The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1920-03-04
FINLAND, HERMIT NATION OF EUROPE
People Passive and Unfathomabe Yet Their Love of
Independence Promises Bright Future

but they had no desire to make propaganda
for their own ideas or their own race.
Yet inevitably they were bound to be
growing trouble to the Russian government
and stumbling block to Pan-Slav policy.
Obviously democratic and almost self
governing province was out of place among
the folds of the vast autocratic rule which
covered all the Russias then.
But far more important objection was
this: The duchy of Finland, alien in Ian
guage, character and administration, was
complete break in that scheme of one vast
homogeneous Russia, stretching from the
Norwegian coast to the Pacific, one in Ian
guage, laws, religion and government that
dream of giant unity and monotony which
seems to have filled the minds of the direc-
tors of Russia for 80 years and more. There
seems little doubt that the deposed dynasty
cherished this design as the Hohenzollerns
did that of Mittel-Europa." 1t was sim
liar huge, dull, magnificent, mischievous idea,
trampling even more widely over the rights
of other nations and intended to produce an
even more dismal uniformity of rule.
So, dispassionately viewed and the
Finn, even when considering his own misfor-
tunes, is eminently dispassionate-
first attack upon the liberties of Finland in
1899 was inevitable, catastrophe of nature.
There is little need to recall "the bad years"
from 1899 to 1906, when the Finnish con-
stitution was suspended and the country was
placed under the rule of military dictator,
General Bobrikof. They form monoto-
nous record of press censorship, dismissals of
native officials, illegal arrests and exile.
The great strike of 1905-19O6, how
ever unsuccessful in its main objects achieved
two things. The election of the Russian
fHa fanaa aad ths ss6sd H
ly the word, for that restricted, cautious and
eminently bourgeois constitution of 1863 was
resurrected into something democratic and
TERRIBLE popular government, based upon
full adult suffrage and proportional repre-
sentation with an elected house containing
at its first assemblage in April, 1907, 80
social democrats out of total of zoo. And
these were genuine, uncompromising Marxist
social democrats, the outcome of party
which was first formed in 1899. Since then
the social democratic representation OF Fin
land has steadily increased at every election.
From the spring of 1907 to that of
1909 Finland experienced "two crowded
years of glorious life" in which the country
simply hummed with internal progress and
political development. The old feuds OF
Svekoman and Fennoman were taken up
with renewed vigor, although the Swedish
speaking Films were now only one-ninth OF
the population and still decreasing.
We all remember how, in May, 1910,
12O members of the British parliament
signed a memorial to the duma expressing
the apprehension with which they regarded
the proposal to deprive Finland of her con-
stitutional rights, while large number of
German, French, Italian, Belgian and Dutch
deputies formed and addressed similar me-
MORALS. But all this was in vain, and by
July, 1910, the bill for the Russifcation of
Finland became law.
1t was not Immediately and violently
put into practice. The landtlag was still as
sembled at intervals, though it had rather
less power than municipal council. A num-
Der of official dismissals took place, Russians
were given full Finnish rights in Finland
and the usual series of arrests, imprisonments
and exilings followed, but until 1912 the
Finnish press was only intermittently CEN
sored. However, this second series of bad
wears, was much harder for the Firms than
the period of 1892 1906.
Soon after the war began Finland was
practically cut off from the civilized world.
Russifcation set in with full force and the
most stringent censorship of the press, of
correspondence and of all written matter
whatever was established. Even the inter-
nal business of the country suffered greatly,
and the whole people were put under
hatches," as it were, and assuredly on very
short rations for an unlimited time.
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