Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/108

 the emancipation of crofters and small tenants from the rule of the landlord, the bank funds under the control of the community, and the taking over and working by the community, of "the great plundering enterprises" for the profit of the community without any regard to private property. All these reforms, it further said, could be carried through only by revolutionary measures taken by the revolutionary organs.

The first official action of the new Commission was to send a hearty greeting to the Government at St. Petersburg, next they informed the governments of the states, which had acknowledged the independence of Finland, of the revolution. By this act, according to the opinion of the Commissioners, the lawful Government of the independent Finland of ten weeks past had been removed, and the country had been subjected to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

But things did not run as smoothly as all that. The vanished Government came to light again at Wasa, somewhat decimated certainly, but still a threatening phantom to the Commissioners. Quite a new figure appeared on the scene at the same time, a personality about whom only few knew that he had been the leader of the organisation of the Protective Corps at Østerbotten for the last few weeks. This was General Gustaf Mannerheim. It is difficult to describe the rejoicings called forth by his first bulletin, which was secretly made known through Helsingfors, among all who had studied the revolutionary appeal of the Red with disgust, and regarded the shooting gangs of the Red savages in the streets with abhorrence. There was a new note in Mannerheim's telegram, a note of hope and confidence in the sound core of the people, which gave glimpses of the fairest vistas. Now both the Russian and the Red were to be driven out, now the country was to be