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Mannerheim drove a hard bargain. The two principles that had caused him to quit the previous May were accepted by the group in power: 1) no rapprochement with Germany; 2) retention of a strong Finnish Army. Mannerheim went to London and Paris, dickered for recognition. When he returned to Helsinki, Regent Svinhufvud resigned, Prince Friedrich Karl renounced his right to the throne, and Mannerheim became Regent of Finland.
He might have become its first President after the Republic was established five months later, if he had not kept clamoring for war against the Bolsheviki and vengeance against the Reds still in prison. Finland was tired of war, sick of vengeance. On a platform of amnesty for the Reds, Professor K. J. Stahlberg was elected President by 143 Parliamentary votes to 50 for General Mannerheim. The hard-bitten soldier (he was 52 then) retired to Louhisaari, to be heard from often again.
As a private citizen he devoted himself with single-minded zeal to bulldozing his country into preparedness. He wrote four textbooks on defensive tactics, one for each season of the year. He hounded the Government into increasing each year the 12% of its budget it originally appropriated for the military. He organized the Civic Guard, 100,000 strong, as a permanent reserve force. In 1931 his old sidekick, Per Svinhufvud, then President, made him President of the Council of Defense. Two years later he became Finland's only Field Marshal. Mannerheim threatened to wash his hands of the whole business of defense unless the Government established conscription. It did.
Even before he became head of the Defense Council, he had spied out promising young officers in the Army, had them sent to France and Germany to study military science. Back in Finland, these men rose quickly to key positions, worked out in detail the tactics Mannerheim laid down. When the war began and he returned as Commander in Chief of all of Finland's armed forces, they knew what they had to do.
Three O's. No one man's triumph has been the brilliant defense put up by the Finns so far. Close to the Field Marshal in mapping strategy is Major General Karl Lennart Oesch, Chief of Staff of the Army and one of the bright young men Manner heim had sent to Germany for training.
Another is General Hugo Ostermann, Commander in Chief of the Army and the man credited with directing most of the quick thrusts and counter-thrusts that have so disorganized the Russians. He fought for Germany in World War I. And in charge of the Karelian Isthmus is General Harald Ohquist, who helped to design the series of positions that have come to be known as the Mannerheim Line. Finns say he knows every boulder on the isthmus. So well has he defended it against terrific frontal assaults that the Finns thought up a story about it. A Russian soldier knocks at the gates of Heaven and St. Peter opens the gates. "So you're dead now?" says St. Peter. "Oh, no," says the Russian. "According to the official communique, I'm still advancing on the Karelian Isthmus."