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208
208 REVOLUTION
[chap. xxiv.
" Yes, I have often heard that the Swedish party in
Finland sought Germany’s support long before the
war."
" Not the Swedish party only, but far more the
Young-Finn party, even to its most extreme elements.
Finland would not even hear of a Swedish policy.
Salvation could only come from the German side. Some
time before the war an agreement was made between
Helsingfors and Berlin that on the day when the
Germans should occupy Esthonia, and when a German
military governor should instal himself at Reval, and it
becomes a German naval base—the Revolution should
break out: not before. This arrangement still holds
good. But in that case what would the fate of Esthonia
be between Finland where a German prince, son or
relation of William II.’s, would reign, and the Prussian
’ Statthalter’ installed at Reval ? "
" I understand your patriotic anxieties thoroughly.
But allow me to ask : who is preventing you—now that
the Revolution has swept away the old tendencies to
Russification amongst us, and professed the principle of
national autonomies—who is preventing you, I say,
from turning openly towards us, and from seeing the
future of your nationality in an open union, based on
wide autonomy, with Russia?"
" Be good enough to forgive my complete frankness
beforehand, Monsieur: in the first place I must confess
that we have no great confidence in your present regime,
and in the possibility of your issuing triumphant from
the struggle; then we always fear that even the new
Russian regime might easily become narrowly
nationalist again ; such things have occurred before in history ;
then finally and chiefly there is the question of the
future frontiers of Esthonia."
" But I thought that those were as perfectly traced
by nature as by history. The frontier between the
Russian nationality and the Esthonian nationality is
Lake Peipus (Pskoff) and the course of the river Narova
up to its mouth in the Gulf of Finland near Narva."
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