lined the course of developments inside Finland and thus, according to the Siirtokansan Kalenteri, dissipating suspicions held against that country.

During World War II the Consulate was ordered closed, and Consul Aaltio departed for Finland. In 1940, Alex Kyyhkynen, of Duluth, was named Vice-Consul of Finland, and later promoted t i Consul.

As far as the relationship between Finland's official representation and the Finns of Minnesota are concerned, a little friction may have been present in the beginning, but that soon disappeared and, when Hjalmar J. Procope was Minister to Washington he became popular throughout the state. All subsequent Finnish ministers to Washington have visited Duluth and the other centers of Finnish population in Minnesota.

Visits to the Old Country : A person who leaves the country of his birth after he has reached adulthood generally finds it impossible to dismiss that country completely from his thoughts. Although conditions in the country might have been far from perfect, and his memories at first tinged with bitterness, years in a strange, foreign country tend to change these memories, and the result is often a feeling of homesickness for the old.

Before Finland became independent, there were many who even returned to their fatherland permanently, as has already been statistically cited in earlier chapters of this book, but at that time there was little travel that could fall under the category of simple visits. In the 1920s, however, when steamship lines began to encourage group travel, the practice of paying the old country a visit became general. The first big venture was that of the Cunard Line, whose Andania brought some 600 Finns from New York to Helsinki in a direct sailing. Thousands of relatives and friends gathered at the Helsinki waterfront, and with the music of bands and the flowing of tears the visitors were welcomed to the country which had once been home. In subsequent years the Cunard Line kept up this pattern, the Swedish-American Line joined in, and in 1929 the number of passengers had reached a new high : Ilmonen estimated that 3,390 persons were carried on the special sailings to Helsinki, while the number who travelled on their own remained impossible to guess.

Being in a position to compare the progress both countries had made and to note the differences which continued to exist between them, many Finns began to recognize the dichotomy in

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