ABOUT FINLAND

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 150, 14 March 1918, Page 10

ABOUT FINLAND

THE MOST NON-RUSSIAN OF THE RUSSIANS ( AN INTERESTING PEOPLE Finland is, with one or two except ions, the muse nou-iuiwian vail- w liiissiu. Geograpnicaliy it belongs 10 the Scandinavian peninsula, being cut otf from ltussia proper by a chain of lakes which tonus one nuge treneii lronv.tiiu Baltic to the White >S«a. It has an area of s-quare miles; and is therefore about thu size ol Montana, or twothirds the sizo of France. Tlie Finns, who form nine-tenths of the population of the duohy, took possession when they were still barbarous nomads, si tnousnnd years or more ,ago. Racially, they are aliens in Europe, being akin to the yellowpeoples of Asia, the Mongols and the Turks; although.the relationship is now remote, and tne traveller will pnd few evidences of it-. In tho twelfth century they weru Christianised from Sweden, and at ttio tame time they were brought under Swedish political control; tor, liko many good people before and since, the Swedes went forth with Bible in one hand end sword in the other. None the Jess, the Swedes uxtended to the backward Finns their superior civilisation, gave them laws, improved their crude agriculture, and introduced among them various practical arts. In the sixteenth century the country was raised to the dignity of a grand duchy, and at the opening of the seventeenth Gustavus Adolphue gave it a Diet, composed of the four orders of the nobility, clergy, burghurs and peasants. Meanwhile Bussia's expansion northward brought her to the Finnish borders, and as early as the fourteenth century the unhappy territory began to suffer .the common fate of 'buffer' states by being made a cockpit of international war. Peter the Great conquered the entire laud, although by the peace of Nystad (1721) only the easternmost province, that of Viborg, was annexed. ■ Repeated efforts of Sweden to"' regain this province failed, however, and finally, in 1809, Alexander 1 brought all the Finnish territories under the Muscovite yoke. Far from treating the. new lands as a conquered province, the liberal-minded Tsar confirmed to them all tho laws, right3-and privileges that they had enjoyed under Swedish rule. This meant that Finland continued to .be a partially independent State, with its own laws, ' its own army, its ' own currency, its own postal system. Tho Tsar, as a. grand diike, was represented in the country by a. governor-general; the Diet served, as before, the purposes of a. national Parliament.

'For eighty years the system worked smoothly and Finland prospered. Then, in the reign of Alexander 111, the PanSlavist bureaucracy got the upper hand at Petrograd, and Finnish liberties began to be curtailed. First, Russiaa was made tho language of official correspondence. Then the local JPress was gagged. An imperial manifesto of 1899 cancelled the powers qf the Diet and virtually abrogated the constitution. A new military law of 1901 practically amalgamated the Finnish armed forces with tho Russian. Finally, in 1903, the Russian Governor was invested with powere closely resembling those of a dictator. The "country was flooded with spies; newspapers were and books confiscated; schools were closed; v arbitrary arrests and banishments became doily occurrences;, no means of Russifica'tion was left untried.' >

•'The oppressed people protested with all but without avail, until the Russian reverses in the war with Japan, lent fresh force to their arguments'. Then a great popular strike drove the Tsar's Government in six days to aban, don its autocratic policy. OuYvovember i, 1905, a decree was issued annulling the whole series of despotic measures and making Finland once more a free country, with a responsible ' Government of*its own.

■In the. following year the Finns themselves followed with a revision of their constitution, substituting for the antiquated four-chambered Diet a con : solidated Parliament, giving tho franchise to women as well ns men at the age of twenty-four, and establishing a , system of proportional representation. The first Parliament of the new regime contained nineteen women.

■Troublous times set in again for Finland in 1908. when, at the instigation of the Pan-SlavJsts, the Tsar began to insist that all Finnish questions affecting: the empire should he decided by the Ministry at Petrograd. Thenceforth until the outbreak of the war in 1914. the tension was severe, and at times the Finnish constitutional system was in imminent danger of overthrow. Finland has, therefore, no love for Russia. Her ties with that country have been wholly artificial. Her three million people include hardly a person of Russian stock, except here and there a public officer. Aside from a quarter of a million Swedes, who form the nobility and ■upper bourgeoisie, the population is purely Finnish. The country is small and poor, hut its people ire thrifty, spirited, and progressive. They are the last folk in the world to shrink from tho responsibilities and dangers of separate nationality.