set to work putting her house in order by substituting for her old mediaeval constitution a brand new one, based on universal suffrage, male and female, and employing such up-to-date devices as proportional representation.  The only result of seven years’ “Russification” was the creation of a united democracy, with a strong socialistic leaven, in place of a nation governed by an antiquated aristocratic Diet, and divided into two hostile political camps on the question whether Swedish or Finnish should be the language of the national culture.  But the fortunes of Finland were accidentally but inextricably bound up with those of the party of reform in Russia, and when the bureaucracy, 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.”  Though her capital, Helsingfors, is but twelve hours by rail from Petrograd, Finland knows as little of the interior of Russia as people do in England.