Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/148

 as no other members have been elected, in spite of the repeated requests of the Commission, the undersigned solicit exemption from being members of the Commission,

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From an undated account of the activity of the Commission, it is further seen that the representatives of the Red Guard have to a great extent kept away from the Commission meetings. These amounted to twelve. At the first three, two members of the Red Guard were present, at the next five, one, and at the last three the chairman and the secretary were quite alone.

From the above documents, we see how much energy the Red Government exerted in its activity against the "anarchist elements" it used to speak about. Two inviolable persons, a physician and a representative of the people, are murdered; the murders are enquired into owing to strong pressure, and, when the investigators begin to get the scent of a result, the enquiry is terminated. It is the Red Guard that takes a hostile view of all such steps.

The Guard ruled, and the Guard would suffer no criticism. There are many examples of this. In March the entire staff of the big timber firm Ahlström was arrested in Norrmark in the vicintiyvicinity [sic] of Björneborg, and taken away. On the way all the sixteen prisoners were murdered. The organ of the Red at Björneborg considers this rather awkward, and, as the outrage has caused a melancholy sensation in those parts, the paper denounces it in mild terms. The Helsingfors paper, Työmies, prints the article. But immediately the paper receives an indignant protest from two Red Guardsmen, who sign their names. "When reading such things," they write, "one gets into a very melancholy mood, for an article like this comes either from short-sightedness or provocation. It is not fitting to throw a shadow on all our noble