The grip which Germany had taken on Finland was indicated when even so strong a reactionary as General Mannerheim, commander of the Finnish White Guards, resigned early in July, 1918, and left the country for Stockholm. Here he stated publicly that Finland had practically become a territory of the German Empire and would remain so unless expelled by force. He added that he was waiting for the opportune moment to rally the patriotic Finns against the Germans. Said Hugo Haase, leader of the German minority Socialists, in a speech in the Reichstag:
"The list of those sentenced to death in Finland contains the names of a former premier and fifty Socialists, members of Parliament, some of whom have already been shot. Owing to the number of daily executions in the town of Sveaborg that place has been renamed 'Golgotha.'"
The Finnish Constitutional Committee, by a vote of 16 against 15, has decided on a monarchial form of government, and the new constitution is being drafted accordingly.
CHAPTER LXV
ASSASSINATION OF THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR
The policy of Lenine, as has already been noted, was one of protesting acquiescence to German outrage and demands; he snarled and assumed indignation, but complied. But this attitude was not by any means participated in by all the radicals. Even Trotzky, it will be remembered, had resigned his post as foreign minister because he had been unable to agree with Lenine on this point.
It was among that ultraradical group, the Socialist Revolutionists, that bitterness against Germany glowed hottest, so hot that its members, though having much in sympathy with the Bolsheviki, split away from them on the peace policy. Kerensky himself had been of this school of politics. In the early days of the autocracy, before the war, it had been this group which had carried on those terrorist activities which had given the Russian Revolution so bad a name among the conservatives of all countries.
Again they resolved to resort to these methods. On July 6, 1918, General Count von Mirbach, the German ambassador to Moscow, was assassinated by members of the Socialist Revolutionist Party.
Among others of the prominent Socialist Revolutionary leaders who were said to have been seized for this crime were Tseretelli, Chernov, Skobelev, and Savinkov, all of whom had been members of the Kerensky Cabinet. On July 12, 1918, it was reported that Chernov was marching on Moscow at the head of an army of peasants.
Contrary to general belief in the Allied countries, Germany was inclined to hold the Lenine Government blameless of the murder of Count von Mirbach, for on July 10, 1918, the Berlin Government announced that it did not intend to hold the Soviet responsible. "The German Government and the nation," the dispatch added, "hope that the Russian Government and people will succeed in nipping the present revolutionary agitation in the bud." In a speech on July 11, 1918, Von Hertling, after having laid the blame to the intrigues of the Allies, said: