Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/150

 obliged to carry out at the station town of Toijala in Tavastland may serve as an example. Hear, first, a small incident as an instance of revolutionary idealism. A strict officer at the front had sent a Red Guardsman to this tribunal who had been in a state of excessive intoxication when the order was given to attack. The tribunal finds: "The court have not been able to look at the accused in the same light as our opponents, but are of opinion that as an enthusiastic fellow fighter he should remain at the front and, following an inner call, should there fight for liberty against our enemies."

Counsel for the prosecution at the tribunal at Toijala was a certain Tanner, a shoemaker, who had been liberated by the Red from the house of correction, where he had served three terms; the last time, for robbery and murder. At the disposal of the tribunal there was a "flying corps" led by one, Vuori, a tailor. The latter drove round with his troop, and arrested the employers in the neighbourhood, took them away for "trial," but shot them on the way, and rifled the bodies. The number of his victims was not known, but Tanner, who was arrested and tried after the insurrection, confessed to having been the author of about thirty murders at which Vuori did service as executioner.

A peculiar reason makes the Red themselves commence an investigation of these outrages. A "White" railway guard, Soivio, living at Toijala, had been arrested, and was tried after he had been kept several days in prison. He is found not guilty, and is to be liberated, but the liberation is postponed until seven in the evening. The cause is that it is desired to await the approach of darkness. When it is going on for seven, Tanner gets uneasy, for Vuori has not appeared. He then asks two other soldiers to be so kind as to see to Soivio, "if Vuori is not in time." Soivio is to be taken home by sleigh,