Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/81

 ten days of January the Red Guard carried out several large operations. They gave orders for 300 Russian soldiers to go to Nyslott. They arrived by special train, and began to ravage the little town. The subordinate functionaries were arrested, house-searches were made, robberies committed, etc. The district magistrate at Helsingfors who walked out of the prison one day and took up his official duties again, received a visit from some Red Guardsmen, who declared that within forty-eight hours he must be outside the precincts of the district of Nyland, or they would not answer for his safety.—The Government received a written communication from the Red Guard, in which the dismissal of the district magistrate of Åbo and Uleborg was demanded—or the Guard would proceed to "active measures." The building formerly used as a residence by the Governor-General, at Helsingfors, and now made use of by the Social Department, was coolly taken possession of one fine day by the Red Guard that needed spacious rooms in a central position for their headquarters.—One morning a considerable number of armed Red Guardsmen "took" a train in the station at Helsingfors, departed to the nearest stations on the main line, took possession of them, and sent a division of sixty men to an adjacent, larger, village in the parish of Sibbo to plunder. Resistance was, however, offered, the Red were fired at by the peasants, lost a couple of men, and retired. In the Labour Press this was characterised as murder committed on peaceful working-men by the citizens.—At Viborg great crowds of roughs collected from Åbo, Helsingfors, and St. Petersburg, because the militia threatened to strike, and because it seemed as if there would be an opportunity for plundering. At Frederikshamn, where a number of sempstresses had struck, the