Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/107

 well-known party men. First, the chief of the Government, Kullervo Manner, who had been president of the Lantdag during the summer, and who had begun his political career in the first years of the century by going the errands of the Russian rule of oppression. An ambitious struggler. In the second place, the food controller, Oskari Tokoi, an adventurer of the purest water, formerly a miner in America, later the trusted man of the party, once president of the Lantdag, chief of the Government in the spring and summer of 1917. A good intellect, but without any backbone or character. In the third place, Yrjö Sirola, once a student like Manner, journalist, party-leader, now Minister for Foreign Affairs. A quiet-mannered fanatic, and fairly efficient statesman. Finally, Eero Haapalainen, expelled student, a violent and brutal person, who had had many battles with the police, as he often got drunk, but never could learn how to carry his drink, and so always got exceedingly ferocious and eager to fight. Now Minister of the interior and Commander-in-Chief of the Red Guard.

The programme of the Government of course comprehends a lot of promises of reform. But nothing is found about the constitutent assembly which had before been so energetically demanded. Nor does the programme contain anything about a coming parcellation of land—a considerable divergence that from the programme of the Russian social revolution. But for the rest, it was not a little that was promised. The reforms were briefly these: A complete alteration of the administration of the State, the crushing of the bureaucracy for ever and aye, a chastisement once for all of the wilfulness of the tribunals, an alteration of the whole form of government on democratic lines, in order to safeguard the rights of the working-man, old-age and invalid insurance, the purging of the education work of reactionary efforts,