Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/126

 harmless to the community, and may therefore be set free. Although the prison staffs seem to have been exceedingly liberal in their conception—one prison alone (the district gaol at Helsingfors) setting free 135 prisoners—the prisoners themselves were not satisfied. On the 17th February the Red Press published a communication from the prisoners in the house of correction at Abo under the fine title: "Hopes of the Prisoners. Profound Remorse and Yearning for Liberty." In this the prisoners thank their benefactors, and aver that "the greater part" of the liberated prisoners will no doubt behave well. "For a friendly action pledges us prisoners, too, to reward friendship with friendship, whereas cruelty, hard-heartedness and indifference excites animosity, vindictiveness, hatred, and indifference, which will swell the ranks of the robbers with all sorts of instigators of trouble and strike-breakers." But one item of the conditions "makes the prisoners very sad." "It is this, that only such prisoners are liberated as are not considered dangerous to the community. To this we shall only remark that, if the prisoners are only liberated after the manner in which the officials of the old Tsardom in their partiality have blackened us in their reports, then there are not many who can hope to be set free at once."

The Red Government seems to have seen this, too, for on the 11th March it is decided that the term of punishment for all convicts is to be reduced by half. Prisoners for life are liberated when they have been in prison for five years, All that are liberated regain their civic rights. It need hardly be remarked that there is no question here of "political offenders," but only of gross criminals. The reason for this great leniency must again be put down to the fact that the army needed reinforcement.

What it meant to the community as a whole that the