Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/153

 It cannot be denied that the Red Government's proclamations against deeds of violence and cruelties look very feeble and pale against a background of this sort. Why were such men as Vuori and Tanner not punished? Why was nothing done to counteract the "general opinion" in the Red Guard that prisoners could be murdered?

But we continue. The papers of the Red contain many proofs that the grossest criminals were allowed to go scot free.

In the Labour suburb Kottby, outside Helsingfors, there was a flying corps whose chief was the butcher, Hjalmar Felin. His most trusted man was called Lilja. Already on the 2nd February Felin has murdered three persons, and on the 3rd February he murders a fourth—an organised working-man. From the murder he goes straight to the home of the dead man, and institutes a "house-search." On that occasion he stole a gold ring, but to the enquiry of the dead man's wife about what had become of the body of her husband, he gives no reply. (It was, as a rule, difficult to get the Red to hand over the bodies, for they were only unwillingly shown to the relatives, maimed and rifled as they were.)

Felin was, however, arrested on the 5th February, and his comrades examined. In like manner Lilja is taken into custody. Nothing transpires as regards Lilja during the inquest. Only a witness has seen him dragging an old man along the high road. Lilja had at last landed his man in a snow drift, and kicked him so long in the face till the heel of his boot had battered in his forehead. But this took place already during the general strike in November. As the matter may, therefore, be considered stale, Lilja is set free on the 12th February. Felin's case is worse. The examination of the witnesses which takes place in the Government