Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/51

 Protective Corps, as well as all the corps of the Red Guard, would now unite and combine to guard the peace and lawful order of the country.

There was all the more reason for nourishing such hopes as Finland had, just at this time, by the force of circumstances, been practically detached from Russia. On the 7th November the Bolshevik insurrection had broken loose in Russia and the Provisional Government had been overthrown. Russia was now without government, for the right to the executive power was not acknowledged by anyone but the party's own members, and so much was plain that the power vested in the Russian Emperor, in his quality of Grand Duke of Finland, could not without ceremony pass over to a Russian party committee which had usurped the power. Finland must now decide her own fate.

The moment was great and historical. The collapse of Russia had now progressed so far that Finland as a detached whole could choose her own way and show that she was really a nation with Western culture, capable of holding her own among the States of Europe. But the Labour Party would not hear of anything of the sort. In accordance with the old form of government the Lantdag was to choose a ruler for the country already on the 8th November. But, on account of the split among the factions, the presidency of the Lantdag was of opinion that there were grounds for proposing an administration committee of three persons. The Labour Party moved a counter-proposal containing the programme of an entire social revolution, and demanding amongst other things that the law—the so-called Power Law—which had been the cause of the dissolution of the former Lantdag should now be confirmed. This party thus considered it adequate—as proposed in this law—to continue to commit all foreign and military affairs to the Russian Government