Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/86

 to be in a state of strike. Towards morning two trains arrived from St. Petersburg, one packed full of Russian Red Guardsmen, the other with firearms and ammunition. Referring to a telegram from the Government of Russia, the soldiers demanded that all the Protective Corps should be disarmed, and the arms delivered up to the Red Guard. The latter was then to operate according to the orders of the representative of the Russian Government in Finland, the so-called Rayon Committee.

On the Thursday the strike reigned. At a station near Viborg two telegraph functionaries had been shot, and the station-master at Viborg, who had been arrested earlier, was found in his cell with his throat cut, an equally meaningless and cruel murder on a man of fifty. The number of the prisoners was now ninety-three, and the Red "played" kindly with them. Now they had to run the gauntlet of two rows of Red and Russians, who struck them with the butt ends of their rifles, now they were arranged in rank and file and counted "to see how much shot was needed," etc.

On the last days of the week, from the 24th to the 27th January, the Red held undisputed sway at Viborg. They marched through the streets, made arrests, and searched houses and committed some outrages, as, for instance, when they fired at a sleigh in which a man was taking his wife to the maternity hospital. The man was wounded in the head, the woman in the abdomen, and the child was born directly after. But the movement had now spread through the whole of the country. In the east and the west, in Karelen and Østerbotten, the Protective Corps were masters, and quite calmly disarmed smaller Russian and Red divisions. But in the south the Red have been seized by the intoxication of war. They occupy the railway stations, collect