Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/161

 and then began the great contest for equal rights for the Finnish language within Finland. It was won by the Finns, and Swedish and Finnish gained equal rights in public life. The Finnish movement rapidly developed and during the last thirty years its progress has been most extraordinary, and so the Swedes, who were once predominant, find themselves being elbowed out of the land in which they were masters. The new Finnish literary language is in spirit, though not in structure or vocabulary, Scandinavian. It has produced literature, not great, perhaps, but very interesting, with a number of talented authors, of whom the novelists, Juhani Aho and Arvid Järnefeldt, are probably the best, some excellent poetry, some very interesting art, and also an extraordinarily effective scientific apparatus, an apparatus of learning of which the University of Helsingfors is the active centre. In the last few years, the autonomy of Finland has been limited in many ways. There has been a conflict between the Finns and the Russian Government. I cannot enter into the details of this conflict now, but I can only say that amongst the nationalities of the Empire the Finns occupy a very peculiar and so far distinct place, and as to their assimilation by the Russians or any other people in the world there is no question whatever, because there is no people in the world so tenacious of their nationality as the stubborn hard-headed Finns.

Then south of Finland you come to the Baltic Provinces, which include three nationalities, the Germans, who are in the great minority but hitherto have had nearly all the power in their hands, the Esthonians, and the Letts. The Esthonians and the Letts have in