SKETCH MAP SHOWING FINLAND'S RELATION TO SWEDEN, NORWAY, AND RUSSIA
The notion of Finland's complete sovereignty forms the basis of the peace concluded early in March, 1918, between the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Finnish Socialist Workmen's Republic, "in order to strengthen the friendship and fraternity between the above-mentioned free republics." According to this pact, published on March 10, Russia hands over to the Independent Finnish Socialist Republic all its possessions in Finland, including real estate, telegraphs, railways, fortresses, lighthouses, and also Finnish ships which had been requisitioned by the Russian Government before or during the war. Article IX. provides for "free and unimpeded access for the merchant ships of the Russian and Finnish Socialist Republics to all seas, lakes and rivers, harbors, anchoring places, and channels" within their territories. The next article establishes uninterrupted communication, without trans-shipment, between the Russian and Finnish railways. Article XIII. contains the provision that "Finnish citizens in Russia as well as Russian citizens in Finland shall enjoy the same rights as the citizens of the respective countries."
GERMAN HAND IN FINLAND
If "Red" Finland has had the support of the Russian Bolsheviki, "White" Finland has found a most enterprising ally in Germany. The Vasa Government has been working in direct and now open contact with Berlin. It is overwhelmingly pro-German. The relation between the two Governments early assumed the character of vassalage on the part of the Finns. This is evidenced by the peace agreement which official Finland concluded with Germany on March 7. Its full text will be found elsewhere in this issue.
THE OLD CASTLE OF VIBORG, FINLAND, WHICH THE WHITE GUARDS USED AS A FORT
Since the beginning of the war the Germans have been conducting in Finland an active campaign of espionage and propaganda through a host of agents and sympathizers. The propaganda found a favorable soil among the propertied classes, and especially among the landed gentry of Swedish extraction. On the other hand, the persecutions which the Czar's bureaucracy inflicted upon the nation, and against which neither the French nor the British press uttered any adequate protest, drove some of the patriotic Finns into the arms of Russia's enemies. A number of Finnish youths escaped to Germany and entered the ranks of the German Army. The University of Helsingfors played a prominent part in this movement. In 1915 an entire battalion made up exclusively of Finns fought under the German colors, while no Finns served in the Russian Army, exemption from military service being one of the ancient Finnish privileges respected by the Imperial Russian Government.
After the March revolution, and especially after the fall of Riga, the efforts of the German agents, with whom Finland now fairly swarmed, were directed toward fomenting Finnish separatism. In fact, the Swedish press asserted that from the very beginning of the war the Germans had spent large sums of money in trying to fan the Finns' smoldering discontent with Russia. At the same time Germany endeavored to enlist the sympathies of the White Guards, (skudshär,) which the middle classes were hastily organizing, ostensibly for the purpose of assisting the militia and protecting the population from robbers. Berlin was so successful in its task that as early as October, 1917, the head of the Russian Bureau of Counterespionage in Finland spoke of the skudshär as "the vanguard of the German Army." The Finns who served in Wilhelm's army and were thoroughly indoctrinated with German military science and German ideals were returned to their native country, and it was they that took upon themselves to officer the White Guards. Some of the weapons and munitions used by the latter were secured from Sweden, but most of them came from Germany and were probably a part of the Russian booty. The above-mentioned Russian official declared, in an interview published in a Petrograd daily in October, 1917, that German submarines appeared regularly off the Finnish coast and delivered arms and ammunition to Finnish vessels.