Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/158

 seen some counter-revolutionary papers on his writing table, and murdered in the motor car on the way to the prison. The same is the case when an ex-policeman was shot because he was White. His wife had informed against him. Many examples of inhuman cruelty and sustained torture could be cited. A seventy-year-old clergyman is murdered with bayonets in his bed, and another clergyman is held fast while a Red Guardsman kicks him, and two other cut a cross in his naked breast, and rub salt into the wound. Some unfortunate people were buried alive in a swamp; on others the fingers were cut off to get at the rings before they were killed; one victim was boiled in a Russian camp kitchen, etc. There is evidence that outrages without number of this kind have been committed. This is confirmed by the inquests, as well as by the Red prisoners' own confessions. But in the statement above only such outrages have been included as have been mentioned by the Red in their own documents. They give us the best idea of the insurgents' view of the crime.

From them it would seem safe to infer that the leaders did not evince any special energy in putting a stop to the savage epidemic of murder. This negligence on the part of the chiefs also forced all the better elements in the Guard to silence and subjection. For, of course, "better elements" were found. In many districts there were honest Red "staffs" who did no man harm. They only kept guard, and wrote passports and certificates of curious orthography. But, besides them, there were all these "flying corps," all these revolutionary tribunals and staffs, where liberated convicts and their like played the principal part. They took the lead. They showed how a real revolutionary ought to treat citizens and butchers. They drowned the scruples of their comrades by giving them stolen property, and letting them buy