reaucracy, after the downfall of the revolutionaries, found itself once
more firmly seated in the saddle, it returned to the attack on the Finnish
Constitution, not indeed with the open and brutal methods of Bobrikoff, but
by gradual and insidious means no less effective. And it must be admitted
that the Russian Duma, as "reformed" by Stolypin, so far from being of
any help to Finland in the struggle, has been made the instrument of the
destruction of her liberties.

Finland is in a very unfortunate position. Geographically she is bound to
form part of the Russian Empire; even the extremest Russophobes in the
country have long ago given up hopes of re-union with Sweden; and yet the
frontier between Finland and Russia is one which divides two worlds, as all
who have made the journey from Helsingfors to Petrograd must have noticed.
In literature, art, education, politics, commerce, industry, and social
reform Finland is as much alive as any of the Scandinavian States from
whom she first derived her culture. In many ways indeed she is the most
progressive country in Europe, and it is her proud boast that she is
"Framtidsland," the land of the future. Lutheran in religion, non-Slavonic
in race, without army, court, or aristocracy, and consequently without
the traditions which these institutions carry with them, she presents the
greatest imaginable contrast to the Empire with which she is irrevocably
linked. Finland is Western of the Westerns, and keenly conscious of the
fact just because of this irrevocable link; Russia is--Russia! And yet, as
part of the Russian system, she must come to terms sooner or later with the
Empire; she cannot receive the protection of the Russian military forces, a
protection to the value of which, if reports be true, she is at the present
moment very much alive, and yet retain her claims to be what is virtually
an independent State. That these claims have been pitched on a high note
is no doubt largely the fault of the blundering and cruel policy of the
Russian bureaucracy. But it must be admitted that Finland has never tried
in the very least to understand her mighty neighbour; she has always sat,
as it were, with her back to Russia, looking westwards, and her statesmen
have not even taken the trouble to learn the Russian language. There has,
in fact, been something a little "priggish" in her superior attitude, in
her perpetually drawn comparison between Russian "barbarism" and Finnish
"culture."