Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/103

 Appeal to Revolution to the People of Finland was distributed. It read as follows:—

"The hour for the great Revolution has struck for Finland's Labour Class.

"To-day the working-men of the capital have boldly overthrown the headquarters of the dark rule of few who began a sanguinary war against their own people.

"The members of the criminal senate prepared an atrocious civil war, even in the capital of the country, an invidious assault on the organised working-men of Finland. At the same time they have been guilty of such unblushing treason that they have asked foreign monarchical governments to send bands of murderers to butcher Finland's working-men. The life and liberty of our People is hereby placed in the greatest danger.

"Now all power has been taken from this butchering senate. Orders have been issued that the criminal members of this senate are to be imprisoned wherever they are met with, as the prison has already long been their proper place.

"The working class of the country are to take all governing power in Finland into their own reliable hands.

"Thus the working class have ultimately been forced to rise in order to save themselves and our country from the disaster and distress which the criminal capitalist system has cast our People into. The intrigues of the uncanny and dangerous Senate and its tools have been exposed. In order to usurp the power in the State, that power which—as it is self-evident—ought to belong to the People itself, the Senate have committed one breach of the law after another. The chief aim of all these intrigues has been to put down the Labour Movement of the whole country, to destroy all progress of democracy and bury the suffering People's hopes of a real work of progress.