Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/19

 Government at a meeting in a square. But finally they yielded and contented themselves with the results obtained by the bourgeoisie groups—the re-establishment of the country's rights. Still the schism had now become as plain as daylight; the Labour press declared that the upper class had played the people false, and the corps of the Red Guard were transformed to a purely military organisation "to safeguard the interests of the working-man.:

The Finnish military had been dissolved in 1901—only a battalion of the Guards had been left—but this also had ceased to exist shortly before the outbreak of the general strike. Now non-commissioned officers and privates from the dissolved battalion trained the Red bands; the language of command was Russian, and the actual business of the army somewhat obscure. It was in touch with Russian revolutionary organisations, and became a sort of Finnish central exchange for all the terrorist fanaticism which manifested itself throughout Russia in the course of the following months; not the least so in the neighbouring Baltic provinces, where excited bands ravaged the large estates with pillage, murder and incendiarism.

In Finland, too, a lot of anarchist outrages were committed, and when in July, 1906, a Russian military revolt broke out in the Sveaborg fortress, the Red Guard considered it their business to interfere. They took the side of the revolutionary troops, and even attempted to bring off another general strike. This attempt was however, foiled by the opposition of the bourgeoisie parties, but the affair did not pass without bloodshed. A band of the White Protection Corps was treacherously assailed in a square in Helsingfors and the Red, who were armed with Russian army rifles, shot down seven of its men.