Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1919 — FINLAND the HERMIT NATION of EUROPE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FINLAND the HERMIT NATION of EUROPE

People Are Passive and Unfathomable Yet. Their Love of Inde- / pendence Promises L Bright Future>CSj> V 4 * * WF N 1816 Emperor Alelander I o*V ■_ _Rtjssia wrote' to Stelnheit, then \ governor general of Finland, in the following terms:2 As re ‘ • dglgS gnrds the conditions of Finland, my Intention has been to give this pebple a political existence, s " that they may not feel thetnselves conquered by Russia, but united to her for their own clear advantage; /'therefore not only theircivilbuttlmlrquditicalJaws—iuiisL_he maintained.” Today, a century after those words were written.' there seems at last good hope that Alexander Fs Intent ion may be "permanently fulfilled, writes Rosalind

-FravcTs —Hyiidinnn in New. York Hun. A nice iff Mongolian origin and language, the “Suomihdset” or people of the fens —were Christianized very early In the thirteenth century by the Swedes, who treated them on the whole with equal!tv and justice, and intermarried with them freely, not, h<o\<oer, allowing the Finnish language to be written or spoken to any extent. The result was that in ISOS Russia conquered a people who spoke Swedish and regarded themselves as .independent Swedes; and although the Finns have passed through enormous national changes in the course of the century, Russians of the ruling classes could never get it our of their heads that Finland desired to belong to Sweden again. The governors of Russia, having much vaster affairs in hand, did not realize that the.remarkable development of Finnish nationalism was <ll- - last, against the Swedish language and Finno-Swedish domination. The Finnish language was spoken only by the remote peasantry and Finnish' names even were not legally recognized. , Yet. meanwhile, a great movement was steadily growing up for the revival of Finland's own singularly rich and beautiful tongue. The Finnish people began to think of their country ns “Suomi." something utterly distinct from Sweden or Russia, having a language and literature of its own.- From 1849 onward, when Lonntot published the second edition of the ‘‘Kalevala.” Finland's national epic, educated Finns were beginning to give up Swedish as a means of comniunlcatkln 'and learning to use the strange, difficult. sonorous language which was their birthright. Naturally this development soon cleft the country In two" Many Finns urged, not unreasonably, that it was hardly practicable for so small a people to cut themselves off from Scandinavia, from Russia, from tjie rest of Europe in fact, “by climbing on to a language island” in this way. But natlonalistn triumphed. In 1863 the “nice little Constitution” granted by’ Alexander II left the Finns* free to govern themselves in all internal matters in a fairly representative manner, and from this time the study of Finnish became an L Integral part of the general education. The use of the revived language of Finland grew so fast that Swedish-speaking Finns began to find themselves in a minority, and in 1894 after a very hot debate, the Finnish language was placed t»n an u ith Swedish in the Finland sennte., “Svekoman" (Swede-Finn) and “Fennoman” (Finnish-Finn) became cries oT warfare, and The language conflict fell roughly into line with the divisions of class. The progressive and proletarian elements In the country were Fennoman, while the middle class, conservative and aristocratic fbrees were for a long while by speech and traditions Swede. All this time Finns as a people and as a nation kept Strictly to that policy of detachment and independence which has always marked them'. They took no part at all in Russian affairs and showed little interest in those of Scandinayia; they appeared to Europe generally as self-een-tered as a Chinese colony in the West might be. Finland meant to work out her salvation alone. In literature and art indeed the country was open to influences, for the Finns have always been grreat travelers, wandering about the continent with cold, appraisifig eyeh, selecting and taking back with them such ideas as they considered likely to Ik> of use. They took political ideas also from Scandinavia and from Germany, but they had no desire to riiake propaganda for their own Ideas or their own race. ” A’et inevitably they were bound to be fi growing trouble to the Russian government and a Stumbling block to Pan-Slav policy. Obviously a democratic and almost self-governing province was out of place aiming the folds of the vast autocratic rtjle which covered all the Russias th£n. But a far more important objection was this: The duchy of Finland, alien in language character and administration, was a complete break in that scheme of one vast homogeneous Russia, stretching from the Norwegian coast to the Pacific, one in language, laws, religion and government —that, dream of giant unity, and monotony which seems to have filled the minds'of the directors of Russia for 30 years and more. There seems little doubt that the dei*»sed dynasty cherished this design as the Hohenzollerns did that of “Mittel-Europa.” It was a similar 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 Flim, even when considering his own misfortunes, is eminently dispassionate—Russia's first attack qpon the liberties of Finland in 1899 was Inevitably a catastrophe of nature. There is little need to recall **the bad years” from 1899 to 1906, when the Finnish constitution was suspended and the country was placed under tlte rule of h military dictator. General Bobrikoff. They form a monotonous record of press' censorship, dismissals of native •fldals. Illegal arrests and exile. - " ' The great strike of 1905-1906, however ceaaftd la its main objects, achieved twv things:

The election of the Russian duina and the temporary restoration of Finland’s constitution. Yet “restored” is hardly the word, for that- restricted, cautious and eminently bourgeois constitution of 1863 was resurrected into something democratic anti terrible—a popular based upon full adult suffrage andj>ropprtlonal representation “wiih an elected house, containing at its first assemblage in April, 1907, 80 social-democrats out of a total of 200. And these were genuine, uncompromising Marxist social democrats, the outcome of a parly which was first formed in 1899. Since then the social democratic representation of Finland 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 pollfical development. The old feuds of Svekoman and Fefinoman were taken up with renewed vigor, although the Swedish speaking Finns were now only one-ninth of the population ami still decreasing. " We all remember how, in .May, 1910, 120 members of the British parliament signed a memorial to the dtinta expressing the apprehension with which they regarded the proposal to deprive Finlaml of her constitutional rights, while a large number of German, French, Italian, Belgian and Dutch -deputies formed and addressed similar memorials. But all this was in vain, and by July, 1910, the bill for the Russification of Finland became law. It was not immediately and violently put into practice. The landtdag was still assembled at intervals, though it had rather less power than a municipal council. A number of official dimissals 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 censored. However, this second series of “bad years” was nuich harder for the Finns than the period of 1899-1906. Soon after the war began Finland was practically cut off from the civilized world. Russification 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 internal business of the country suffered greatly, and the wholejteople were put “under hatches,” as it were, and assuredly on very short rations for an unlimited time. One piece of news only came through in the early days of the, war, to the effect ~agerrejril>f oOtns^ia"had returned from .Denmark by way of Finland and had shown much eotirtesy and common sense on her passage. It was said that she had caused her personal guard to be greatly relaxed,- that she had talked with Finns, everywhere and had taken pains to-create a good impression. But shortly after her return the Finns were specially and officially warned “not to build any false hopes of restored liberty” upon

the friendly demeanor of the dowager empress. Naturally ' this ill-advised policy has had very had results. At the beginning of the war many Finns were in favor of the allies, chiefly by reason of their English trade connections and English sympathies.—But when Russia’s most powerful • nfl neces§flFy ally forbode to *say~ one "word in favor of a reasonable treatment of Finland, and when the English press by its undiscrlminatlng praise of all things Russian actually gave jnore strength to the powers of reaction, then the Finns cannot be blamed for looking elsewhere. Their exiles flocked to Germany in great numbers, qnd it is said that more than 3,000 Finns took up their residence there. The Germans are further credited with making active propaganda for their cause among the professors and students of Finland, but it seems doubtful whether they would really have found it worth while, when the allies themselves were unconsciously doing so much to spread pro-German sympathies there. If —but no one can say more than if—Finland was occasionally used as a channel for communication between Germany and the traitorous party in Russia the allies have only themselves to blftrne. However this may be, It seems pretty clear that there were several German agencies in more than one part of Finland trying to stir the people up to an armed revolt. / Since our reactionary press at one time took upon itself to repeat tile Venerable and discredited cliches about Finland’s desire for independence or for union with Sweden, it is well to say once more that Finland’s great nationalist movement .was fill directed against Swedish influence, and that there are not five wiseacres in the whole country who would dream of the possibility of such a union. Nor has the fiercest advocate of Finnish freedom ever contemplated absolute independence. The position of the country and its very small population wholly forbid it. Surely this tiny nation has a magnificent future! It may .even be possible for them, highly trained and politically qualified as they are, Io hurry through the intervening stages of their economic development and show to Europe the working model of a co-operative commonwealth. They are in the main Mongolians, patient, passive, secret and unfathomable, and their kinsmen in Japan and China have done equally' marvelous things. Yet a 1 ien from us as they are racially, their development* is so western that no Englishman who has spent much time in Finland has any sense of a race barrier. Q# pftffitgiry. they seem, once know'll', curiously appealing and synipathetici this brave, ugly little people, with their high cheekbones, great foreheads and deep-set eyes. Their literature, like their landscape, is extraordinarily varied and beautiful and there runs through it a sense of the. timeless forests and the unbounded North. It haunts you; no one who has felt the chann of Finland is really content till he sees the Land of Thousand Lakes again.

THE MARKET SQUARE OF HELSINGFORS