Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/15

 we find, on the one hand, an often bitter conflict between the languages; on the other hand, a worship of theoretical education, of studies and theoretical knowledge which has drawn too sharp a distinction between the "educated" classes, to which the "student examination" for admittance to the university is the only stepping-stone, and the "uneducated," i.e., those who have no academical education.

Another spiritual movement which has assumed the character of a religion—or perhaps rather of an epidemic—is the total abstention movement. It has had the result: entire prohibition for the whole country just because the whole people was stirred up and had the alcohol question presented to them in the light of a sacred cause and not as a difficult problem. In the same way the fight for the co-operative movement has been stamped by a similar holy ardour, where there has been no talk of reason or sense, but only of friend or foe.

It is obvious that a people that is thus constituted ought to live in peace. It will then be able to assert its fine qualities. It will then be able by its tenacity, its perseverance, its stubbornness, to create great and enduring things. But when once it is stirred, when one after another of the sacred claims knock at its doors, it rests with leaders, stump orators, lecturers and the press, whether this people shall be urged towards the good or the bad. Twenty years ago there was one cause which really forced the whole nation to fight, the cause against the unlawful measures adopted for the Russification of the country. And the people proved itself capable of resistance. In spite of every attempt denationalisation made no progress. A stubborn and tenacious resistance was offered against the Russian work of destruction, a defence was made which will always show as an honourable leaf in the history of