Finland the good

BOTH before setting out and since returning from a British Council‐sponsored specialist tour of Finland to look at libraries and library schools and give a series of lectures, friends have been either congratulating my bravery or castigating my foolhardiness in venturing behind the Iron Curtain. Even those few people who seemed aware of the unescapable fact that Finland is not occupied by Russians (or indeed anyone at all across vast, forest‐covered stretches of the country) wondered how I coped with the intense cold and the marauding bears believed to wander unchecked around the unmade streets of the log‐cabin settlements.