Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/33

 their "class" was the one that ruled the country. A typical illustration of this feeling was a resolution, carried at a meeting of labourers at Torneå, in which the upper class were commanded to give up wearing starched collars and cuffs "so that they could get to look like other people."

Difficult as were the exterior and interior conditions of the country, an increased mob-rule could only cause still greater confusion, trouble and disaster. The Lantdag was at work and treated a great number of Bills, but the Labour Party brooked no opposition, would not hear of the least modification or amendment of the Bills once proposed by it. The debates were one long series of violent oratorical sallies against the bourgeoisie, however willing, and more than willing, these latter in fact were to fix by legislation the length of the working-day within the various industries, to reform the municipal legislation, and to accelerate the emancipation of the cottagers—the three chief claims of the Labour Party. But the objective of the party was power. It had only a narrow majority in the Lantdag; it therefore behoved it to fan the hatred against the "upper class" to a still greater flame. The party did not feel how many enemies it raised up against itself in this way. The farmers were resentful on account of the agricultural strikes, and even the older and more sober working-men began to entertain doubts of the development their party was taking. For it was quite plain that an element of pure ruffianism was coming more and more into the foreground.

However disquieting the situation was in the interior, it was not given all the attention it might have deserved, for another and more important question filled the minds of all—the old question of the relations with Russia. The impotence of the great empire began to show more and more plainly. All the various foreign nationalities within the frontiers of the empire sought to emancipate