Arto Salomaa Mathematician Computer

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Jukka Paakki

Arto Salomaa:
Mathematician,
Computer Scientist,
and Teacher
A Thematic Biography
Arto Salomaa: Mathematician, Computer Scientist,
and Teacher
Jukka Paakki

Arto Salomaa:
Mathematician, Computer
Scientist, and Teacher
A Thematic Biography
Jukka Paakki
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland

ISBN 978-3-030-16048-7 ISBN 978-3-030-16049-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16049-4

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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Preface

In 2013, I was writing a history of Finnish computer science and interviewed all the
key persons in the area. One of them was Arto Salomaa, academician and professor
of mathematics at the University of Turku.
So, I travelled to Turku and met Arto for the first time ever. This might seem a bit
surprising, because Finland is a rather small nation where everyone knows each
other, and we both had worked in the same subarea of computer science, namely
formal languages. In the twentieth century, the universities in Finland were not yet
forced—or supposed—to do cooperation, so we were working almost 200 km apart,
Arto mostly in Turku and I mostly in Helsinki.
Of course, I knew who Arto was even though I didn’t know him personally. He
was the grand old man of Finnish computer science and a legend already in the
1970s when I started my studies at the university. At that time, the number of
computer science textbooks was small, and they all seemed to be written by
Americans. There was one notable exception, though: the highly valued and widely
used textbooks Theory of Automata and Formal Languages were written by a Finn,
Arto Salomaa. Even I used the latter one in my studies.
Before the meeting with Arto, I was not sure what I could tease out of the famous
academician. However, the interview went smoothly. I was surprised at how well
Arto still could recall his past achievements and scientific results from the 1960s and
1970s. After the actual interview, we talked about our hobbies and family matters.
Yet another surprise was that Arto is a most fanatic spectator sportsman who knows
about sports almost as much as I do. Even though my main personal hobby, golf,
does not belong among Arto’s favorites, we still fell into a deep intellectual discus-
sion about Greg Norman’s Finnish roots and Mikko Ilonen’s recent success on the
European golf tour.
After the history book was finished, I got the feeling that it was rather imperfect in
the sense that all the themes and persons had been addressed too superficially.
Therefore, I wanted to continue with at least one theme in much more detail. After
a few sauna sessions, I was ready to make the obvious decision that Arto Salomaa
would definitely be the best choice for a follow-up. When I called Arto and

v
vi Preface

suggested a biography project, he first tried to be modest and offered a ‘thank you
but no’. I didn’t, however, give up so easily but explained that biographies had been
written of Finnish mathematicians with much smaller claims than his. Moreover, as I
noted, biographies of Finnish computer scientists did not exist at all, so it was high
time to start filling such an enormous gap. I suppose that Arto asked his wife’s
opinion, as usual, and Kaarina immediately told him to say ‘yes’. That Arto also did,
and after a few weeks we started working.
Since Arto is most of all a first-class scientist, the main objective of the biography
was to describe his research career and his main scientific results. This part was
rather straightforward, based on Arto’s books and other publications. However, such
a biography with just scientific content would have been most boring to read (at least
for non-mathematicians), so I decided to include in it also the other side of Arto’s
life: his background, childhood and youth, family as well as hobbies. This part was
based on interviews, not only with Arto but also with his family members and
colleagues.
Originally, the biography was published in Finnish in the report series of the
Turku Centre for Computer Science (TUCS) and the Department of Mathematics
and Statistics, University of Turku. The publishing support of the director of TUCS,
Ion Petre, is gratefully acknowledged.
The Finnish version of the biography was launched on June 16, 2017, at the
University of Turku in connection with the 13th Computability in Europe conference
(CiE 2017). Ronan Nugent from Springer was present, both at the conference and at
the special Salomaa-biography session. After the launching session, Ronan came to
me and told me that Springer appreciates Arto and his career so much that they
would be interested to publish the biography in English. ‘Ok, why not’, I thought.
Soon, the publishing agreement was signed, and I started to work on the English
version that same fall.
In order to have the biography written in fair English, I asked Marina Kurtén from
the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, to help me. Marina
kindly agreed and translated the chapters “Professor’s Son”, “Child and Youngster
in Turku, Finland”, “Master and Doctor of Science”, “Academician, One of the
Twelve”, “Champion of Sauna, Master of Music and Sports” and “Äijä: The Great
Grandfather”, as well as the non-scientific parts of the chapters “Father of Formal
Languages”, “Champion of L” and “Master of Formal Power Series”. I updated and
translated the rest and tried to improve the scientific content from the original version
by including one new chapter “Prehistory of Automata and Formal Languages” on
the history of formal languages and by describing Arto’s research more extensively
and in more detail.
The book is roughly divided into two themes. Arto’s scientific career is described
in the chapters “Master of Many-Valued Logic”, “Prehistory of Automata and
Formal Languages”, “Father of Formal Languages”, “Champion of L”, “President
of EATCS”, “Master of Formal Power Series”, “Champion of Cryptography”,
“Master of Biocomputing”, “All-Round Grand Champion” and “Q.E.D.” and his
personal life in the chapters “Professor’s Son”, “Child and Youngster in Turku,
Finland”, “Master and Doctor of Science”, “Academician, One of the Twelve”,
Preface vii

“Champion of Sauna, Master of Music and Sports” and “Äijä: The Great Grandfa-
ther”. Since Arto does not make an explicit difference between ‘work’ and ‘leisure’,
there is some degree of thematic overlap within the chapters.
In addition to Marina Kurtén, Ronan Nugent and the anonymous copyeditor from
Springer are acknowledged for their support. Ronan especially made a most careful
review of the whole text and found a number of bigger and smaller errors. I hope that
at least all the major errors have been corrected and that this book will be worth
reading.
Finally, my warmest thanks to Arto for spending long hours with me and to
Kaarina for the nice recollections of old Karelia and for the interview meals at their
home in Turku. It was a great pleasure to meet the rest of the Salomaa family too; I
hope to see them all soon again.

Costa del Silencio, Spain Jukka Paakki

January 24, 2019
Contents

Professor’s Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Child and Youngster in Turku, Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Master and Doctor of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Master of Many-Valued Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Prehistory of Automata and Formal Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Father of Formal Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Champion of L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
President of EATCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Master of Formal Power Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Champion of Cryptography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Master of Biocomputing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Academician, One of the Twelve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
All-Round Grand Champion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Champion of Sauna, Master of Music and Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Äijä: The Great Grandfather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Q.E.D. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Appendix A: References and Suggested Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Appendix B: PhDs Supervised by Arto Salomaa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Appendix C: Textbooks and Handbooks by Arto Salomaa . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

ix
Professor’s Son

Helky laulu Auran rantain

silmä kirkas salamoi,
kaiu maine kauas kantain
minkä kunto kansan voi!
Täällä Suomen synnyinmuistot,
täällä työn ja tiedon puistot
virttä vapauden soi
virttä vapauden soi.
(Ring out you song of Aura’s shores
Be full of lightning, sparkling eye,
Echo our name as wide and as far
As the heart of our people may!
Here is the memory of Finland born,
Here was born work and wisdom
Playing the hymn of freedom
Playing the hymn of freedom.)

This is the grand beginning of the regional anthem for Finland Proper, with lyrics
by Väinö Kolkkala (writing under the pseudonym Väinö Kulo) and composed by
Toivo Nieminen (later Louko). It was performed for the first time in the village of
Prunkkala, at the summer festival of the youth association of Finland Proper on June
27, 1915.
The area praised in the song, on the southwestern coast, is one of the provinces of
Finland. Finland is divided into 19 provinces with their own histories and identities,
their own administrations, corporations, and culture. The province of Finland Proper
is the third largest province in Finland when it comes to population (480,000). The
total population of Finland was some 5.5 million in 2017.
The province capital of Finland Proper is Turku. It is the oldest city in Finland,
founded in the year 1229. In the years 1809–1812 Turku was the capital of the
autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland under the Russian empire, and the first Finnish
capital before Helsinki. Today, the population of Turku is some 190,000 and it is the
sixth-largest city in Finland.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

J. Paakki, Arto Salomaa: Mathematician, Computer Scientist, and Teacher,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16049-4_1
2 Professor’s Son

The “work and wisdom” mentioned in the anthem for Finland Proper relate to the
Salomaa family, as it has its roots there.
On his father’s side, Arto Salomaa is a Proper Finn, who are stereotypically
taciturn, inquisitive, uncommunicative, and have a strong sense of pride in their
place of origin. In the 1930s, in a primary-school book written by Kaarlo Hänninen,
they were described as follows:
The Proper Finns are a Häme tribe that has been mixed with Swedes. The Proper Finn is
taller than a true Häme person. He is lively and speaks a very short-worded dialect.

Indeed; many “very short-worded dialects” are spoken in Proper Finland. They
belong to the southwestern dialects of Finland. They are identified by such features
as initial consonant combinations (e.g., “krapsuttaa” vs. official Finnish “rapsuttaa,”
to scratch), the endemic presence of a voiceless f sound (e.g., “affen” vs. “ahven,”
perch) and elision in words of three or more syllables (e.g., “suamlane”
vs. “suomalainen,” Finn). The southwestern dialects have more features in common
with Estonian than other Finnish dialects. Though all southwestern dialects have the
same main features, there is a great deal of local variation. The most well known of
the dialects, and the one that is hardest to understand, is the dialect of Rauma; a well-
known example of it is how to suggest first-name terms: “san snää mnuu snuuks,
snuuks mnääki snuu sno” (standard Finnish: “sano sinä minua sinuksi, sinuksi
minäkin sinua sanon”).
On his mother’s side (Prins family), Arto Salomaa has Kymenlaakso blood in
him. Kymenlaakso in southeastern Finland is not one of the historical provinces of
Finland, but a scrap of land surrounded by Uusimaa, Päijät-Häme, Southern
Savonia, and Southern Karelia. This means the people from Kymenlaakso are not
considered their own tribe, but are considered to be composed of a combination of
features from the traditional Finnish tribes of Häme, Karelia, and Savonia. In 2017,
the population of the Kymenlaakso region was around 180,000.
Arto’s maternal grandfather, Frans Hjalmar Prins (1870–1920), was a member of
the Savonian-Karelian students’ association when he studied at the University of
Helsinki, so he must have considered himself more eastern than western Finnish.
Prins, ordained in 1898, had his first posts in Southern Karelia, and so his daughter,
Aili, born in 1898, received a primarily Karelian upbringing. Today, those home
towns of the Prins family, Antrea and Säkkijärvi, are part of Russia.
In Hänninen’s school book, Karelians were described as follows:
KARELIANS have a slim figure and are taller. Their eyes are darker, they usually have dark
hair, which is often curly. The Karelian’s character is spirited, talkative, and active. How-
ever, they do not have the same perseverance as Häme people when it comes to working.
This is especially obvious in that they are not as willing to farm the land as the Häme people.
Instead, they love trading. Karelians love singing and music.

So, his genes make Arto Salomaa tall, slim, a brunette, and an active Finn who
speaks in a spirited way but with short words and his own special dialect—when he
speaks. He is very proud of his place of origin and loves music. He would have fared
best as a trader, but fate had other ideas . . .
(Great) Grandparents 3

Fig. 1 The house in Ankka

(Great) Grandparents

The father of Arto Salomaa’s paternal grandfather was a yeoman from Finland
Proper. He owned a farm in the village of Ankka (Fig. 1) in the parish of Lieto,
but due to financial straits he had to sell it at the beginning of the 1890s. In
connection with the deal, the family was allowed to rent an allotment of about one
hectare of the farmland, where Arto’s grandfather built a cottage consisting of one
largish main room and one small chamber. The maternal family of Arto’s father, for
their part, lived about ten kilometers away, in Yliskulma in Lieto.
Arto’s grandfather, Gustaf (Kustaa) Edvard Kustaanpoika (Kustaa’s son)
Grönholm (1865–1923) and grandmother Vendla Sofia Annantytär (Anna’s daugh-
ter) Stackelberg (1857–1893) belonged to the peasantry, who seldom owned any
arable land of their own. They lived by various odd jobs and paid rent to the owner of
the estate by working for the estate. Gustaf also had to work most of the time, and
often late into the night, at other farms in the region. The peasantry were—according
to Arto’s father—“the lowest of the low” and not much better than beggars.
In the 1800s and into the 1900s, Finland was still a class society, where only the
nobility, clergy, burghers, and farmers owning registered land had the right to vote.
In addition to the peasantry, country people who did not own land or have the right to
vote until 1906 included tenant farmers and cottagers, independent maids and farm-
hands doing temporary odd jobs and also making a living as artisans, farm laborers
working for room and board, and dependent laborers who would doss down in the
host’s house and work odd jobs for food. The lowest caste included those living at
the mercy of society’s support: the poor, the old, the paupers, the weak-minded, the
invalids, the chronically ill, the underage orphans who could be auctioned off like
merchandise, and the beggars mentioned above who would wander around begging
from those who were better off.
Thus, the idea Arto’s father had from his childhood of the peasantry may have
been realistic, but it was also very narrow-minded, since many other groups had it
even much worse in 1890s Finland. The status of the peasantry (and cottagers)
improved in 1918, when the so-called cottagers’ law gave them the right to buy their
rented land for themselves.
4 Professor’s Son

Jalmari Salomaa, Father and Professor

Arto Salomaa’s father, Jalmari Edvard (J. E.) Salomaa was born on April 19, 1891,
in his parents’ home town of Lieto. At that time, Finland still belonged to the Empire
of Russia, which tried to make Finland and other of its provinces more Russian by
infringing on their autonomy during the period of oppression at the turn of the
century. However, as the industry, art, and culture of Finland had developed, the idea
of Finland as an independent state, separate from Russia, had already spread far and
wide; this led to such events as the great strike of 1905, leading to the formation of
Finland’s own parliament and party system, as well as universal suffrage. The
collapse of the Russian Empire caused by the First World War eventually gave
Finland the opportunity to declare itself an independent state on December 6, 1917.
The general nationalist ideology included replacing Swedish, which had previ-
ously been the prevalent language, with the country’s own Finnish language. A
significant part of this nationalist movement entailed changing Swedish names into
Finnish ones, and so Jalmari changed his surname in 1906 from Grönholm (“green
island”) to Salomaa (“deep forest” or “wilderness”), because his political and social
interests had already—in his teenage years—as he said, “awakened.”
Jalmari changed his surname on the centennial of the Finnish national philoso-
pher, J. V. Snellman, on May 12, 1906, along with tens of thousands (officially
24,800) of other Fennomans, people who promoted the Finnish culture and lan-
guage, and that date is called the “great name change.” Within his family, Jalmari
was the only one to change his name, so it is only his branch of the family that
became Salomaas, while the rest remained Grönholms.
Jalmari’s mother, Vendla, died of typhoid fever when the boy was only 18 months
old, and his grandfather died when he was four years old. Since Jalmari’s father,
Gustaf, had to make a living for his family by working away all the time, Jalmari
mainly grew up in his grandmother’s care (Fig. 2). When his grandmother moved to
Turku to be with her three daughters in 1899, Jalmari faced being without any daily
care at all. However, the problem found a lucky solution when father Gustaf
remarried the same year. Along with a stepmother, Hilda Eufemia Juhontytär
(Juho’s daughter) Linden, the eight-year-old Jalmari gained a slightly younger
brother and sister as a result of the marriage.
However, Jalmari’s life was not happy in his new stepfamily. When he was
supposed to be sent as a shepherd to the uninhabited village of Väljä, known for its
witches and ghosts, as part of his father’s work responsibilities in spring 1900, the
little boy, having had nightmares about the job, decided it was better to run away to
Turku, to his grandmother and aunties. He stayed there for a while, until he returned
home the next year to start primary school in Lieto parish village in fall 1901. This
made Jalmari the first member of his family to go to primary school.
Though Jalmari fared very well in school, to the extent that he could skip some
grades, his working-class father did not value his education. Mainly supported by his
grandmother, Jalmari was allowed to apply to the Finnish lyceum in Turku after he
had finished primary school, and he started studying there in fall 1904. At the same
Jalmari Salomaa, Father and Professor 5

Fig. 2 Jalmari and his

grandmother

time, Jalmari moved back to Turku and his grandmother and aunties, becoming
estranged from his own family.
This time it was a final separation: Jalmari never had any more contact with his
family, not even in his old age, and did not accept any of the inheritance he could
have had. It is likely that Jalmari changed his surname at the age of 15, not just as a
result of his social awakening, but also because he wanted to distance himself from
the Grönholm family.
Jalmari Salomaa became independent at a young age. From the time he was in the
sixth year of the lyceum, he lived on his own, making a living by tutoring weaker
pupils. In spring 1910, Jalmari passed his matriculation examination with top grades,
including an oral exam in Helsinki as a formality.
After the oral exam, Jalmari made a seamless transition to the Imperial Alexander
University in Helsinki in 1910. He signed up for the historical-linguistic department,
since he had decided to study philosophy, esthetics, and history, and other related
subjects.
He also considered mathematics, but Jalmari did not end up choosing that, though
his mathematics teacher at the lyceum, Dr. I. A. Rosenquist, time and time again
urged his uncommonly bright pupil to study mathematics. In fact, his teacher’s
6 Professor’s Son

urging had the exact opposite effect, as Jalmari Salomaa himself said: “Later, it
would again be my fate to take a path that I had not been told to enter, and not the
one I had been urged to take.”
Jalmari chose theoretical and practical philosophy, as well as general history, as
his major subjects. Out of these subjects, general history became the major of his
M.A. degree; inspired by the theories of German historian Karl Lamprecht, he wrote
his Master’s thesis Kirkkovaltion synty (The birth of the church state). The supervi-
sor of Jalmari’s M.A. thesis was the Extraordinary Professor in general history
Magnus Schybergson (1851–1925), but his postgraduate studies were supervised
by the professor in theoretical philosophy Arvi(d) Grotenfelt (1863–1941), as
Jalmari’s scholarly interests turned from general history toward the history of
philosophy.
Jalmari thought he had several good ideas for topics for a doctoral thesis, but the
aristocratic Grotenfelt was not convinced by them. In the end, fed up with the
suggestions of his eager postgraduate, Grotenfelt accepted the thesis topic of a
comparative study of the relationship between the philosophies of two German
pessimistic philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann.
In order to develop his thesis, Jalmari made a visit to the University of Leipzig in
Germany in 1914, where he had the opportunity to meet the inspiration for his
M.A. thesis, Lamprecht. In Leipzig, Jalmari primarily discussed the thesis topic he
had set in Finland with the professor in philosophy and pedagogics, Johannes
Volkelt (1848–1930), but since he immediately met “his excellency” (Exzellenz)
and the father of modern psychology, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), he was inspired
to prepare an alternative thesis on experimental psychology. The topic was set to be
the comprehensiveness of consciousness, with necessary test subjects and assistants.
Dreams do not always come true: in summer 1914, the First World War broke out
in Europe. When Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, Jalmari had to leave
his studies and psychological experiments in Leipzig and return to Finland. After an
arduous journey, Jalmari eventually reached his hometown Turku alive, and, tired
and disappointed in his wrecked plans, said: “I felt old. My youth had run out.”
Since the war had interrupted the psychological research Jalmari had started in
Leipzig, he continued with his doctoral thesis on Schopenhauer and von Hartmann
once he was back in Finland. Ending up siding with Schopenhauer’s views in his
comparison between the two philosophers, Jalmari Salomaa’s doctoral thesis Scho-
penhauer ja von Hartmann—Kriitillis-vertaileva tutkielma (Schopenhauer and von
Hartmann—a critical comparison) was finally completed in 1918 and he graduated
as Doctor of Philosophy the next year at the university that had changed from
Imperial to national, the University of Helsinki.
Alongside his studies, Jalmari also spent his time like any student, with parties
and other soirées, where often lively and deep academic debates were carried out. At
these get-togethers he met many then and future celebrities, such as national poet
Eino Leino (1878–1926), who, besides being bohemian and outgoing, turned out to
be “the most spirited conversationalist.” Leino had many subjects to discuss, as he
had just returned from a grant trip to Italy and was one of the leading figures in the
new romantic nationalism.
Jalmari Salomaa, Father and Professor 7

Naturally, young Jalmari also mingled with female students and other young
ladies. His most long-term teenage crush was Astrid Eklund, who had lived in the
same building as him during his first years at the lyceum, and whom he dared to
propose to in a letter from Leipzig in summer 1914, after long hesitation. Though she
said yes, Jalmari’s relationship with Astrid never ended up in marriage.
Instead, he found his mate through his sideline. At the beginning of the twentieth
century, university students used to spend their summers in the countryside. Jalmari
spent his vacations traveling to such places as Åland, Eastern Finland—and
Kymenlaakso. In some places, he would tutor school children in languages and
mathematics for a small fee.
During breaks between tutoring at the Anjala clergyman’s home in Kymenlaakso,
Jalmari found his new girlfriend, Aili Prins, and this relationship led to them getting
married in 1919. The couple had three children, Sirkka in 1919, Pentti in 1922, and
their evening star, Arto, in 1934. At that time, Jalmari was 43 and Aili 36.
In 1919, Finland was a young, independent republic, where a grueling civil war
had led to the creation of a democratic and modern society. One of the important
national efforts was the establishment of universities around the country, in addition
to the University of Helsinki. Two of them were rapidly established in Turku: in
1918 Åbo Akademi for Swedish speakers and in 1920 the University of Turku for
Finnish speakers, which had two faculties initially: a faculty of arts and a faculty of
mathematics and natural science.
Jalmari Salomaa started his career proper within the folk high school, working as
the director of both the Kankaanpää folk high school (1918–1920) and Tuusula folk
high school (1921–1923). His later stints as the headmaster of the summer university
in Turku 1936–1947 and 1951–1953 and as chairman of the delegation of the
Society of Popular Education in 1940–1956 can also be seen as his contribution to
the education of the people.
Jalmari entered his career as independent postdoctoral researcher in 1924, when
he was appointed docent (assistant professor) in theoretical philosophy at the
University of Helsinki. After his work in the folk high schools, Jalmari made a
living as the secretary of the chancellor of the University of Turku (1925–1930),
while carrying out significant scholarly research and writing most of his main works
at the end of the 1920s. He found inspiration for them during his journeys to England
and France (1926–1927), Germany (1927), and Denmark and Sweden (1929).
At the beginning of the 1920s, Jalmari also visited the United States, though not
as a scholar but to ask wealthy Finnish-Americans for donations to the newly
established University of Turku. He succeeded so well that J. E. Salomaa is
mentioned as one of the most successful fundraisers for the university.
The beginning of the 1930s was a turning point in Jalmari Salomaa’s academic
career. In 1930, he first lost the competition for a professorship at the University of
Helsinki to Eino Kaila, but the next year he received a consolation prize; he was
appointed to the post Kaila had left at the University of Turku, as professor of
philosophy. Jalmari held this full-time office until 1958, while also carrying out the
teaching and research duties of the education and pedagogics professorship in
1932–1955.
8 Professor’s Son

An active professor can hardly avoid administrative duties, and so Jalmari

Salomaa acted as Elder of the Students’ Union (1934–1937) and Dean of the Faculty
of Arts (1935–1948) at the University of Turku. He was elected into the Finnish
Academy of Science and Letters in 1934.
The Kaila-Salomaa filling of the professor’s vacancy is one of the best known
disputes in Finnish academia. The post of professor in theoretical philosophy at the
University of Helsinki had become vacant in 1929 when its longtime holder, Arvi
Grotenfelt, had retired. The academic competence of the applicants was to be
assessed by Grotenfelt, Professor Ernst Cassirer (University of Hamburg), and
Professor Bruno Bausch (University of Jena). Cassirer and Bausch considered
both applicants competent and were reluctant to rank them as better or worse.
Grotenfelt, who had tutored both applicants, took Kaila’s side because he considered
him a more “original thinker” than Salomaa.
Several heated discussions were conducted in both the historic-linguistic depart-
ment and the senate of the University of Helsinki over this uncommonly even race
for the post. After the department had voted 10-6 for Kaila in January 1930, Salomaa
wrote an appeal, as was the custom, to which Kaila for his part replied with such a
deeply philosophical and methodological writ that it was later published as a part of
the history of analytical philosophy in Finland. As Salomaa’s appeal was rejected by
nine votes to six by the department and 40-17 in the senate, Kaila was appointed to
the post in June 1930.
The professor in Roman literature, future rector and chancellor of the University
of Helsinki and prime minister of Finland, Edwin Linkomies (1894–1963), defended
Salomaa the most within the senate, and the mathematics professor, future rector of
the University of Helsinki and chancellor of the University of Turku, Rolf
Nevanlinna (1895–1980), spoke most fervently for Kaila. Nevanlinna was a close
friend of Kaila. However, in his memoir, Nevanlinna has stated that he had “factual
reasons” to vote for Kaila. Many have seen things differently.
As it turned out, the appointment of Eino Kaila (1890–1958) was not a bad choice
for the University of Helsinki, as he soon became the leading philosopher in Finland,
and one of the most visible characters at the university and a significant cultural
influence in general. Besides being a competent academician, Kaila was also a
brilliant teacher, whose legendary and dramatic lectures attracted both philosophy
students and other students, and even the general public. Kaila educated a whole
generation of scholars including many of the internationally best-known names in
Finnish history of philosophy.
The fate of J. E. Salomaa, who lost the post at the University of Helsinki, was not
so bad, either. Naturally, we can only surmise what his career could have been like in
the leading Finnish university and the capital of the country, and how it would have
affected the academic careers of his sons, but they did accomplish a great deal in
Turku, as well. Salomaa also became a significant scholar and teacher in philosophy
and a social influence, though the history books have placed him in the shadow of
Kaila and his students. One effect the working environment at the University of
Turku had on Salomaa’s scholarly choices was that he specialized, besides in more
traditional areas of philosophy, also in the history of philosophy and in pedagogics,
Jalmari Salomaa, Father and Professor 9

subjects which would hardly have been given a very high status at the University of
Helsinki.
Something may have left a bad taste in J. E. Salomaa’s mouth from the filling of
the vacancy at the University of Helsinki, as he tried to avoid meeting his victor, and
did not, for example, go to see Kaila when he visited the University of Turku. The
whole Salomaa family did not absent itself, however, since the youngest son, Arto,
once attended a lecture to see and hear the famous star speaker. Arto did not quite get
the point of the Kailaesquely spirited lecture, as he was occupied with wondering
what Kaila had meant with his dramatic exclamation “Deo volente!” (God willing),
which seemed to have nothing to do with the topic of the lecture.
Though their shared case had ended in defeat in 1930 at the University of
Helsinki, J. E. Salomaa still kept in regular contact with his benefactor and friend
Edwin Linkomies from his seat at the University of Turku. It would seem that the
defeat had also continued to bother Linkomies, because he told Master Arto Salomaa
at his conferral in 1955 at the University of Turku: “Your father suffered a great
injustice back then.”
J. E. Salomaa’s most significant scholarly work studies epistemology and ethics.
Among other things, he studied core philosophical questions in epistemology such
as “what is knowledge,” “what can we know,” and “what makes beliefs justified” by
separating realization of truth from truth in itself: truth that is realized consists of
known and proven facts, while truth in itself consists of things that were true even
before they were proven to be so. The existence of Neptune, the planet, for example,
was a fact (truth in itself) even before the planet was discovered and the truth of its
existence was realized.
In his work on the philosophy of values, Salomaa studied the experience of value,
the concept of value, and problems with value recognition, ending up with the
phenomenological view that values are perceived through feelings (and not, for
example, facts). Salomaa’s primary scholarly work is generally considered to be his
book on epistemology and values, Totuus ja arvo (Truth and Value, 1926).
The second main branch of Salomaa’s research was pedagogics, about which he
published several works, including Yleinen kasvatusoppi (General Pedagogics,
1943) and Koulukasvatusoppi (School Pedagogics, 1947). This category also
includes psychology, where Salomaa was a trailblazer of Finnish IQ testing, pro-
ducing a Finnish version of the American Stanford-Binet test developed by Lewis
Terman, and publishing it in 1939 as a pamphlet called Älykkyyden mittaaminen
Suomen oloihin sovelletulla Binet’n-tyyppisellä testistöllä (Measuring IQ with a set
of Binet-type tests adapted to Finnish conditions).
The third branch of Salomaa’s output was history of philosophy. In this area, he
studied the philosophical movements of the early twentieth century in general and
especially the thinking and philosophies of the well-known philosophers of his time.
In this field, he published books on J. V. Snellman (1944), Arthur Schopenhauer
(1944), and Immanuel Kant (1960), among others. The most well-known of
Salomaa’s historical works is Filosofian historia (The history of philosophy) in
two parts (1935–1936), which was used as course literature in Finnish universities
into the 1990s. Other well-known historical-philosophical works of Salomaa are
10 Professor’s Son

Philosophie der Geschichte (1950) and the posthumously published Historia ja

nykyaika (History and Modern Days, 2000), based on a manuscript from 1960.
Salomaa also published a few works that were outside his own field. This
category includes the history Helsingin Suomalainen Klubi 1876–1926 (The Finnish
Club in Helsinki) published in 1926, Pohjois-Amerikan Yhdysvaltain historia (The
History of the United States of North America) published in 1937, and the laid-back
memoire Eräs lapsuus ja nuoruus (A Childhood and Youth) published in 1954.
Jalmari wanted to be called “Professor J. E. Salomaa” in academia, but within the
family he was known by the more informal “ukki” (grandpa). Besides not being very
fond of family, ukki also was not very kind to children. He did not take much interest
in his own children until they were in their teenage years. Ukki’s authority over the
family was emphasized by the fact that his older children, Sirkka and Pentti,
addressed him with the polite form of address, “te” (plural you) instead of the
informal “sinä” (singular you). Arto, for his part, was on first-name terms with his
father.
As a professor, J. E. Salomaa did not have any close colleagues, but kept his
distance from them, as well; when a well-known professor of philosophy from
Germany came to visit the University of Turku, for example, J. E. refused to see
him, claiming his “promise” to take his son Arto on a bus ride to Kemiö the same day
as an admissible reason.
The professor had more informal relations with his students. Once upon a time,
for example, the students absolutely needed the professor to sign their study books
after his course and J. E. Salomaa was having a long lunch at the Hamburger Börs
restaurant, so he received the students there. When the students went up to his table
to ask for the mark, he asked each of them their grade and wrote their answer in their
books. As far as we know, none of the students dared to improve their grades on their
own initiative, because J. E. was known to have a long and photographic memory.
All this indicates that Jalmari Salomaa was the prototype of the reticent Finn
Proper and authoritarian head of the family. On the other hand, he was also a polite
gentleman, and a scrupulous and trustworthy father, who was generous with his
endless store of knowledge, giving good and useful advice to his (elder) children
about such things as the meaning of increasing judgment and critical thinking as you
grew older, and that you should not believe everything that is said or written down at
first glance. Always the philosopher.
Ukki was good with his hands and very athletic; he would carve bark boats, take
long walks, and row back and forth from the summer cottage the family rented in
Merimasku to the baths in Naantali. There he would have a session in the vapor bath,
which he thought was much nicer than the sauna, which according to him was much
too stifling.
Ukki was not the right age to have been at the front during the Second World War,
but he did have national duties in the aircraft warning services and chopping wood in
Turku during the war. Further, he contributed to the war effort by raising patriotic
feelings in talks at the front and writing a series of columns on pedagogy for the
magazine Suomen Kuvalehti.
Jalmari Salomaa, Father and Professor 11

Fig. 3 Professor J. E.
Salomaa in 1958

At first, ukki was optimistic about the Continuation War, as Finland had paired up
with Germany and set out to expand to the east, to build a Great Finland and pay
back the Soviet Union for the Winter War: “Täst sorast määki tykkään!” (This is a
war I like!) However, his view of the war turned pessimistic when the United States
joined the alliance against Germany, and the defeat of its allies inevitably started to
loom in the future.
After the wars, Professor Jalmari (J. E.) Salomaa continued his work at the
University of Turku. He retired in 1958 and died soon after from cancer of the
esophagus, on September 3, 1960, in Turku, at the age of 69. Salomaa was an active
and valued teacher, scholar, philosopher, and writer until the end of his academic
career. He is mentioned as a trailblazer of Finnish philosophy in many works about
the history of philosophy in our country, and the history of philosophy is most often
named the most enduring of his research areas. In Fig. 3 we see Professor Salomaa
about two years before his death.
Though J. E. Salomaa gained fame and respect during his lifetime, he was not
vain for titles, but received every distinction with philosophical calm. For example,
when the President of the Republic, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, conferred in
1944 the distinguished Commander of the Order of the White Rose of Finland on
Professor Jalmari Edvard Salomaa, he pinned it on a teddy bear instead of his own
chest. Ukki probably thought it would be displayed better there.
12 Professor’s Son

On September 9, 1960, the following obituary was published in the leading

Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat:
Professor Jalmari Salomaa is dead
Last Saturday, on June 3rd, Emeritus Professor Jalmari Edvard Salomaa died in Turku of
a severe illness. He was born in Lieto on April 19, 1891, matriculated in 1910, got the Master
of Arts degree in 1914, and the Licentiate degree and the Doctoral degree in 1919. He was
appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Turku in 1931, and he became
emeritus professor in 1958. Professor Salomaa also carried out the teaching and research
duties of the education and pedagogics professorship at the University. He worked as the
director of the Kankaanpää folk high school in 1918–20 and as the director of the Tuusula
folk high school in 1921–23. He was general secretary of the Turku Finnish University
Society in 1922–23, and docent of the University of Helsinki in 1924–31.

Aili Salomaa, Mother and Volunteer

Arto Salomaa’s mother, Aili Hellin Prins, was born on January 19, 1898, in Jaala, to
future reverend Frans Hjalmar Prins (later Parmala), who was awaiting his ordina-
tion, and Amalia Koskinen. Aili met her future husband when he worked as tutor to
the two older and less gifted siblings in the house. Their acquaintance gradually grew
into a deeper relationship, until Aili and the tutor of her siblings, Jalmari Salomaa,
got married in 1919.
As a Karelian, unlike Jalmari, Aili was sociable and loved her extended family,
which made her husband say she had a “generic mania.” She would often travel
around Finland, alone or with her children, to visit relatives, and in the latter part of
the 1950s, she even managed to persuade her unwilling Jalmari to join her. Since
Aili’s relatives mostly lived quite far from Turku, this branch of the family never
became very close to the Salomaa family.
Within the family, Aili was called “mummu” (grandma) echoing ukki for Jalmari,
and less flatteringly “munapää” (egg-head) by the grandchildren. Her most peculiar
pet name was made up by ukki: “Litvinov,” which was supposed not just to raise her
status as mother, but also to put down Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, who had been
foreign minister of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, before the Second World War.
Because of the communist shade the pet name carried with it, it cannot be said to
have been Aili’s own preferred name, rather the opposite.
Mummu had needlework and reciting of poetry as her hobbies, and she often
performed at different events, but most of all she was into organizational activities.
Among other posts, mummu worked on the city council of Turku for 15 years as a
representative of the Coalition Party, and after the wars she was invited to stand for
parliament, but she declined because her family was against it. As was usual at the
time, mummu did not have a profession as such, or a place of work except her home,
but she translated books to Finnish and wrote for the Lotta Svärd magazine (both
under her own name and under the pseudonym “Salama” (lightning)) and for the
Coalition Party’s organ in Turku, Uusi Aura (under the pseudonym “Nappikoukku”
(buttonhook)).
Aili Salomaa, Mother and Volunteer 13

The most important work for Aili Salomaa was the Lotta Svärd organization,
which followed the tenets of the Coalition Party. She joined Lotta Svärd at the
beginning of the 1930s and advanced to the post of chair for the Turku district, and
then to a seat on the central executive committee for the duration of the Continuation
War 1941–1944. During these years she also acted as the vice-head of the collection
and maintenance department of the central executive committee. In addition, Aili
Salomaa was a member of the board of editors at the Lotta Svärd magazine in
1939–1944.

The Lotta Svärd organization was established in the aftermath of the Finnish
civil war as a support organization for female national defense volunteers
supporting the Civil Guards. The Civil Guards, in turn, had been formed as
local self-defense organizations against the Russians since 1917. Scattered
around the country for the first couple of years, the small women’s organiza-
tions were brought together into a national organization on September 9, 1920,
when it was entered in the register of associations as the Lotta Svärd society
(since the registration was made in Swedish, it was entered as Lotta Svärd r.f.).
In 1941, the society’s name changed to “Lotta Svärd r.y.” in official docu-
ments, and in everyday use it was called the Lotta Svärd organization.
Lotta Svärd was a disciplined, downright military organization with strict
rules, orders of the day, and norms for acceptable behavior. The “Lottas”
participating in the society were obliged to wear a uniform, for example, in
accordance with a model determined in February 1921 as follows:
A frieze coat that is 45 cm from the hem of the gown and with a yoke that is 12 cm in
front and back; on the upper pockets of the coat 5 cm broad folds reaching all the way
down; sleeves turned up 12 cm; a 5-cm broad belt made from the same material as
the coat.
A loose frieze skirt, same color as the coat, the hem 25 cm from the ground and a
three- or four-strip ordinary model; the front and back strips 17 cm in width, must
have a pocket; no slip but very warm underpants instead, with the topmost completely
concealing, made from warm, dark material or frieze and buttoned to under the knees.
A grey shirt made from a warm material, with long sleeves and a straight yoke in front
(and back), 10 cm wide with buttonholes for cufflinks on the inside at the lower edge
of the cuffs, and a buttonhole for fastening the sleeve on top of the shoulder; at the
left-side lower edge of the yoke a small pocket.
A cap made from frieze in the style of Mannerheim’s cap, like the ones worn by the
corresponding Civil Guard; the same cockade as worn by the corresponding Civil
Guard.
The footwear should preferably be boots, pike shoes, or laced shoes made out of thick
leather and with leg warmers; woolen socks.

(continued)
14 Professor’s Son

Insignia, ribbon, and shield in accordance with the model approved by the supreme
commander; a backpack made out of water-resistant material, the contents of which
are stipulated in more detail in the regulations.

Lotta Svärd was a hierarchical organization. The society was led by a

central executive committee, and to make the administration easier, the society
was divided into district, local, and village departments corresponding to the
Civil Guard organization. The work was administrated by dividing the society
into a healthcare, a catering, an equipment, and a collection division. In
peacetime, the largest and most important was the catering division, which
organized the catering for all the events of the Civil Guards, from small coffees
to the feeding of entire large encampments.
The number of members increased steadily so that, after having some
41,000 members in 1925, in the last year of its operations, 1944, the organi-
zation had 232,000 members. Some 52,000 of these members were Girl
Lottas, i.e., 8–16-year-old “Little Lottas” who had their guardian’s permission
to join the Lotta Svärd organization.
During the Second World War from 1939–1944 the organization had a
significant role in the defense of Finland, as the Lottas carried out demanding
work in medical, catering, collection, clerical, and aircraft warning services
both at home and at the front. The primary wartime responsibilities of the Lotta
Svärd organization were the field hospitals and canteens at the front.
After the war had ended, the Moscow Armistice signed on September
19, 1944 stipulated in its twenty-first article that “Finland undertakes imme-
diately to dissolve all pro-Hitler organizations (of a Fascist type) situated on
Finnish territory, whether political, military or para-military, as well as other
organizations conducting propaganda hostile to the United Nations, in partic-
ular to the Soviet Union, and will not in future permit the existence of
organizations of that nature,” which meant that the Lotta Svärd organization
was nearing its end. Based on the armistice conditions, the Lotta Svärd
organization was discontinued on November 23, 1944.
Ending the organization did not put a stop to all the charitable work of the
Lottas; knowing that the organization would have to discontinue, it managed
to transfer most of its assets to Suomen Naisten Huoltosäätiö (the Finnish
women’s aid foundation), established on October 24, 1944. The foundation
started to take care of catering services at the large rebuilding projects around
the country, hiring former Lottas for the work. At the end of the 1940s, the
work expanded to workplace catering to the extent that a new company,
Työmaahuolto Oy, was founded, with the foundation owning the majority of
shares in it. The biggest effort Työmaahuolto ever made was catering for the
Summer Olympics in Helsinki in 1952.

(continued)
Aili Salomaa, Mother and Volunteer 15

When enough time had passed since the end of the wars, the word “Lotta”
became acceptable again. In 2004, the name of Suomen Naisten Huoltosäätiö
was changed to Lotta Svärd Säätiö (the Lotta Svärd Foundation).
The most famous member of Lotta Svärd was the legendary Fanni
Luukkonen (1882–1947), who was the longest-acting chairperson of the
central executive committee, from 1929 to 1944. Luukkonen was awarded
many medals for her work during the war, including the Cross of Liberty of the
first class including sword from Finland, and the cross of the Order of the
Eagle from Germany “for battling against Bolshevism.” After the organization
was discontinued, Luukkonen withdrew from social activities and lived in
Helsinki on a small pension and occasional literary jobs until her death.

During the wars, Aili fulfilled her Lotta responsibilities by working in a library on
the home front and lecturing and reciting poetry during visits to the war front. This
meant she never came very close to the actual fighting. Among Aili’s remits were the
strict norms set for Lottas regarding morals in frontline conditions; to clarify them
she wrote a guide called Lotan siveysoppi I (The Lotta’s moral philosophy I) in 1943.
Aili’s husband and “pedagogic philosopher” J. E. Salomaa also supported the Lotta
ideology by writing the wartime education guide Suunta ja tie: kansalaiskasvatuksen
perusta (The direction and the path: the basis of national education), which was
published by the Lotta Svärd organization in 1942 and used as a guiding principle by
the organization. In Fig. 4 we see Aili Salomaa in her Lotta uniform.
Her responsibilities kept Aili busy at meetings most nights during the 1930s and
1940s. Her Lotta activities impacted life at home, as well, as Fanni Luukkonen often
visited the Salomaas, who would be inspired to make stylish plaster images of
Luukkonen for business purposes. The takings from selling the plaster images
were donated in full to the Lotta Svärd organization.

Fig. 4 Aili Salomaa

16 Professor’s Son

As a typical Karelian, mummu was a lively, tender and solicitous model mother
who always—except for the evenings she was away at meetings—had time for her
family. Since both she and ukki Jalmari were often away from home, the Salomaas
employed a maid to take care of their home and children until the end of the war.
Aili Salomaa continued with her Lotta activities even after the war, in the
executive bodies of Suomen Naisten Huoltosäätiö, until she had to step down
from her social duties in the 1960s because of her worsening genetic degenerative
arthritis. After being widowed, Aili lived alone and her main hobby was attending a
Bible circle, until she had to give that up, too, because of her failing health. Aili
passed away at the age 78 on February 17, 1976, in Turku.

Sirkka Salomaa, Sister and Headmistress

Arto Salomaa’s sister, Sirkka Hellikki, was the eldest of the children, born on
October 12, 1919, in Anjala. A bright student, Sirkka continued the Salomaa
academic tradition started by her father, the professor, by studying psychology at
the University of Turku and defending her doctoral thesis on life-stage psychology,
Ikäkausien vaihtelu: tutkimus Helsingin yliopistossa vv. 1828–1878 toimineiden
opettajien elämänkulusta (The changing stages of life: a study of the lifetimes of
instructors at the University of Helsinki in 1828–1878) in 1945. The dissertation was
a media event to some degree, as Sirkka Salomaa became the first woman to defend
her thesis at the University of Turku. This merit even put her on the cover of the
women’s magazine Hopeapeili in February 1946.
With her doctor’s competence, an academic career would have been a distinct
possibility for Sirkka, and she was offered posts as lecturer at both the University of
Turku and the University of Helsinki. However, Sirkka did not embark on an
academic career, but followed another path indicated by her father, in the folk
high school. Before leaving the university, Sirkka had translated some scholarly
milestones into Finnish, the most well-known one being Homo Ludens by the Dutch
historian Johan Huizinga, published in Finnish as Leikkivä ihminen in 1947.
Sirkka embarked on her folk-high-school career in 1947 as a teacher of history
and other scholarly subjects at Suomen Nuoriso-opisto in Mikkeli. In 1952, she
transferred from Mikkeli to the folk high school in Huittinen, becoming its head-
mistress for the years 1956–1983. This school, free of ideological or religious
commitments, was established in 1892, and now called Länsi-Suomen opisto (Insti-
tute of Western Finland), is the oldest folk high school for Finnish speakers in
Finland; at that time it was a boarding school primarily offering a one-year further
education program.
Sirkka was a polite person, but managed the finances very strictly and meticu-
lously, which was an absolute precondition for someone in charge of the economy of
a large folk high school. As headmistress, Sirkka was popular and admired, illus-
trated by the fact that, with her term lasting 27 years, she is still the longest-serving
head of Länsi-Suomen opisto ever.
Pentti Salomaa, Brother and Professor 17

Sirkka’s thrift was evident in her private life, as well; she never used a taxicab or
threw away anything, no matter how old it was. Unmarried, childless, and living
alone, she never wanted to arrange any large (and expensive) parties, but always
disappeared “out of town” on her important birthdays (40, 50, 60). At other times,
Sirkka never tried to avoid her friends and family; during the war, for example, she
looked after her little brother Arto while other family members were busy with the
war effort. Sirkka also had her own wartime duties, which she carried out in the
library of the University of Turku.
After Arto grew up, Sirkka still kept in close contact with him, especially after her
little brother had his own family in the 1960s, as she loved children. In addition to
playing with her nephews and nieces, Sirkka’s hobbies included needlework and
cooking. As she grew older, Sirkka started to develop heart problems, and she passed
away in Turku on May 31, 1989, from ventricular fibrillation at the age of 69.

Pentti Salomaa, Brother and Professor

The second child of the family, Pentti Antero, was born on June 28, 1922, in
Tuusula. He matriculated from the classical lyceum in Turku in 1940, though he
did not have to take the matriculation exams due to the war. The same year, he
started studying chemistry at the University of Turku, taking his bachelor’s degree in
1947 and doctoral degree in 1954. Pentti Salomaa’s doctoral thesis, The kinetics of
1-halogenoether alcoholysis had been finalized the previous year, and it was super-
vised by the professors in chemistry at the University of Turku, Reino Leimu
(1904–1981) and Atte Meretoja (1912–1975).
Pentti’s first workplace at the end of the 1940s was at the analytical laboratory of
the Outokumpu Oy metal factory in Pori, but he ended up choosing an academic
career, unlike his sister who was facing the same career choices at the same time. His
career started as an assistant at the chemistry department at the University of Turku
in 1950. He was appointed assistant professor of the University of Turku in 1956,
associate professor in 1958, and invited professor of physical chemistry in 1961.
Pentti made several study and research trips around Europe, especially to England,
and in 1962–1963 he was visiting research fellow at Cornell in the United States.
Pentti’s scientific body of work focused on electrochemistry, thermodynamics,
isotope chemistry, and reaction kinetics. His most significant research studied
chemical reaction mechanisms, especially hydrolysis, i.e., how water breaks down
compounds into their original elements, and kinetics, i.e., the speeds of these
reactions and the factors impacting them. The main forum for Pentti’s publications
was the Acta Chemica Scandinavica, where a total of 46 of his articles were
published in 1947–1977. Pentti Salomaa was invited to be a member of the Finnish
Academy of Science and Letters in 1969.
Out of the Salomaa family, Pentti (Fig. 5) was the only one who had seen actual
warfare. During the Winter War (November 1939–March 1940) he was part of the
anti-aircraft defense and during the Continuation War (June 1941–September 1944)
he was a fire observer in the artillery in places like the Karelian isthmus, where the
18 Professor’s Son

Fig. 5 Pentti Salomaa

fiercest battles of the war took place in summer 1944. During the trench warfare
lasting two and a half years before that, Pentti spent his time playing poker and
carving wooden boxes to pass the time.
Pentti rose to the rank of second lieutenant, and he was awarded the Knight
Commander’s Cross of the Finnish Lion, the Cross of Liberty, fourth class, with
sword and oak leaves, as well as the rare mine-clearing medal. Though Pentti was
lucky in the sense that he came back from the front unhurt, he suffered from
nightmares like many other men who had seen active duty.
His little brother Arto idolized Pentti, even though Pentti would often usher him
away in the 1930s so he would stay out of the “big-boy business.” After the war,
Pentti made up for his earlier age discrimination by teaching his little brother
chemistry and mathematics.
Pentti married Raili Vuorinen (1922–1993) in 1947. The couple had two children,
Martti Antero in 1950 and Sinikka Anneli in 1955. Since Pentti had his hands full
with his own family, he never had much to do with Arto’s family. Figure 6 shows the
young couple together with Pentti’s mother, big sister and little brother.
As a civilian, Pentti suffered from bad luck, experiencing all kinds of misfortunes
all the time. The winter-coat episode is a typical example: as there was a shortage of
everything after the war, it was something of a catastrophe for Pentti when his warm
overcoat was stolen at the university. Through her women’s network, Litvinov
managed to get him a frieze coat tailored from Lotta materials, so it seemed like
this setback to mother’s favorite child had been averted. However, the joy did not
last long, because Pentti’s new coat was also stolen, and in the same week. Both
Pentti and the long-fingered thieves had to wait a bit longer for the third coat.
Pentti held his post until his sudden death from a heart condition, which surprised
the family completely on January 17, 1976, at their summer house in Askainen when
he was only 53. Pentti Salomaa was generally respected both among the students and
within the chemists’ community in Turku. Among other activities, he was a member
of the Chemistry club in Turku and its chairman in 1956. However, Pentti Salomaa is
not widely known in the international science community, and he is not counted
among the elite of chemistry scientists in Finland.
Salomaa Coat of Arms: From Possibility to Reality 19

Fig. 6 Salomaa family in 1947. Left to right: Arto, Aili, Sirkka, Pentti, Raili

Salomaa Coat of Arms: From Possibility to Reality

In the mid-1970s, Arto Salomaa bought the main building and sauna of an old
country house to be the family’s summer house. It was located in Karuna, which was
later annexed to the municipality of Sauvo in Finland Proper. As it happened, their
neighbor was a well-known painter, artist, and graphic designer, Veikko Kiljunen
(1927–2001), living in the vicarage of Karuna. He was mainly working as an art
conservationist at Ateneum Museum of Arts and the archeological committee. To
celebrate Arto’s fiftieth birthday (June 6, 1984), Kiljunen decided to give his close
summer neighbor a more unique gift than the usual flowers and bottle of whisky, and
one that would survive for longer; a family coat of arms.
Since the recipient did not object to the idea, Kiljunen started designing in
accordance with the official rules of heraldry. As a result, the Finnish association
of heraldry registered the Salomaa family coat of arms on February 19, 1986, with
the following blazon:
Shield: Azure a fess argent and indented hill vert. Crest: upon a helm argent an eagle wing or,
mantled azure double argent. Motto: AB POSSE AD ESSE.

In the registration application, the theme was explained as follows:

The green island refers to the family’s old name, Grönholm. The blue and silver of the shield
represent the water and sky surrounding the island where the scientist withdraws for work in
isolation.
20 Professor’s Son

Fig. 7 The Salomaa coat

of arms

In addition, the application stated that the coat of arms could be used by “Arto and
Kaarina Salomaa and their children Kai and Kirsti Salomaa and their offspring in
direct descent.”
Kiljunen did not dare to take responsibility for the motto inscribed on the arms,
but left that to the Salomaa family. Since the heraldic design of the coat of arms
illustrated the solitude of scientific work, the recipient wanted the motto to reflect the
same theme. A suitable model for the motto was found in the classical Latin sentence
of philosophical logic, “ab esse ad posse,” which also exists in the longer form “ab
esse ad posse valet consequentia”: “from the fact that something exists follows that it
is possible,” “from existence follows possibility,” or, in short, “from real to possi-
ble.” Arto had the stroke of genius to turn the phrase around and form a general
principle for the researcher: “from possibility to reality” or “ab posse ad esse.”
The family coat of arms (Fig. 7) was given a permanent place of honor in the
sauna (the “Salosauna”) at the summer house, where it was painted on the bricks of
the fireplace in the dressing room, in color and about one square meter in size. There
it has been admired and its noble motto has been read aloud, not just by the Salomaa
family, but by many scientific sauna visitors from home and abroad.
Child and Youngster in Turku, Finland

Arto Kustaa Salomaa was born on Wednesday, June 6, 1934, at the Heideken
maternity hospital on 3 Sepänkatu in sector III of Turku. According to the Central
Meteorological Institute, it was 23
C (c. 73
F) in Turku at 3 pm, Beaufort force
3 (7.6–12 mph) moderate southern wind, mostly clear and dry.
According to the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, there were counterfeit 10-mark
metal coins in circulation in Finland; 72 had been encountered in Turku, 44 in
Helsinki, and “some few pieces in the countryside.” Though “the maker of fake
money has not yet been apprehended,” it looked like Turku was the headquarters of
the counterfeiters.
The world news was mixed: right on Arto’s birthday, “50,000 L of spirits will be
sent from Estonia to Finland.” A heavy storm off the coast of Korea had destroyed
300 vessels, and around 350 members of their crews had been killed or maimed. In
the USA, 100 prisoners had broken out of their cells in the Nashville penitentiary,
but “after a larger task force of police had arrived, it was hoped the rebellion could be
curbed with bloodshed.”
There was also a scientist from Tampere, Niilo Mäki, reporting on his experiences
in the USA from his year-long Rockefeller scholarship visit. During his trip, Mäki
had observed at least one annoying habit among the Americans, smoking:
When the teacher enters the classroom, the students do not even stand up to show their
attention, and during the lecture they are free to choose the most comfortable sitting position
they want, and they may even light up a cigarette. The smoking among academics is a new
and surprising experience to foreigners. Gradually, you grow accustomed to it, as even
during solemn lectures (e.g., at the meetings of scientific societies), smoke rings are rising
from the audience, the whole room is soon filled with a fog of smoke, which does not always
have the most pleasant effect. In America, the floor is most often used as an ashtray. Many
restaurants, for example, do not have any ordinary ashtrays. If you ask a waiter for one, you
will hear: “Everyone uses the floor, we sweep every half hour!”

When naming the older Salomaa children (Sirkka, Pentti), the parents had not
spent much time considering their names, but this time, Jalmari decided to be more
creative; wanting to honor his favorite philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, he

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 21

J. Paakki, Arto Salomaa: Mathematician, Computer Scientist, and Teacher,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16049-4_2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “It must be because Di has such a vivid imagination,” continued her
sister musingly. “She sees what he might have been, what he probably was
meant to be——”
“And what he would still be,” put in Jellaby, “if only he would allow his
nice wife to influence him a little.”
“But John,” thought I, “in that is right. Let us be fair and admit his good
sides. A wife should never, under any circumstances, be allowed allowed
——”
Then, suddenly struck by the point of view, by the feminine idea
(Socialists have the minds of women) of a man’s being restored to what he
was primarily intended to be when he issued newly-made (as poets and
parsons would say) from the hands of his Maker through the manipulations
of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, my sense of humour played me a nasty trick (for I
would have liked to have heard more) and I found myself bursting into a
loud chuckle.
“What’s that?” exclaimed Jellaby, jumping up.
He soon saw what it was, for I immediately put my head round the edge
of the pillar.
They both stared at me in a strange alarm.
“Pray do not suppose,” I said, smiling reassuringly, “that I am a ghost.”
They stared without a word.
“You look as though I might be.”
They went on staring.
“I could not help, as I sat here, hearing what you were saying.”
They stared as speechless as though they had been caught killing
somebody.
“I really am not a spirit,” said I, getting up. “Look—do I look like one?”
And striking a match I playfully passed it backward and forward across
my features.
But its light at the same time showed me a flush of the most attractive
and vivid crimson on Frau von Eckthum’s face, colouring it from her hair to
her throat. She looked so beautiful like that, she who was ordinarily white,
that immediately lighting another I gazed at her in undisguised admiration.
 “Pardon me,” I said, holding it very near her while her eyes, fixed on
mine, still seemed full of superstitious terror, “pardon me, but I must as a
man and a judge look at you.”
Jellaby, however, unforgivably ill-bred as ever, knocked the match out of
my hand and stamped on it. “Look here, Baron,” he said with unusual heat,
“I am very sorry—as sorry as you like, but you really mustn’t hold matches
in front of somebody’s face.”
“Why sorry, Jellaby?” I inquired mildly, for I was not going to have a
scene. “I do not mind about the match. I have more.”
“Sorry, of course, that you should have heard——”
“Every word, Jellaby,” said I.
“I tell you I’m frightfully sorry—I can’t tell you how sorry——”
“You may be assured,” said I, “that I will be discreet.”
He stared, with a face of stupid surprise.
“Discreet?” said he.
“Discreet, Jellaby. And it may be a relief to you to know,” I continued,
“that I heartily endorse your opinion.”
Jellaby’s mouth dropped open.
“Every word of it.”
Jellaby’s mouth remained open.
“Even the word bounder, which I did not understand but which, I
gathered from your previous remarks, is a very suitable expression.”
Jellaby’s mouth remained open.
I waited a moment, then seeing that it would not shut and that I had
really apparently shattered their nerves beyond readjustment by so suddenly
popping round on them in that ghostly place, I thought it best to change the
subject, promising myself to return to it another time.
So I picked up my hat and stick from the chair I had vacated—Jellaby
peered round the pillar at this piece of furniture with his unshut mouth still
denoting unaccountable shock—bowed, and offered my arm to Frau von
Eckthum.
“It is late,” said I with tender courtliness, “and I observe an official
approaching us with keys. If we do not return to the camp we shall have
your sister setting out, probably on angelic wings”—she started—“in search
of you. Let me, dear lady, conduct you back to her. Nay, nay, you need have
no fears—I really can keep a secret.”
With her eyes fixed on mine, and that strange look of perfect fright in
them, she got up slowly and put her hand on my proffered arm.
I led her away with careful tenderness.
Jellaby, I believe, followed in the distance.
 CHAPTER XX

L IFE is a strange thing, and full of surprises. The day before, you think
you know what will happen on the morrow, and on the morrow you find
you did not. Light as you may the candle of your common sense, and
peer as you may by its shining into the future, if you see anything at all it
turns out to have been, after all, something else. We are surrounded by
tricks, by illusions, by fluidities. Even when the natural world behaves
pretty much as experience has led us to expect, the unnatural world, by
which I mean (and I say it is a fair description) human beings, does nothing
of the sort. My ripe conclusion, carefully weighed and unattackably mellow,
is that all one’s study, all one’s thought, all one’s experience, all one’s
philosophy, lead to this: that you cannot account for anything. Do you, my
friends, interrupt me here with a query? My answer to it is: Wait.
The morning after the occurrences just described I overslept myself, and
on emerging about ten o’clock in search of what I hoped would still be
breakfast I found the table tidily set out, the stove alight, and keeping coffee
warm, ham in slices on a dish, three eggs waiting to be transferred to an
expectant saucepan, and not a single caravaner in sight except Menzies-
Legh.
Him, of course, I now pitied. For to have a treacherous friend, and a
sister-in law of whom you are fond but who in her heart cannot endure you,
to be under the delusion that the one is sincere and the other loving, is to
become a fit object for pity; and since no one can at the same time both pity
and hate, I was not nearly so much annoyed as I otherwise would have been
at finding my glum-faced friend was to keep me company. Annoyed, did I
say? Why, I was not annoyed at all. For though I might pity I was also
secretly amused, and further, the feeling that I now had a little private
understanding with Frau von Eckthum exhilarated me into more than my
usual share of good humour.
He was sitting smoking; and when I appeared, fresh, and rested, and
cheery, round the corner of the Elsa, he not only immediately said good
morning, but added an inquiry as to whether I did not think it a beautiful
day; then he got up, went across to the stove, put the eggs in the saucepan,
and fetched the coffee-pot.
 This was very surprising. I tell you, my friends, the moods of persons
who caravan are as many and as incalculable as the grains of sand on the
seashore. If you doubt it, go and do it. But you cannot reasonably doubt it
after listening to the narrative. Have I not told you in the course of it how
the party’s spirits were up in the skies one hour, and down on the ground the
next; how their gaiety some days at breakfast was childish in its folly, and
their silence on others depressing; how they quoted poetry and played at
Blind Man’s Buff in the morning, and in the afternoon dragged their feet
without speaking through the mud; how they talked far too much
sometimes, and then, when I wished to, would not talk at all; how they were
suddenly polite and attentive, and then as suddenly forgot I could possibly
want anything; how the wet did not damp their hilarity one day, and no
amount of sunshine coax it forth the next? But of all their moods this of
Menzies-Legh’s in the field above Canterbury was the one that surprised me
most.
You see, he was naturally so very glum. True at the beginning there had
been gleams of light but they soon became extinguished. True, also, at
Frogs’ Hole Farm, when demonstrating truths by means of tea in glasses, he
had been for a short while pleasant—only, however, to plunge immediately
and all the deeper into gloom and ill-temper. Gloom and ill-temper was his
normal state; and to see him attending to my wants, doing it with
unmistakable assiduity, actively courteous, was astonishing. I was
astonished. But my breeding enabled me to behave as though it were the
most ordinary thing in the world, and I accepted sugar from him and
allowed him to cut my bread with the blank expression on my face of him
who sees nothing unusual or interesting anywhere, which is, I take it, the
expression of the perfect gentleman. When at length my plate was
surrounded by specimens of all the comforts available, and I had begun to
eat, he sat down again, and leaning his elbow on the table and fixing his
eyes on the city already sweltering in heat and vapour below, resumed his
pipe.
A train puffed out of the station along the line at the bottom of our field,
jerking up slow masses of white steam into the hot, motionless air.
“There goes Jellaby’s train,” said Menzies-Legh.
“Jellaby’s what?” said I, cracking an egg.
“Train,” said he.
 “Why, what has he got to do with trains?” I asked, supposing with the
vagueness of want of interest, that Jellaby, as well as being a Socialist, was
a railway director and kept a particular train as another person would keep a
pet.
“He’s in it,” said Menzies-Legh.
I looked up from my egg at Menzies-Legh’s profile.
“What?” said I.
“In it,” said he. “Obliged to go.”
“What—Jellaby gone? First Lord Sidge, and now Jellaby?”
Naturally I was surprised, for I had heard and noticed nothing of this.
Also the way one after the other left without saying good-bye seemed to me
inconsiderate—at least that: probably more.
“Yes,” said Menzies-Legh. “We are—we are very sorry.”
I could not, however, honestly join in any sorrow over Jellaby, so merely
remarked that the party was shrinking.
“Yes,” said Menzies-Legh, “that’s rather our feeling too.”
“But why has Jellaby——?”
“Oh, well, you know, public man. Parliament. And all that.”
“Does your Parliament reassemble so shortly?”
“Oh, well, soon enough. You have to prepare, you know. Collect your
wits, and that sort of thing.”
“Ah, yes. Jellaby should not leave that to the last minute. But he might,”
I added with a slight frown, “have taken leave of me according to the
customs of good society. Manners are manners, after all is said and done.”
“He was in a great hurry,” said Menzies-Legh.
There was a silence, during which Menzies-Legh smoked and I
breakfasted. Once or twice he cleared his throat as though about to say
something, but when I looked up prepared to listen he continued his pipe
and his staring at the city in the sun below.
“Where are the ladies?” I inquired, when the first edge of my appetite
had been blunted and I had leisure to look about me.
Menzies-Legh shifted his legs, which had been crossed.
“They went to the station with Jellaby to see the last of him,” said he.
“Indeed. All of them?”
 “I believe so.”
Jellaby then, though he could not have the courtesy to say good-bye to
me, could take a prolonged farewell of my wife and of the other members
of our party.
“He is not what we in our country would call a gentleman,” I said, after a
silence during which I finished the third egg and regretted there were no
more.
“Who is not?” asked Menzies-Legh.
“Jellaby. No doubt the term bounder would apply to him quite as well as
to other people.”
Menzies-Legh turned his sallow visage to me. “He’s a great friend of
mine,” he said, the familiar scowl weighing down his eyebrows.
I could not help smiling and shaking my head at that, all I had heard the
night before so very fresh in my memory.
“Ah, my dear sir,” I said, “be careful how you trust your great friends.
Do not give way too lavishly to confidence. Belief in them is all very well,
but it should not go beyond the limits of reason.”
“He’s a great friend of mine,” repeated Menzies-Legh, raising his voice.
“I wish then,” said I, “you would tell me what a bounder is.”
He glowered at me a moment from beneath black brows. Then he said
more quietly:
“I’m not a slang dictionary. Suppose we talk seriously.”
“Certainly,” said I, reaching out for the jam.
He cleared his throat. “I got a lot of letters and telegrams last night,” he
said.
“How did you manage that?” I asked.
“They were waiting for me at the post-office here. I had telegraphed for
them to be forwarded. And I’m afraid—I’m sorry, but it’s inevitable—we
shall have to be off.”
“Off what?” said I, for a few of the more intimate English idioms still
remained for me to master.
“Off,” said he. “Go. Leave this.”
“Oh,” said I. “Well, we are used to that. This tour, my dear sir, is surely
the very essence of what you call being off. Where do we go next? I trust to
a place with trees in it.”
“You don’t understand, Baron. We don’t go anywhere next as far as the
caravans are concerned. My wife and I are obliged to go home.”
I was, of course, surprised. “We are, indeed,” said I, after a moment,
“shrinking rapidly.”
Then the thought of being rid of Mrs. Menzies-Legh and her John and
Jellaby at, so to speak, one swoop, and continuing the tour purged of these
baser elements with the tender lady entirely in our charge, made me unable
to repress a smile of satisfaction.
Menzies-Legh looked in his turn surprised. “I am glad,” he said, “that
you don’t mind.”
“My dear sir,” I said courteously, “of course I mind, and we shall miss
you and your—er—er—” it was difficult on the spur of the moment to find
an adjective, but Frau von Eckthum’s praises of her sister the night before
coming into my mind I popped in the word suggested suggested—“angelic
wife——”
He stared—ungratefully I thought, considering the effort it had been.
“But,” I continued, “you may be very sure we shall take every care of
your sister-in-law, and return her safe and well into your hands on
September the first, which is the date my contract with the owner of the
Elsa expires.”
“I’m afraid,” said he, “I wasn’t clear. We all go. Betti included, and
Jumps and Jane too. I’m very sorry,” he interrupted, as I opened my mouth,
“very sorry indeed that things should have turned out so unexpectedly, but it
is absolutely impossible for us to go on. Out of the question.”
And he set his jaws, and shut his mouth into a mere line of opposition
and finality.
Well, my friends, what do you say to that? What do you think of this
example of the surprises life has in store for one? And, incidentally, what do
you think of human nature? Especially of human nature when it caravans?
And still more especially of human nature that is also English? Not without
reason do our neighbours label the accursèd island perfide Albion. It is true
I am not clear about the Albion, but I am very clear about the perfide.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I said, leaning toward him across the table
and forcing him to meet my gaze, “that your sister-in-law wishes to go with
you?”
“She does,” said he.
“Then, sir——” I began, amazement and indignation struggling together
within me.
“I tell you, Baron,” he interrupted, “we are very sorry things have turned
out like this. My wife is most genuinely distressed. But she too sees the
impossibility—unforeseen complications demand we should go home.”
“Sir——” I again began.
“My dear Baron,” he again interrupted, “it needn’t in the least interfere
with you. Old James will stay with you if you and the Baroness would like
to go on.”
“Sir, I have paid for a month, and have only had a week.”
“Well, go on and finish your month. Nobody is preventing you.”
“But I was persuaded to join the tour on the understanding that it was a
party—that we were all to be together—four weeks together——”
“My dear fellow,” said he (never had I been addressed as that before),
“you talk as if it were a business arrangement, a buying and selling, as if we
were bound by a contract, under agreement——”
“Your sister-in-law inveigled me into it,” I exclaimed, emphasizing what
I said by regular beats on the table with my forefinger, “on the definite
understanding that it was to be a party and she—was—to be—a—member
of it.”
“Pooh, my dear Baron—Betti’s definite understandings. She’s in love,
and when a woman’s that it’s no earthly use——”
“What?” said I, startled for a moment out of all self-possession.
“Well?” he said, looking at me in surprise. “Why not? She’s young. Or
do you consider it improper for widows——”
“Improper? Natural, sir—natural. How long——?”
“Oh, before the tour even started. And propinquity, seeing each other
every day—well,” he finished suddenly, “one mustn’t talk about it, you
know.”
But you, my friends, what do you say to that? What do you think of this
second example of the surprises life has in store for us? I have been in two
minds as to whether I would tell you this one at all, but to a law-abiding
man, calm and objective as I know myself to be and as you by now must
know me too, such an incident though pleasurable could not in any way
affect or alter my conduct. Strictly Menzies-Legh was to be censured for
mentioning it; however that, I suppose, was what Jellaby called the bounder
coming out in him, and I perceived that whatever they exactly may be
bounders have their uses. I repeat, I make no attempt to deny that it was a
pleasurable incident, and although I am aware Storchwerder never liked her
(chiefly, I firmly believe, because she would not ask it to her dinners) I am
convinced that not one of you, my friends, and I say it straight in your
faces, but would have been glad to stand at that moment in my shoes. I did
not forget I was a husband, but you can be a husband and yet remain a man.
I think I behaved very creditably. Only for an instant was there the least
little lapse from complete self-possession. Immediately I became and
remained perfectly calm. Edelgard; duty; my position in life; my beliefs; I
remembered them all. It also occurred to me (but I could not well tell
Menzies-Legh) that having regard to the behaviour throughout the tour of
his wife it was evident these things ran in families. I could not tell him, but
I felt myself inwardly in every way tickled. All I could do, indeed all I did
do, was to say “Strange, strange world,” and get up from my chair because I
found myself unable to continue sitting in it.
“But what do you propose to do?” Menzies-Legh asked, after he had
watched me taking a hasty turn or two up and down in the sun.
“Behave,” said I, stopping in front of him, “as an officer and a
gentleman.”
He stared. Then he got up and said with a touch of impatience—a most
unreliable person as regards temper: “Yes, yes—no doubt. But what shall I
tell old James about your caravan? Are you going on or not? If not, he’ll
pilot it home for you. I’m afraid I must know soon. I haven’t much time. I
must get away to-day.”
“What? To-day?”
“I must. I’m very sorry. Obliged to, you know——”
“And the Ailsa?”
“Oh, that’s all arranged. I telegraphed last night for one of the grooms.
He’ll be down in an hour or two and take charge of it back to Panthers.”
“And the Ilsa?”
“He’ll take that too.”
 “No, my dear sir,” said I firmly. “You leave the Ilsa in our charge—it and
its contents.”
“Eh?” said he.
“It and its contents—human and otherwise.”
“Nonsense, Baron. What on earth would you do with Jane and Jumps?
They’re going up to town with me by train. And my wife and Betti—oh,
yes, by the way, my wife gave me instructions to tell you how very sorry
she was not to be able to say good-bye to you. I assure you she was really
greatly distressed, but she and Betti are motoring up to London and felt they
ought to start as early as possible——”
“But—motoring? You said they had gone to the sta——”
“So they did. They saw Jellaby off, and then were picked up by a motor I
ordered for them last night in the town, and went straight from there——”
I heard no more. He went on speaking, but I heard no more. The series
of surprises had done their work, and I could attend to nothing further. I
believe he continued to express regret and offer advice, but what he said fell
on my ear with the indifferent trickling of water when one is not thirsty. At
first anger, keen resentment, and disappointment surged within me, for why,
I asked myself, did she not say good-bye? I walked up and down on the hot
stubble, my hands deep in my pockets and myself deep in conflicting
emotions, while Menzies-Legh supposing I was listening regretted and
advised, asking myself why she did not say good-bye. Then, gradually, I
could not but see that here was tact, here was delicacy, the right feeling of
the truly feminine woman, and began to admire her all the more because
she had not said it. By degrees composure stole upon me. Reason returned
to my assistance. I could think, arrange, decide. And before Edelgard came
back with the two children, mere heated débris of that which had lately
been so complete, what I had decided with the clear-headed rapidity of the
practical and sensible man was to give up the Elsa, lose my money, and go
home. Home after all is the best place when life begins to wobble; and
home in this case was very near the Eckthum property—I only had to
borrow a vehicle, or even in extremity take a droschke, and there I was.
There too the delightful lady must sooner or later be, and I would at least
see her from time to time, whereas in England among her English relations
she was entirely and hopelessly cut off.
 Thus it was, my friends, that I did not see Frau von Eckthum again. Thus
it was our caravaning came to an untimely end.
You can figure to yourselves what kind of reflections a man inclined to
philosophize would reflect as the reduced party hastily packed, in the heat
and glare of the summer morning, that which they had unpacked a week
previously amid howling winds and hail showers in the yard at Panthers.
Nature then had frowned, but vainly, on our merriment. Nature now was
smiling, equally vainly on our fragments. One brief week; and what had
happened? Rather, I should say, what had not happened?
On the stubble I walked up and down lost in reflection, while Edelgard,
helped (officiously I thought, but I did not care enough to mind) by
Menzies-Legh, stuffed our belongings into bags. She had asked no
questions. If she had I would not have answered them, being little in the
mood as you can imagine to put up with wives. I just told her, on her return
from seeing Jellaby off, of my decision to cross by that night’s boat, and
bade her get our things together. She said nothing, but at once began to
pack. She did not even inquire why we were not going to look at London
first, as we had originally planned. London? Who cared for London? My
mood was not one in which a man bothers about London. With reference to
that city it can best be described by the single monosyllable Tcha.
I will not linger over the packing, or relate how when it was finished
Edelgard indulged in a prolonged farewell (with embraces, if you please) of
the two uninteresting fledglings, in a fervent shaking of both Menzies-
Legh’s hands combined with an invitation—I heard it—to stay with us in
Storchwerder, and the pressing upon old James in a remote corner of
something that looked suspiciously like a portion of her dress-allowance; or
how she then set out by my side for the station steeped in that which we call
Abschiedsstimmung, old James preceding us with our luggage while the
others took care for the last time of the camp; or with what abandonment of
apparent affectionate regret she hung herself out of the train window as we
presently passed along the bottom of the field and waved her handkerchief.
Such rankness of sentiment could only make me shrug my shoulders, filled
as I was by my own absorbing thoughts.
I did glance up, though, and there on the stubble, surrounded by every
sort of litter, stood the three familiar brown vehicles blistering in the sun,
with Menzies-Legh and the fledglings knee-deep in straw and saucepans
and bags and other forlorn discomforts, watching us depart.
Strange how alien the whole thing seemed, how little connection it
seemed to have with me now that the sparkling bubbles (if I may refer to
Frau von Eckthum as bubbles) had disappeared and only the dregs were
left. I could not help feeling glad, as I raised my hat in courteous
acknowledgment of the frantic wavings of the fledglings, that I was finally
out of all the mess.
Menzies-Legh gravely returned my salute; our train rounded a curve;
and camp and caravaners disappeared at once and forever into the
unrecallable past.
 CHAPTER XXI

T HUS our caravaning came to an end.

I could hardly believe it when I thought how at that hour of the day
before I was lying beneath the hop-poles of Frogs’ Hole Farm with the
greater part, as I supposed, of the tour before me; I could hardly believe that
here we were again, Edelgard and I, tête-à-tête in a railway carriage and
with a future of, if I may coin a word, tête-à-têteness stretching
uninterruptedly ahead as far as imagination could be induced to look. And
not only just ordinary tête-à-têteness, but with the complication of one of
the têtes, so to speak, being rankly rebellious and unwifely. How long
would it take, I wondered, glancing at her as she sat in the corner opposite
me, to bring her back to the reason in which she used before we came to
England to take delight?
I glanced at her, and I found she was looking at me; and immediately on
catching my eye she leaned forward and said:
“Otto, what was it you did?”
They were the first words she had spoken to me that day, and very
naturally failing to see any point in them I requested her not to be subtle,
which is courteous for senseless.
“Why,” said she, not heeding this warning, “did the party break up?
What was it you did?”
Were there ever such questions? But I recollected she could not dream
how things really were, and therefore was not as much put out as I would
otherwise have been at the characteristically wifely fashion of at once when
anything seemed to be going wrong attributing it to her husband.
I therefore good-humouredly applied the Aunt Bockhügel remedy to her,
and was willing to leave it at that if she had let me. She, however, preferred
to quarrel. Without the least attempt to change the Bockhügel face she said,
“My dear Otto—poor Aunt Bockhügel. Won’t we leave her in peace? But
tell me what it was you did.”
Then I became vexed, for really the assumption of superiority, of the
right to criticize and blame, went further than a reasonable man can permit.
What I said as we journeyed up to London I will not here repeat; it has been
said before and will be said often enough again so long as husbands have to
have wives: but how about the responsibility resting on the wives? I
remembered the cheerful mood I had been in on getting up, and felt no
small degree of resentment at the manner in which my wife was trying to
wipe it out. Give me a chance, and I am the kindest of men; take away my
chance, and what can I do?
And so, my friends, as it were with a wrangle ended our sojourn on
British soil. I lay down my pen, and become lost in many reflections as I
think of all these things. Long ago have we settled down again to our
ordinary Storchwerder life, with an Emilie instead of a Clothilde in the
kitchen. Long ago we paid our calls announcing to our large circle that we
were back. We have taken up the threads of duty, we have resumed
regulated existence; and gradually as the weeks melt into months and the
influence of Storchwerder presses more heavily upon her, I have observed
that my wife shows an increasing tendency once more to find her level. I
need not have worried; I need not have wondered how I could bring her to
reason. Storchwerder is doing it. Its atmosphere and associations are very
potent. They are being, I am thankful to say, too strong for Edelgard. After
a few preliminary convulsions she began to cook my meals and look after
my welfare as dutifully as before, and other effects no doubt will follow. At
present she is more silent than before the tour, and does not laugh as readily
as she used when I chance to be in a jesting mood; also at times a British
microbe that has escaped the vigilance of those beneficent little creatures
Science tells us are in our blood on the alert to devour intrusive foreigners
crops up and causes her to comment on my sayings and doings rather à la
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, but I frown her down or apply the Aunt Bockhügel,
and in another few months I trust all will be exactly as it used to be. I
myself am exactly as I used to be—a plain, outspoken, patriotic, Christian
gentleman, going steadily along the path of duty, neither looking to the right
nor to the left (if I did I should not see Frau von Eckthum for she is still in
England), and using my humble abilities to do what I can for the glory of
my country and my Emperor.
And now having finished the narrative there is nothing more to do but to
buy a red pencil and put marks on it. Many, I fear, will be those marks.
Unfortunate is the fact that you cannot be sincere without at the same time
being indiscreet. But I trust that what remains will be treated by my hearers
with the indulgence due to a man who has only been desirous of telling the
whole truth, or in other words (and which amount, I take it, to precisely the
same thing) of concealing nothing.
 POST SCRIPTUM

A TERRIBLE thing has happened.

Finished a week ago and the invitations to come and listen already
in the post, with the flat being cleaned in preparation and beer and
sandwiches almost, as it were, on the threshold, I have been obliged to take
my manuscript once more out of the locked drawer which conceals it from
Edelgard’s eyes in order to record a most lamentable occurrence.
My wife received a letter this morning from Mrs. Menzies-Legh
informing her that Frau von Eckthum is about to be married to Jellaby.
No words can express the shock this has given me. No words can
express my horror at such a union. Left to herself, helpless in the clutches
of her English relatives, the gentle creature’s very virtues—her pliability,
her tender womanliness—have become the means of bringing about the
catastrophe. She was influenced, persuaded, a prey. It is six months since
she was handed over entirely to the Menzies-Leghs, six months of no doubt
steady resistance, ending probably in her health breaking down and in her
giving in. It hardly bears thinking of. A Briton. A Socialist. A man in
flannel. No family. No money. And the most terrible opinions. My shock
and horror are so great, so profound, that I have cancelled the invitations
and will lock this up perhaps forever, certainly for some weeks; for how
could I possibly read aloud the story of our harmonious and delightful
intercourse with the tragic sequel public knowledge?
And my wife, when she read the letter at breakfast, clapped her hands
and cried, “Isn’t it splendid—oh, Otto, aren’t you glad?”

THE END

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

It it had not been=> If it had not been {pg 7}
though her concience=> though her conscience {pg 133}
the Menzies-Leigh couple=> the Menzies-Legh couple {pg
176}
all enioying themselves=> all enjoying themselves {pg 198}
Mrs. Menzies-Leigh=> Mrs. Menzies-Legh {pg 213}
devasting microbe=> devastating microbe {pg 340}
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