Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/100

 that had been employed at the fortification work had joined them in great numbers, and in like manner the greater part of the working-men from the centres of industry; but the following among farmhands and crofters was very slight, and—if they joined the Red—they mostly confined themselves to taking over "the power" in their parish, playing at district magistrates, police and parish council, and ordering about their former masters.

Hardly either to the peasants did the bold step of overthrowing the Government become decisive. The many months of mob-rule had brought them to despair. All ruffians, all Russian soldiers, all wretches and criminals freely made havoc of the country. There was no possibility of order and safety if one did not oneself take up arms and suppress the Russian terrorism. The White fought for liberty, law and order, a war of defence against all destructive, disintegrating forces. Their war was a war of liberation, not a struggle for power.

Plainer, perhaps, than by anything else, the Russian colouring of the Red is shown by the fact that they were entire strangers to such conceptions as law and order. Their whole rule bore the impress of the East, with contempt of the right of others, of discipline and self-control. In this they differed completely from all Western "Socialism." They had the purely Russian mania for giving orders to all the four corners of the earth, for writing ukases, manifestoes and decrees—which were never obeyed. They had acquired the Russian manner of intoxicating themselves in speeches and negotiations through long nights, of talking and smoking themselves into an over-excited frame of mind, of living on the enthusiasm fomented in monster meetings—on the whole, of playing with the fluctuating moods of an irresponsible crowd as the wind plays with the autumn