Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/101

 leaves. Their life was to be one ecstacy of excitement, one intoxication of power. Motor-cars dashing about, telephones ringing frantically, heaps of telegrams, clicking type-writers, orders here and orders there, food snatched at any moment, an hour's sleep anywhere. What was order, what was cleanliness, what was all quiet and unpretending everyday life—nothing. To rule and reign, live in a fever, throw all middle-class ideals to the winds, that was the thing to do. The revolution of the Red was as foreign as possible to our character, as it was foreign to any deliberate, carefully planned, coolly carried-out revolution. It built on the hypnotism of the mass meetings, it was a riot, no conspiracy.

In the following pages details and facts will supplement this characterisation. It is not intended to give any historical account of the course of the civil war, but only to describe certain aspects of the Red rule as it shaped itself in the south of Finland, and briefly to touch on the outbreak of the insurrection and its final suppression

On Saturday, the 26th January, it was clear to everybody that the Red intended to proceed to serious action. How far they aimed was not known, whether the intention was only to go for all the Protective Corps in the whole country, or to attack the Government also, was uncertain. The Red bands were concentrated at Helsingfors, where Russian Red Guardsmen and marines from St. Petersburg also arrived. On the Saturday evening the weak Protective Corps retreated from the city in order to avoid hopeless fighting in the streets, and some of the members of the Government went to Wasa in Østerbotten in order to be able to sustain the lawful government there if the worst came to the worst.