Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/170

 Party, and with them virtually the whole Labour Class, were drawn into the Red movement. In this sense we may speak of "class war," but not in the sense in which the word is generally used. For this movement was not social but political. It was not a conflict between proletariat and bourgeoisie. It was a struggle for the power on the part of the Red, a struggle for Finland's independence, for law and order on the part of the White. It was a war between a fanatical international movement to which the State and the Nation meant nothing, and the defenders of the sacredness of the native country and of the life of the community.

The Red threatened everything that the Finnish people had learned to treasure as its greatest values during the long struggle against Russian oppression, whether it was practised in the name of Tsarism or Anarchy. These values may be comprehended in the words "Western culture." The Red bands had been led astray, if you will—infected is, perhaps, the better word. They were infected with the Russian plague now called Bolshevism. Lawlessness, disorder, want of reverence for all cultural values, contempt of the life, happiness and property of their fellow-men had seized them, and dragged them down into chaos.

But as yet the country has not recovered after the catastrophe which has shaken it to its foundations. As yet there is infinite work left to be done. An independent political life is to be built up with respect for the law and the subjection of the individual to the demands of the community. The problems are many, the difficulties great. Mistakes must be made, reverses must come. But the foundation has been laid. Finland has been liberated from Russian oppression.

Every people, be it as small and weak as it may be, clings to the thought that it has its special mission in