hat her people would swell the
tide of revolution. But that danger once passed, the old policy of
oppression was soon renewed, and was carried onward until in November
of 1909 the Finnish Parliament was dismissed by imperial command. All
through 1910 repressive laws were passed, reducing Finland step by step
to a mere Russian province, so that before the close of that year the
Finlanders themselves surrendered the struggle. One of their leaders
wrote, "So ends Finland."

We give here first the despairing cry written in 1903 by a well-known
Finn who fled to America. Then follows the official Russian statement
by the "Minister of the Interior," Von Plehve, who held control of
Finland in the early stages of the struggle, and was later slain by
Russian revolutionists. Then we give the very different Russian view
expressed by the great liberal Prime Minister, Baron Sergius Witte, who
rescued Russia from her domestic disaster after the Japanese War. The
story is then carried to its close by a well-known Finnish sympathizer.

JOHN JACKOL

"Russia is the rock against which the sigh for freedom breaks," said
Kossuth, the great statesman and patriot of Hungary. Although fifty
years have passed, and sigh after sigh has broken against it, the rock
still stands like a colossal monument of bygone ages. It is pointing
toward the northern star, as if to remind one of the all-enduring
fixity. Other stars may go round as they will; there is one fixed in
its place, and under that star the shadow of despotism hopes to endure
forever.

While yet in Finland I used to fancy Russia as a giant devil-fish,
whose arms extended from the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Black Sea
to the Arctic Ocean. Then I would think of my native land as a
beautiful mermaid, about whom the giant's cold, chilly arms were slowly
creeping, and I feared that some day those arms would crush her. That
day has come. The helpless mermaid lies prostrate in the clutch of the
octopus. Not that the constitution of Finland has been annulled, as has
been so often erroneously stated, and quite generally believed. The
Russian Government has made only a few inroads upon it. The great
grievance of the Finns is not with what has been absolutely done in
opposition to their ancient rights and privileges, nor in the number of
their rights which have in reality been curtailed, but with the fact
that they have henceforth no security. The real grievance of the Finns
is that the wel