Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/156

 home of the murdered man has been plundered. The murderer is known, "but could not be tried as he is at the front." In the parish of Mäntsälä three cases of murder are investigated. One of the murdered persons has been shot, the other has had his head shattered, and the third has been strangled. The committee for the investigation report that, besides these three, about twenty persons in the same parish have been murdered. Among the murdered are also "neutrals." At Helsingfors an ex-policeman has been shot. A witness communicates the names of the two murderers. To the question whether the murderers were acquaintances of the murdered man the witness replies: "No, they did not belong to his friends, but they had had to do with him before, for he had sometimes been obliged to take them into custody when on duty." The day after the murder one of the murderers had been to the mortuary to look at the dead body. "He only wanted to see where the bullet had gone in," he said. An ardent interest in the trade!

Finally, we shall here communicate one or two Red documents of another description, yet characteristic, too. On the 21st March an anonymous subordinate official in the hospital of the Red at Hyvinge writes to the procurator—"the supreme guardian of the laws." In the letter the murders in this part are very casually mentioned, though they were revolting enough. Eleven persons had been shot, among them a woman and four working-men. The reason for this was a list that had been found containing the names of these eleven. It concerned the distribution of food, or something equally neutral. The eleven were, however, shot, and the Red Press stated that the murders had been committed "by mistake." The anonymous correspondent wishes to call the attention of the procurator to the fact that besides the murders,