Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/154

 Buildings—by whom conducted it is not stated—-gives inter alia the following result: "Felin's comrades have not taken part in the murders, but 'if the murdered men were butchers they approve of the action.'" At all house-searches Felin has pocketed objects of value. A witness describes the following incident: The witness is walking along the high road and sees Felin conducting a man into the wood. Some shots are heard, and Felin comes out of the wood again. He says to the witness: "Now Träskman is shot." The witness: "But that was not Träskman at all. It was the old man we arrested already during the general strike, but who was set free again later on." Felin: "Indeed! Well, then, it was not Träskman, but anyway, it is all the same. It was always a novelty to this one to be shot."

Such a thing was not, however, considered a sufficient reason for sentencing Felin to imprisonment. On the 24th February Felin's comrades carry the following resolution by eighty-eight votes against nil.

"We, members of Kottby Red Guard, have every day read in the papers with what terrible brutality the citizens of Finland are fighting against us without shunning any means whatever. We therefore will not allow that our comrade is kept imprisoned in such times, owing to the information of private persons, with which crimes we, all men of the Guard, have not had occasion to make ourselves acquainted, then we demand that our comrade is at once set free, and sent to serve with his troop."

The style is, as will be seen, a little clumsy, but the intention is good enough. The minutes further contain a resolution that all the papers concerning the investigation against Felin are to be burnt. This, however, has not been done. At any rate, here we see what were the results of the tales about the cruelties of the White. On the 25th February the "leading commission" set Felin free.