constantly coming in from Sweden, but the negotiations came to nothing as far as direct military intervention was concerned. On their side the Swedes tried during the revolution to put an embargo on Aaland, which belonged to Finland. When the defeat of tho revolutionary army was certain, and there was left only the hangman's work to do, Sweden sent her "black brigade" to Tammerfors to drink the blood of the revolutionary workers, a thing which the faithful Socialist lackeys of the Swedish Government and bourgeoisie made no attempt to prevent. Before the arrival of the black brigade a semi-official delegation of Right Swedish Socialists came to Helsingfors, and Möller, the secretary of the party, declared in their name that the victory of the Finnish Revolution would be a disaster for international democracy. The international Socialist swindlers were thus already afraid of our revolution. They feared lest it should spread the flames which threatened to set fire to the feathers of the couch which the bourgeoisie had prepared for them. For us, on the other hand, it seems terrible that our revolution with its democratic programme might have been triumphant. It would have troubled the understanding of the workers of neighbouring countries in relation to the great task of the proletarian revolution.
Once more did victory rest with capitalist violence. German imperialism gave ear to the lamentations of our bourgeois, and gave itself out as ready to swallow up the newly-acquired independence, which, at the request of the Finnish Social Democrats, had been granted to Finland by the Soviet Republic of Russia. The national sentiment of the bourgeoisie did not suffer in the least on this account, and the yoke of a foreign imperialism had no terrors for them when it seemed that their "fatherland" was on the point of becoming the fatherland of the workers. They were willing to sacrifice the entire people to the great German bandit provided that they could keep for themselves the dishonourable position of slave drivers.
They were now indeed in this position, and they took the whip in hand. And never had the whip been wielded in more bestial, brutal fashion than it was under Svinhufoud's rule in Finland every day uninterruptedly for seven months. The savage lust for revenge on the pan of the Finnish bourgeoisie was responsible for more victims amongst defenceless prisoners than the war of the classes had cost the workers
