Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/114

 to carry through an organised, properly planned conduct of the war. The troops were too undisciplined for that. Besides, the army had been ordered to demobilise before the insurrection broke out. A great deal of the soldiers wanted to return to Russia, and were disinclined to go to war again. Demobilisation was, however, prevented in all sorts of ways, and the result was more often than not that those who had obtained leave stayed where they were, but now as "volunteers," and on higher pay. From Russia crowds came streaming in of the Russian Red armies raised there, and from documents and reports the presence of at least the following Russian formations in Finland may be established as a fact: the 42nd Army Corps, a Lettish army, volunteer divisions (consisting of men on leave), the National Socialistic Red Army, the Red Labour and Peasant Army, and finally the Anarchist Corps, consisting of 300 Marines. As, besides, the Finnish Red Guard received Russian volunteers, and all its special troops consisted of Russians, it will be understood how impossible it is to form an exact estimate of the number of Russian troops in Finland, and yet that the number was considerable.

The Finnish Red Guard, in spite of all, formed the nucleus of the revolutionary army; it could supply a lot of soldiers. Their arms and equipment the Russians had to provide. And they did their best. When the General Staff of the Red Guard on the 2nd February sanction the expenses of the Guard for the next two months, the estimate reads as follows:—