The morning following my arrival, I wired
an angry protest to the British Minister at
Helsingfors, and sent similar messages to the
Finnish Foreign Minister and my Finnish
Socialist comrades. In addition, I tried to
wire to Lloyd George and the Daily Herald,
but these telegrams were not despatched.
To say I was alarmed is only to say the bare truth. I was expecting to get the very diseases from which the authorities were pretending to protect me and others. In addition, every time I moved, an armed soldier—a mere youth— accompanied me. And as I know how thoroughly hated I was by reactionary Finns and White Russians, I expected every day to be shot or otherwise put away by accident.
To people who travel in Scandinavia, vapour or steam baths are taken as a matter of course. I was ordered to take one in a sort of stable house about ten minutes’ walk from the hut in which I was detained. For some days my throat had been giving me trouble, so I jibbed at a vapour bath with a ten minutes’ walk to follow. Two fully armed soldiers, a nurse, and a matron appeared and tried to coerce me, but obstinacy won, and for a day or two I was left alone.
On the third day a delegation from Helsingfors appeared representing the British Army, the British Consul and the Red Cross. After a wrangle, I was removed to what is
