Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/42

 By this the power would be placed in the hands of the Labour Party in a way that was as simple as it was shrewd. But it proved a miscalculation. The party therefore changed tactics, and kept very scrupulously to the usual procedure of the Lantdag, in order to bring the influence of their great minority to bear as much as possible.

As soon as their defeat in the elections had become known, the Labour Party began to organise corps of the Red Guard in good earnest. Before they had been mutually independent organisations, now they were to be transformed into a real army. The purpose of this was first stated to be self-defence against the butcher-corps, i.e., the Protective Corps, but soon the real, purely revolutionary, intention is allowed to show through, though only obscurely.

In a procalamation issued on the 20th October the leaders of Finland's Collective Trades Unions say as follows: "As the bourgeoisie is now feverishly arming itself against the labourers in order to stifle their most important endeavours for reform, the leaders are of opinion that in self-defence, and to provide against all contingencies, the labourers should immediately raise corps of Guards all over the country." But already on the 16th October the former chief of the Government, Mr. Tokoi, had pointed out in a speech at Åbo that the defeat at the elections need not be of decisive importance as "the labourers had other means of power besides the ballot to bring home their claims. It was necessary to stand firm, and fight for the victory of the revolution when the right moment had come."

On the 31st October the party council of the Social-Democratic Party calls upon those corps of the Guard that are not yet fully equipped to "get ready as quickly as possible, and collect all the forces of the working-men