300 THE CLASS STRUGGLE FINLAND LABOR REPUBLIC 301 uprising of the people took place, beginning in a general strike.
The White Guard Government fled to the sparsely settled northern part of Finland, leaving the capital and all the agencies of government, and all the popular manufacturing districts in the hands of the forces of the people. People Republic was declared, and a Provisional Government formed, which has appointed me its representative in the United States. This Government was immediately recognized by the Soviet Government of Russia.
privileges, managed to persuade the Provisional Russian Government (Kerensky s) to dissolve the Diet. This wholly illegal action was carried out by sending Cossack troops to Helsingfors in order to crush the representatives of the Finnish people. New illegal elections were held, in which for one reason or another large numbers of electors did not take part, and a so called Government was formed, precursor of the White Guard Government of today. Recent dispatches from Finland show that immense election frauds were perpetrated in that election to the detriment of the labor party. It has been maintained by the supporters of the White Guards that they only recently became pro German, and then merely because they were faced by the necessity of saving their little farms and factories from anarchy at home. The fact is that the junker elements in Finland, forming the White Guard leadership, were covertly plotting for German intervention in Finlard from the early days of the war and actually sent thousands of Finnish young men to Germany to be trained in the German army. Today the White Guard leaders are openly boasting of this. In the issue of Kalova, the official White Guard newspaper, of March last, now on my table, appears a copy of a laudatory telegram sent to the German Chancellor by the White Guard Prime Minister.
It begins. On this day, when the Finnish Chausseurs, who have been drilled in Germany, are returning to their Fatherland to fight on Finland soil for the freedom and independence of their country, the Government of Finland is sincerely impelled to express to His Majesty the German Emperor and to the Imperial Government not only its admiration of the glorious deeds of the German people and their illustrious leader, but also the gratitude, welling from the bottom of the heart of the Finnish people because of all that Germany has done for our country and for the Finnish Chausseurs who this day three years ago voluntarily entered the military service in Germany.
At the time of this revolution the White Guard was formed, composed mostly of hired thugs and strike breakers, armed with German weapons and officered by the Finnish chasseurs above referred to, trained in the army of the Kaiser. This Butcher Guard, as the Finns call them, would have had no chance to impose its will against the wishes of the great mass of the Finnish people. Fighting alone, it was doomed. But the German Government, spurred by the desire of making Finland an outpost of German imperialism and securing a road to the Russian arctic ports of Kola and Archangel, which would give Germany control over Scandinavian shipping, heeded the call of the Finnish junkers and sent 40, 000 men. The forces of the Provisional Government, a hastily raised voluntary army of upwards of 100, 000 men, poorly armed and more poorly fed, were no match for the German war machine. Finland has fallen. Today the White Guard is giving the German officers lists of their political oppo nents, and the Germans are slaughtering the proscribed men and women by the thousands. In this primitive fashion, the system of Sulla, the Whites hope to create a majority for themselves.
For many weeks there have been stories in the papers about Red Guard atrocities. Many of these have been exaggerations and many downright lies. They have come mostly from German sources, reactionary Swedish sources and from the pro German White Guard leaders, who up to a few weeks ago seemed to be able successfully to camouflage many of their real purposes from American representatives with whom they were in contact.
That there were Red Guard killings that should have been The coup whereby the Democratic Diet was dissolved roused the Finnish people. As time went on they saw that the Finnish reactionaries were bent upon getting into the saddle. Revolution was in the air, and late in January of this year a great.