which a complete rupture of relations was certain to entail. They therefore stood for the maintenance of the connexion with Russia.
Principally, however, the Social Democrats believed that Socialist governance had come to stay in Russia, and they were not minded to protect Finnish capital from seizure if the birth of a cooperative commonwealth in Finland could thereby be accelerated. When the Bolshevist coup d'etat in Russia became known, they unwisely fraternized with the Russian soldiers stationed in Finland, and with their help rejected municipal bodies and replaced them by Social Democrat committees. Such action was hardly designed to relieve the ever-growing food difficulties and laid their party open to the reproach of harbouring anarchical tendencies. The Socialists were almost all Maximalists and anti-militarists, and, as such, averse even to the formation of a democratic citizen army maintained for pur- poses of order and defence. They pinned their faith on the Musco- vite connexion to save their country from invasion oblivious of the fact that the Russian soldier, freed of the restraints of a disci- pline which had become his second nature, starving and unpaid, was, to say the least, an uncertain factor. While free passes were given, whole trainloads of revolutionary soldateska arrived from Petrograd nominally to assist the Socialists in their active differ- ences with the bourgeoisie, but in reality to create disturbances. Having massacred their officers and any bourgeois elements which remained among them, they entered the so-called Finnish " Red Guards," and ransacked the country. The reactionaries, getting together the doubtful elements of the disbanded gendarmerie and their own adherents, organized the " White Guards." German arms and explosives were imported by one side; Russian bayonets by the other. At Christmas 1917 matters came to a head at Abo, where the Social Democrats imprisoned the governor and the chief of the police. For about a week the " Red Guards," which were com- posed of casually armed Social Democrats, remained on duty not- withstanding the fact that their pay had been suspended by the local Moderate bourgeois authorities. Then they gave up their job, and Russian troops and "hooligan elements " seized the oppor- tunity to sack a part of Abo. After some days' disorders, hurriedly summoned " Whites " from another district and some of the original " Reds " restored order together. But the bourgeois bloc neglected to introduce a democratic citizen army and opposed the reactionary efforts of the Swedish party to form a conscript army round the nucleus " White Guards."
The Bolsheviks were clearly bent on precipitating civil war in Fin- land, and poured arms, munitions and troops into the country for the ostensible purpose of helping the Social Democrats. For this reason the Senate on Jan. 29 addressed a protest against the action of the Russian Government to the various Powers which had recog- nized Finnish independence. But it was too late, as now even the sanest Social Democrats were swept into a flood of Bolshevism. Helsingfors on that very day was seized by the Red Guards and by Feb. 8 1918 the coup d'etat had occurred and " Whites "and " Reds were in brutal conflict everywhere.
The German Intervention, March-May 1918. The Diet belatedly adopted, on Jan. 17 1918, certain measures suggested by Senator Kaarlo Castren for the strengthening of the White Guard forma- tions. As these were insufficient to save the White army, which was under the command of the former Russian general of cavalry, Baron Carl Gustav Emit Mannerheim, the necessity arose of seeking foreign intervention. As regards this it is known from the Swedish statesman Branting that the Finnish Government, when it " made its official proposal for a Swedish intervention had simul- taneously asked in Berlin for a German armed intervention." Thus Sweden, had she assented, would have been dragged into the war, as " nobody can imagine that Germany would have refused an offer so favourable to her hegemony in the Baltic."
This judgment is true, for while Sweden refused official help, the Germans did not hesitate. After all, they had kindled the Bolshevist fires in the East and sent war material into Finland for the express purpose of fomenting troubles which they could exploit to their own advantage. The situation was favourable to them, for as Mr. E. Lofgren, Minister of Justice in the Swedish Coalition Government of 1918, publicly explained, " the Finns immediately after the declara- tion of their independence had entered into negotiations for a treaty with Germany, which in a commercial political sense made Finland the ally and vassal of Germany. . . ." The allusion is to the Finno- German treaty of March 7 1918.
But since the public knew little of the underground workings of German policy, the landing of a German composite division in the Aland island of Ekero on March 3 and in Finland by April 3 caused the Prussian general officer commanding, Count Riidiger yon der Goltz, to be hailed as the liberator of the country. He had initially some 12,000 men under his orders, viz., three dismounted cavalry regiments, three Jiiger battalions, Bavarian mountain artillery, two heavy batteries, a squadron of cavalry, and sundry technical and supply formations which were subsequently reinforced by the detachment " Brandenstein," consisting of three infantry battalions, one cyclist battalion, a squadron of cavalry and two batteries. He had further the support of the German navy in the landing operations, and the remnant of the 2,000 Finnish exiles who had joined the German army in 1915-6 and made up the famous "27tn" Jagers, who were as well drilled in Pan-Germanism as in military science.
Gen. von der Goltz, by landing in the rear of the Red forces and holding part of these in a successful action near Karis on April 6, enabled Gen. Mannerheim to win the battle of Tammerfors, while he himself, by a rapid advance on Helsingfors, between April 1 1 and 13, freed this capital which he officially entered on April 14. Finally his victory over the Reds in the three days' battle (April 3O-May 2) of Lahti-Tavastehus contributed to Mannerheim's decisive defeat of the Red eastern army near Viborg on April 28-29. The remnants of the Red army being forced eastwards into Russia, the campaign ended in a month with the complete victory of the Whites.
The terrible cruelty of the Reds, however, led to the White Terror as the price the country had to pay for being dragged into " Mittel- Europa." Some 15,000 men, women and children were slaughtered in cold blood, and by June 27 1918 73,915 Red insurrectionaries, including 4,600 women, were prisoners of war.
The Diet, which met in June 1918, was Moderate, since the So- cialists or 46% of the electorate were excluded from the register. It authorized Senator Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, who under the Russian regime had been an exile from his country, to exercise the supreme power in so far as it had not already been conferred on the Senate which was bringing forward proposals for a monarchical form of government by offering the crown to Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, brother-in-law of the German emperor.
But the Germans pursued the ulterior object of securing Finnish military cooperation against the Murman railway, which, having been built by English enterprise during the war, was now guarded by a British expeditionary force. The claim of the liberators upon the gratitude of the Finns was assuming the most peremptory forms known to diplomacy, when, three days later, on July 18, events took place on the western front which marked the turn of the war to Ger- many's disadvantage. One collision between a Finnish force and a detachment commanded by a British officer, Lt. Quinn-Harkin, oc- curred in northern Karelia, but valuable time was gained until the rapid transformation of the European war, culminating in the Armi- stice of Nov. 1 1 1918, caught Finnish reaction between wind and water. Svinhufvad, the pliant tool of Germany, relinquished the supreme power, and was succeeded on Dec. 12 by Gen. Mannerheim as regent, who formed a Coalition Government composed of six Republicans and six Monarchists. The persons discredited by their extreme pro- Germanism, among them Gen. Thesleff, the Minister of War, were replaced in order to obtain the recognition of Finland by the Great Powers and secure the food supply of which the country stood in need. The definite orientation towards the Entente marked the transition from the monarchist period of German influence towards the democratic regime associated with England and America.
The German troops, in part mutinous, were conveyed back to Germany in the middle of Dec., but with difficulty, as the German navy refused to transport units which had remained faithful to the Emperor. Gen. Mannerheim, who as regent wielded the power of a quasi-dictator, was a monarchist, but not a pro-German.
Events in 1919 and 1920. The year 1919 witnessed the growth of the Republic of Finland out of the ashes of a country laid waste by civil war. Mannerheim organized the " Skydds- korps " or Protective Guards, a body of over 100,000 men, whose loyalty to the existing order of society could be relied upon.
The general election of March i 1919 showed the following division of parties: Social Democrats 80, Agrarians 42, Coali- tionists 28, Progressives 26, Swedish 22, Christian Labour two. The Social Democrats had thus diminished by 12 since the 1917 elections. This was largely attributable to the disfranchisement of over 40,000 voters for participation in the Red revolt. The tendency towards a republican form of government was outlined by the Agrarian party, composed of small landowners hostile to the claims of the Swedish-speaking Monarchist section.
Mannerheim's popularity being immense with the parties of the Right and the army, the temptation of exploiting the military impotence of Soviet Russia was very great. In 1919 continued the Entente intervention on the Murmansk and Archangel fronts, and when the 237th Brigade (Gen. Price), which formed part of the expeditionary force under the English Maj.-Gen. Maynard, at the end of May reached Medvyejva Gora at the head of Lake Onega, the Finnish Government offered coopera- tion in return for the possession of Petrozavodsk. The offer being declined, a Finnish volunteer force nevertheless assaulted the town independently, but without success. Again, at the close of the year, when the White-Russian Gen. Judenitch was marching on Petrograd, Mannerheim went so far as to sound the Allies as to their views on the proposed Finnish intervention. But he received no encouragement from Paris or London, nor from the Moderates at home.
Already on July 17 of that year the Finnish Diet had resolved to establish a republic, with a president to be elected every six
