Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/168

 refused the Swede's offer of accompanying him. Instead he was accompanied by a young physician, who was very popular among the Red, because he had successfully nursed their wounded. The prisoners and their custodians reached the bridge across Kymmene river. Reports were heard, and the two fell down dead. They were stripped of all their clothes and thrown into the river. The clothes were sold by auction later on.

Such was the downfall of the Red power. Only the leaders and a few others succeeded in escaping to Russia. More than 70,000 people remained as prisoners in the hands of the victors. Among the prisoners, virtually all who had filled posts of trust carried lots of notes and valuable objects on their persons. But also on privates and women enormous sums were found. Two hundred thousand marks, sewn into the clothes of a prisoner, was no special rarity.

Compared with the stupendous spectacle of the world war, the insurrection in Finland is only a trifling incident. In the great drama of the "Break-up of Russia" the events in Finland constitute only a small scene. But to the people of Finland the war of liberation shaped itself as the mightiest struggle in the ancient conflict carried on in this country between West and East, between culture and barbarism.

The Finnish Labour Party called themselves Social Democrats. But by their actions they have shown that they were not worthy of the name. They trusted to a young, most unformed and immature proletariat, and to the thirst for liberty which the Russian oppression had called to life in the whole people. They drew their weapons for this agitation from all the arsenals open to them. Social-Democratic phraseology, Syndicalism,