Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/52

 which at the moment did not exist. After a great many difficulties the question was decided to the effect that the Lantdag itself took over the Higher Power in Finland.

In the meanwhile the Labour Party found that the moment had now come to bring into play those "unparliamentary means of power" they had so often threatened to employ. On the 13th November at twelve midnight they proclaimed a general strike throughout the country, and their first act was to take possession of all the printing offices of the bourgeoisie papers, so that the morning papers could not appear on the 14th. The Red Guard had now come into action.

What was the reason for this sudden vigorous measure just at this time? The demands preferred by the party in the strike proclamation did not make the matter clearer. They consisted in a radical regulation of the food question, and the struggle against unemployment on the lines laid down by the Labour Party; the confirmation of the "Power Law," of the law of the eight-hour working-day, and of the proposed extremely radical municipal law; secure guarantees for an old-age pension scheme, for an effective taxation of large incomes and war profits, for the emancipation of cottagers, and the extension of the franchise to persons of the age of twenty; the convening of a constituent assembly.

It is not easy to see how a general strike would be able to act beneficially with regard, e.g., to the providing of food, or do away with unemployment, or why the "Power Law," with its highly unsatisfactory solution of the problem of Finland's relations with Russia, was now so desirable. On the whole there was every possible reason for suspecting that the end and purpose of the strike was something very different from what the proclamation stated, and that this latter was only a