bear it, but when the new rules attacked the
time-honored social institutions and customs, indignation could no
longer be suppressed. For instance, the order to open private mail
caused a general protest. The postal director and his secretary refused
to sign the order and resigned. No less obnoxious was the order
forbidding public meetings and directing the governors of the different
provinces of Finland to appoint only such men to fill municipal rural
offices as will be subservient to the Governor-General. The governor of
the province of Ulrasborg resigned, while several other provinces were
already governed by pliant tools of General Bobrikoff.

The long-suppressed anxiety of the people has changed into a
heartrending sigh of anguish. These words of a national poet express
the general sentiment, "Better far than servitude a death upon the
gallows." A vicious circle has been established. The high-handed
measures cause indignation, and the Governor-General is determined to
suppress its expression. There is no safety in Finland for honest and
patriotic men. The judiciary has been made subservient to General
Bobrikoff. Latest advices are ominous. April 24, 1903, was a black day
in the history of Finland. It witnessed the inauguration of a reign of
terror which, by the ordinance of April 2d and the rescript of April
9th, General Bobrikoff had been authorized to establish.

Bobrikoff returned to Finland with authority, if necessary, to close
hotels, stores, and factories, to forbid general meetings, to dissolve
clubs and societies, and to banish without legal process any one whose
presence in the country he considered objectionable.

For 700 years Finns have been free men; now they have become Russian
serfs, and it is well to make closer connections between the Finnish
railway system and the trans-Siberian road. Finns are long-suffering
and patient, but who could endure all this?

While the expression of indignation is suppressed in Finland, outside
of the Grand Duchy, especially in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Russia's
relentless tyranny has made the highest officers of state as resentful
as the man in the street. Indeed entire Scandinavia is aflame with
indignation and apprehension. The leading journals are warning
Scandinavians "that the fate of Finland implies other tragedies of
similar character, unless Pan-Scandinavia becomes something more than a
political dream."

VON PLEHVE[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted by p