Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/82

 Red Guard thought that the demands of the strikers were not complied with quickly enough. They therefore, with the assistance of Russian soldiers, arrested all the Government officials of the town, and took them to the lock-up. When the Red had kept them there for one night it was thought that they would be sufficiently humbled, and now a lot of demands were made: the city was to grant the Red Guard 50,000 marks for the maintenance of order. Not until the evening, when they had gone without food for a night and a day, and been subject to the wildest threats, did the prisoners submit.—At Mariehamn on Aland Russian soldiers shot one person, wounded one, and arrested three.

Those were only the greater occurrences. Innumerable lesser ones took place at the same time. But also the Protective Corps began to stir. The failure of the marauding expedition to Sibbo gave the Protective Corps in these parts occasion for stationing guards along the railway line, etc. In Østerbotten there were signs that the new Government force, which was mainly being organised there, began to excite a wholesome respect among the Russian soldiers. The general feeling in all sensible circles began to be more optimistic. Perhaps anarchy could really be crushed, perhaps the threats hurled out by the adherents of the Labour Party in the Lantdag when the Force for the Maintenance of Order was at last sanctioned after a hot debate lasting eighteen hours, perhaps they were only an outbreak of impotent fury at the defeat of the party.

And yet these hopes were again dashed. The Labour Party got into closer and closer relations with the Russian soldiers, and the behaviour of the latter became more and more lawless. The more time that passed the more sick and tired the soldiers got of all meetings, speeches, and demonstrations. They wanted to arrange every-