Friends Behind the Curtain

Buried deep in Finland's endless pine forests some 40 miles south of Rovaniemi, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, is the little community of Varejoki. The people of Varejoki, struggling desperately to keep alive and to create a new life for themselves, are a strange assortment. There are 50 Finnish farmers--mostly refugees from the northern district of Petsamo, now Russian territory--who live with their 300 children in lean-tos and shacks. There are several score prisoners--mostly short-term smugglers and black marketeers--who live in improvised barracks almost without guards. And there are 35 welcome visitors sent by the American Friends Service Committee from half a dozen countries to help in the building of the community. The visitors live in tents and work each day clearing the land, draining the swamps and fitting together the sturdy log houses that will soon make Varejoki a real town.

Most of the Friends' campers are aged 18 to 28. Half are Finnish; the rest come from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Czechoslovakia, the U.S. and Germany. They are chosen by local representatives of the American Friends Service Committee and are sent to Finland for ten-week periods. The men and some of the women work on construction; the rest of the women run the school, the nursery school, and cook for the camp.

Though less than half the campers are Quakers, all attend daily meetings for worship, and the entire community is drawn into the Sunday meeting. Like all Quaker meetings-for-worship, the liturgy-less silence may be broken by any worshiper who feels prompted by the "inner light" to. speak. Even the older, stalwart Lutheran Finns attend now; after coming for several weeks, they begin to speak, in their dry, taciturn way. Some of the campers are unhappy about this development; the totally silent meetings seemed the easiest answer to the 17 declensions of the Finnish language.

One of the Friends Service Committee Americans now in Finland is handsome, young Mary Barclay Howarth of Wichita, Kans., who has been there for two years. Said she last week to a U.S. visitor:

"I like it here. We do without many of the comforts we have become accustomed to in the States, but I at least have an inner comfort which I did not have before. We are working unmolested, and I think effectively, in a part of the world which has suffered terribly. It is furthermore part of the world lying behind what is sometimes called the Iron Curtain. I can think of no more important place to work for brotherhood and understanding."

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