Finland and the War
When the war broke out in the summer of 1914, the sympathies of Finland were divided. The inclination of the mass of the people was towards the Allies.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Finland and the War” from Finland and the Finns by Arthur Reade, 1917.
When the war broke out in the summer of 1914, the sympathies of Finland were divided. The inclination of the mass of the people was towards the Allies. In spite of what they had suffered from Russia they felt instinctively what some of the better-educated classes failed to grasp—that the defeat of the Allies would involve the defeat of democracy and the cause of the small nations.
It might seem strange that Russia, who had oppressed many small nations, should be drawing the sword on behalf of Servia, but, in some mysterious way, on this occasion Russia was in the right.
This feeling expressed itself in various ways. The writer was in Stockholm when the war broke out, and had to return to Finland on a train carrying some 800 Russians who had escaped from Germany and other parts of the Continent. Many of these Russians were penniless and destitute, but all alike were treated with the utmost kindness and generosity by the Finns who thronged the railway stations. There was no suggestion anywhere of the hostile demonstration which many of the travellers seemed to expect; old wrongs were forgotten, and a new spirit of brotherhood seemed to be taking the place of the old suspicion. This change of attitude was reflected in a new tone which became noticeable in several Russian papers which had been notoriously anti-Finnish, and in the manifesto issued by the Grand Duke Nicholas thanking the Finnish railway men for the efficient help rendered by them at the time of mobilization. It seemed that the war might initiate a new era in Russo-Finnish relations.
There was, however, a minority on whom the immediate struggle to retain their vanishing liberties pressed so hard, that they failed to see the world-conflict in its true perspective. For these, smarting as they were with their wounds, Russia loomed as a sinister power which could not by any possibility be fighting on the side of liberty. Nor was there any possible defence of France and Britain, who had irretrievably condemned themselves by joining hands with the Muscovite. To this minority it was useless to point out that the whole case of Finland against Russia was based on the sacredness of a “scrap of paper," and that to take sides with the power which openly repudiated treaties and the pledged word was practically to justify Russia in her aggression upon the rights of Finland. This party counted among its adherents, also, many whose education had imbued them with a genuine love or admiration for Germany, and theorists who contended that the essence of the world struggle was the social conflict of Teuton and Slav. Britain, in siding against Germany, was branded as a traitor to the sacred cause of Teutonism.
The Russian Government unfortunately played into the hands of the minority in Finland. After the too brief period in which the countries seemed to be drawing together, the reactionaries at Petrograd succeeded in frightening the Government into a resumption of the policy of russianization, on the plea that Finland was disloyal and could only be held down by force. Up to this time, the disloyalists in Finland were a negligible quantity, but the natural result of this change of policy was to make many people in Finland say, “If this is what we get from Russia for showing our loyalty, have we not more to gain from a German victory f Indeed, the question suggests itself whether the change of policy may not have been the result of German intrigue.
A disloyal Finland would embarrass Russia, and the policy adopted and carried out by the Governor-General, himself of German origin, was exactly calculated to exploit any disloyalty there might be in the country. This, however, is matter for speculation. What is certain is that German agents were profuse in their promises to the Finns, if only these would revolt from Russia. With a fine inconsistency, German agents in Finland were promising to make Finland an independent republic, while others in Sweden were offering to restore the Grand Duchy to the Swedish Crown!
The net result of German intrigue and Russian mistakes was to cool the sympathy of the mass of the people for the Allies, and to make Finland, in feeling, a neutral country. It was common to hear the hope expressed that Britain and France might be victorious on the west, and Russia suffer defeat on the east.
No attempt will be made in these pages to lift the veil which has shrouded events in Finland during the greater part of the war. Nor is it profitable to attempt any detailed mapping-out of the future. In times of uncertainty, judgment must be based on, and action guided by, broad principle. Broadly speaking, the future of Finland depends on whether the rights of the smaller nations are or are not going to be respected. In the event of a victory for the Central Powers, those rights would be trampled under foot as ruthlessly as were the rights of Belgium. The only hope of the smaller nations rests in an Allied victory. But even in the event of an Allied victory, there are certain small nations which may be pardoned if they view the future with considerable anxiety. Of these the Finns are one.
The future of their country depends on what happens in Russia, on whether liberal or bureaucratic tendencies prevail there. The Finnish patriot inevitably asks himself, “Is there any prospect of Russia becoming more liberal as a result of the war?” Let us glance at the nature of the prospect.
Among the forces making for liberalism are these. The war is taking the Russian peasant out of his narrow village life and showing him his own country and other countries. His mind is expanding, he is asking questions he has never asked before. He is comparing the conditions of life in Russia with the conditions of life in other lands. It was men who had fought in the Napoleonic wars who sowed the seeds of liberalism which were to result in the emancipation of the Serfs fifty years later, and no less a revolution may result from the impregnating of the Russian mind to-day with ideas current in Western Europe. The close association of Russia with France and Britain strengthens the same tendency. The Russian may not be easily coerced, but he can easily be won if his heart and imagination are touched. It was a British Prime Minister who won Russian confidence by his gallant words at a critical time—“La Douma est morte. Vive la Douma!" A similar spirit in France and Britain may achieve similar results to-day. Russia has no desire to appear illiberal in the eyes of her Allies.
The war has advanced the cause of progress in other ways also. The prohibition of the sale of Vodka has been accompanied by a great increase of prosperity and of self-respect. The savings of peasants have increased by leaps and bounds, and therewith the feeling that they have a stake in the country. By cutting off supplies from the outer world, the war has given a tremendous stimulus to industry and to industrial organisation. This, as in other countries, is accompanied by a greater feeling of independence among the working classes. The political sense of the people has been developed by having to face great issues, and the power of organisation has been increased by the war-work which, in spite of the jealousy of the central government, has had to be entrusted to the Zemstvos. The army can no longer be officered exclusively by the aristocracy, and new men who have come to the front and tasted responsibility will not be denied their right to a share in the life of the nation after the war.
Last among the forces making for liberalism is the fact that Russia is fighting Germany. The conflict is not merely the external one that is being fought out on the plains of Central Europe—it is also an internal conflict, which is being fought out in Russia itself. This is easily realised by anyone who is able to estimate at their true value the many changes in the Government machine during the war, the many swingings of the pendulum towards and away from the Central Powers. It is not always realised how deeply Germany has set her seal on Russian life, nor how much the ordinary Russian resents it, and wishes to emancipate himself from it, nor how difficult it is for him to do so. Prussia and Russia have been linked by many ties. The two aristocracies spring largely from the same barren countryside on the fringe of the Baltic, and have been inspired by similar ideas. Since the partition of Poland, they have had a common interest in retaining the stolen property. The Kaiser has been a bitter foe of the Russian Duma, and has encouraged every attempt to suppress it, realising that the establishment of Constitutional Government in Russia would imperil his own position at Berlin. Russia has always resented these German influences which have strangled her own attempts at self-expansion, but she has never been able to throw them off. There can be no doubt that if, as a result of the war, she succeeds in doing so, a great obstacle to progress will have been removed.
The signs are propitious. Sickened by the intrigues of pro-Germans in high places, whose policy threatened to disgrace Russia and to drag her into a dishonourable and feeble peace, the people, with instincts nobler than their rulers, have in these days taken the matter into their own hands. What the outcome of the March revolution may be, whether it will be guided throughout by the wisdom which has marked its early stages, it is impossible to say. We welcome its dawn, and our hearts respond to this spontaneous outburst of a great nation's indignation and hope. We know equally well that the path to be travelled cannot be an easy one. Russia was not born for easy victories. The task of readjustment is a gigantic one. It may be decades before the great problems of home and of imperial reform are worked out to a conclusion.
Meanwhile, as regards that particular portion of the Russian Empire with which this book is concerned, it is clear that if the principles for which the Allies claim to be fighting are to be carried out, Finland must receive other treatment than she was receiving before the war. It by no means follows, however, as some Finns seem still to imagine, that the clock can be put back 20 years, and all be as in the days before the russianisation policy was ever started. The Finnish problem must be considered henceforward as part of the general Russian imperial problem. This problem, in its vastness and complexity, is comparable only to the imperial problem which will confront the British Empire at the close of the war, and cannot be discussed here.
It must suffice to say that the Finns will have to abandon the too rigid nationalism into which they drifted, partly through a little people's fear of absorption, and partly through Russian aggressiveness, and learn to think of themselves as part of a great whole. It would be folly to predict a golden path for Finland, and the period of readjustment cannot be viewed without anxiety. But the path of exclusiveness will not be the path of safety. That lies, rather in a closer understanding with the men who stand for progress in Russia, and who have over and over again had the courage to stand up for Finland in the past.
Reade, Arthur. Finland and the Finns. Dodd, Mead & Company, 1917.
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