Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/38

 The article asserts quite coolly that the bourgeoisie have armed themselves to "mutilate the starving proletariat." "There is no intention of checking the marauding policy of the war ruffians, but in support of it citizens are armed against the desperate working-men in order to pour out the blood of brethren." This, of course, was sheer conscious untruth. What was the purpose of the Protective Corps will appear from what has been stated above. The want of an efficient police force also showed itself in the rationing of food, the producers in the country were very unwilling to send their products to the towns for the express reason that they feared they would be seized without ceremony by the mob. Here, then, was another task for the Protective Corps. But the campaign against them was continued in the Labour Press. A few more extracts will give an idea of the tone. On the 25th September "Työmies," under the title; "Bourgeois' Sanguinary Guards. They Are Being Trained and Armed Quickly. Their Activity is Directed against the Working-men," writes amongst other things as follows: "It is the intention of the upper classes to commit sanguinary deeds, and to crush the working-men's organisations by force of arms. Is there any difference between Bobrikoff's gendarme rule and this occupation? By no means. These men of the Protective Corps go almost further. They wander about with the finger on the trigger, and are ready to snap the life out of anyone who is dressed in the labourer's jacket." "The bourgeois themselves have let fall the veil. Their blood-dripping measures are revealed to the sight of the honest fellow-citizen, their armed, thousand-headed guards and mounted troops. The bourgeois are bringing up ignorant men to wholesale slaughter of their own fellow citizens. They have already emptied the arsenals of our country, and are