Chapter XXVIII: The United States in Asia 316 (1)

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

Siberian Types--When They Smile Less and Think More
They Will Find Freedom _Frontispiece_

The American Army Mules Arrive in Vladivostok for Duty 24

Street Service in Vladivostok with Bay in Distance 24

An American Doughboy Helping Make Siberia “Safe for Democracy” 48

Night View of Vladivostok Harbor from Hill of City 48

Russian Soldiers Clearing the Track After a Wreck on the
Trans-Siberian 100

Japanese Officers Talking with an American Officer 100

Ataman Semenoff, Chief of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks 158

Mongol and Tartar Descendants of Conquering Hordes with 1919
Model “Cars” 158

Siberians Celebrating the Signing of the Armistice 200

Room in House at Ekaterinburg where Czar and His Family are
Reputed to Have Been Executed 200

An Example of Carving on a Typical Siberian House 230

Typical Russian Church in Cities of Siberia 230

Some American Railroad Men of the “Russian Railway Service” 250

Washing Clothes in Sixty-below-zero Weather 250

SIBERIA TO-DAY

I

EXILED TO SIBERIA

“Let me see your palm!”

A smiling major thus accosted me in the offices of the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff of the army in Washington the latter part of July, 1918.

The weather was hot as Billy-be Hanged--hotter than I had ever known it in the Philippines, or so it seemed. It was hotter than the roadstead of Singapore, hotter than the mud-baked streets of Suez City, hotter than Malacca Strait.

In former times of tropical soldiering, I had seen commanding generals working in their undershirts. But a new discipline pervaded our new army, and we were imitating the Prussian system, and doing our best to look and work as secretly as possible in uniform coats with high stiff collars. We realized that the more uncomfortable we might feel, the quicker the war would be won in France.

I gave my limp and perspiring hand to the smiling major. I suspected that his pleasantry meant that I had been selected to pay for the dinner that night of our own particular little group of plotters against the Imperial German Government and its agents in the United States.

“You are going to take a long journey,” said the major, as he examined the corns on my fingers, which were the result of soldiering with a pencil. For having been a cavalryman, the powers that be in Washington had given me a flat-top desk covered with a blue sheet of blotting paper, and a swivel chair as a buffer for my spurs. What I wanted to do was to cross sabers with the Death Head Hussars, and maybe get a thrust at the Crown Prince himself. But when I looked at that blue blotter every morning, I realized what a terrible war it was, after all--for old cavalrymen.

My smiling major sobered suddenly.

“You are going to take a long journey,” he said.

I caught a serious glint in his eyes, and holding my breath for an instant before I dared speak, I asked as casually as I could: “Will it be a sea trip?”

Another serious examination of the lines in my palm.

“Yes.”

“Do you,” I asked, “see in the delicate hand you hold any indication that I am to be thrown among rude and rough soldiers, where a man may swear with a gentle forbearance without being overheard by a stenographer who chews gum?”

“I do,” said the amateur seer, more serious than ever.

“Glory be!” I breathed. “I have been in your beautiful city just eight days, and the chef at the hotel cooks well, but he does not know how to growl, not being an army cook. Also, this blue blotter is making me color blind. Have I been ordered to where bombs are bursting in air?”

“You have. There are a lot of bums in the direction you are going. Plans have been made to establish a new front against Germany in Russia. I suggest that you make your will and go out and buy some fur mittens. Your orders are to report to Vladivostok, for duty in Siberia.”

I sat down and turned the electric fan in such a way that I got its full effect in my face, and tried to shiver. Siberia! How many times had that word been heard with feelings of terror by Russians doomed to exile! Fancy my impressions in mid-summer in Washington, on being told that I was going to Siberia! Cold, ice, snow, steppes, wolves, whiskers, prisons, Cossacks, wild horses, ski’s and ovitches! All these things passed in review before my mind’s eye against a background of heat waves rising out of F Street, where the coolest thing in sight was a traffic policeman near the Treasury Building, standing on melting asphalt under a white umbrella which displayed an advertisement of a nearby soda fountain.

I reached for my blue desk-blotter, tore it in bits, and hurled the pieces into the waste basket.

The smiling major wandered away to the nether regions, where they wrote orders which sent American soldiers into exile in Siberia, as calmly as they wrote orders which insisted that all officers keep their blouses buttoned to their chins in tropical Washington.

II

THE SECRET “GETAWAY”

Crossing the continent in our special car, we began to study Russian, to scan maps of the Russian Empire, to talk of strategy, and to go on learning how to be as secret as possible. This last was accomplished by crowding fifteen officers into one of the drawing-rooms, and holding in this sweat box, what the young officer who had taken upon his shoulders the weight of the Russian campaign, called “conferences.” These conferences did no particular harm, and so far as I could see, no particular good, unless it was to make us yearn for cold weather and more congenial surroundings for our corns.

I am going to call this young officer Smith, not because I have any animosity toward the well-known Smith family, but because it is handy. We also called him “the oldest living boy scout in the world.” And he provided much amusement for us, as he pinned the big map of the expansive Russian Empire on the wall of the drawing-room, and discussed the railroad tunnels around Lake Baikal, and showed us how we could get round the flank of the Bolshevist army at Samara.

We were all aware of the fact that General Graves was going to have a lot of labor taken off his mind (real, hard-thinking labor), and as Smith spoke of thousands of versts as readily as if his mother had kept a boarding house for versts, we realized that before long we would have plenty of elbow room. (Incidentally, Smith never left Vladivostok, and his wide study of Russian geography was of no use to him except for conversational purposes.)

We began to suspect that this intense interest in the campaign, before we reached Siberia, was, in addition to being help for the Chief of Staff of the Siberian Expedition, making a decided impression on the son of General Graves, a young major who had seen and done good fighting in France and wore the Croix de Guerre, and now was being sent to Siberia. He attended one conference in that hot drawing-room, and then, undoubtedly feeling that we were safe in the hands of Smith, spent the remainder of his free time in the observation car, which indicated to us all that he was gifted with an extraordinary amount of good sense.

Smith on his own responsibility organized a little general staff, and with a typewriter, wrote orders about various trifles, covering what the officers and field clerks should do in Chicago, and what they should not do, assigning an officer to the duty of looking after baggage with the serious mien suitable to ordering a battalion to go over the top at zero hour, setting forth with maddening exactitude the minute at which the field clerks would go to the depot quartermasters in Chicago to buy uniform caps.

Before reaching San Francisco, Smith wired for the Intelligence Officer in San Francisco to arrange for a hotel, for taxicabs to take us to the hotel, circulated “memoranda” among us as to whether or not we were willing to pay for the taxis he had ordered, and asking us with paternal care, to signify the officers with whom we intended to share rooms. Some wag suggested discreetly that we should arrange by wire for a supply of lollypops, and that we each specify the color desired. Smith turned a baleful eye in the direction of the wag.

We found that General Graves had sailed ahead of our arrival. He evidently had not been aware of the value of Smith’s counsel. We faced a wait of three weeks for the transport. We went to our rooms in the Fairmont, and in the morning Smith marched us down to the paymaster’s and handed us out blanks and set up a table in the corridor of headquarters of the Western Division, from which he superintended the signing of our names to our vouchers. Back at the hotel again, he got the office of the depot quartermaster on the telephone, and for three weeks he worried the life out of a patient major. (This major sailed with us, but for some reason or other, was assigned to the transport _Logan_, while we were assigned to the _Sheridan_. Likewise by some peculiar whim of Fate, Major Graves also sailed in the _Logan_, though he confided to some of us that he was sorry not to be with us.)

Smith resumed his conferences. His field clerk would call all our rooms on the telephone and summon us to secret meetings in Smith’s room. The bellboys were much impressed by these gatherings. They knew we were Intelligence Officers, and they felt we were up to something which was dark and mysterious. If they had listened at our locked door they might have heard Smith advising us to get smoked goggles, or asking us for the sizes of our shoes, and whether we preferred our canvas Alaskan coats lined with yellow or blue felt.

In spite of the burden of these details, Smith managed to find a professor in a nearby college who had lived in Japan several years and talked Japanese fluently. Smith felt that this man would be of value to the expedition, as we were to serve with General Otani’s Japanese divisions.

But the professor had his family in Berkeley, his position in the college, and was also serving in an advisory capacity for the local Board of Trade in Japanese commercial matters. He could not afford to leave home unless assured a good salary.

Smith, we understood, had said that if the professor would go, he would be given the rank of major, and instead of being classed as an interpreter, would have the title of “advisor” or something of that sort, to the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia.

But in the short time before our departure, Smith asked Washington to authorize the engaging of the professor as a field clerk, when Smith had brought the urgency of the matter to the attention of a public-spirited citizen of San Francisco, who put to the professor’s credit in a local bank some two thousand dollars to insure him an adequate income in addition to the pay as field clerk. So the professor went with us.

As the sailing date approached, and we had finished buying clothing and equipment suitable for a polar expedition, Smith became more secretive than ever. The night of the first of September he called a last conference, in which he issued envelopes containing tags for our heavy baggage.

“Gentlemen,” he announced, looking at us over his glasses in his room, strewn with Red Cross gifts for us, “the name of our transport is the _Sheridan_. In these envelopes are the tags, with the name of the ship. The envelopes serve to conceal the name of the transport, and will not be removed from the tags till the baggage is inside the enclosure of the transport dock. You will not disclose to any person the name of the transport. And I have ordered taxicabs to be at the hotel at nine in the morning. All officers will appear on the hotel veranda at that hour, with their hand baggage, and ready to get into the taxicabs. The drivers have been told that they are to take us to the ferry building, but at the last minute I will tell them that we are to go to the transport dock. I have assigned the officers in pairs to each cab, and as I call the number of the cab, the officers assigned to it, will enter it, and then wait for the order to move out. Is that satisfactory?”

Trying to keep our faces straight, we decided we were suited. Then the wag in the party asked if we were to keep secret from the hotel management the fact that we were departing.

“Most certainly,” said Smith, swallowing bait, line and sinker.

“Then I suggest,” said the wag, “that we do not pay our hotel bills. That would be the proper procedure, to keep it all dark and secret.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Smith. “Of course we will pay our bills in the morning at the last minute.”

“I think,” said the wag, “that after all, the clerk looks like a loyal American citizen, and can be trusted. And as the _Sheridan_ is at the dock, in plain sight of the hotel and such of San Francisco as cares to go and look at it, we will have to take the chance that the day after it sails, it will not be missed--or folks will think it has gone up to Mare Island Navy Yard to be painted or something. That, however, is one of the hazards of war--we must risk the deductions of the local amateur sleuths and spies of the Kaiser.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Smith, and handed him the sealed envelopes for baggage, with the tag-string sticking out a slit in the end.

In the morning the porter took out my bedding-roll and lockers, and moved my grip to the hotel veranda. He looked at the envelopes, seeking the destination of the baggage, but I coldly informed him that an army truck would take them from the baggage entrance of the hotel, and he need not worry. He felt relieved.

I went to the desk and asked for my bill. A prosperous citizen asked the clerk when the next trans-Pacific ship sailed.

“I’m not sure,” said the clerk. “There is some ship sailing to-day, because there are a lot of officers here going to Siberia. That’s their baggage out on the porch. But probably they are going in the transport _Sheridan_ or _Logan_--I understand they sail to-day.”

The clerk did not know it, but I felt like shooting him. At least something should be done about it. We had done our best to be secret, and here he was telling a perfect stranger with a diamond in his tie and wearing most suspicious spats, the fact that this was the regular sailing date for transports from San Francisco, and that we were going to Siberia. But I paid my bill, and gave a bellboy a quarter just to show there were no hard feelings.

Outside on the veranda I found the officers standing about with their luggage, the center of an interested group of civilians, and drawn up in a semi-circle, a fleet of taxis. Smith was nervously waiting my coming. Immediately he began calling out numbers, and taxis turned in and stopped, and by pairs, the officers took their places in the vehicles.

Smith then went to the leading driver, and whispered something to him, got into the leading cab, and shut the door.

“Follow me to the transport dock, fellers,” bawled the leading driver to the others, and secretly, a dozen taxis with officers and field clerks, wheeled out in column. We hoped that the civilians we passed in California Street and Van Ness Avenue toward Fort Mason, en route to the transport dock, would not notice us.

The transports _Dix_, _Sheridan_ and _Logan_ were at the piers, the latter with naval guns mounted forward, the _Sheridan_ with field-pieces lashed on the forecastle-head, and machine-guns on the after bridge. Blue Peters, the signal-flags which announce that a vessel sails that day, hung limply from the fore-trucks of the _Sheridan_ and _Logan_. The troops to go with us marched in from nearby military posts all day, and swarms of relatives, friends and sightseers, gathered on the hills near Fort Mason to watch the transports.

It was all a matter of regular routine to the dock-workers. The Pacific transports had been sailing on their regular schedule to the Philippines, Honolulu and Guam during the war, and looked no different in their gray paint than they had in the old days of the Philippine campaigns, except that the red, white and blue bands were missing from their funnels.

Smith cautioned us not to leave the dock, and not to send any messages outside, such as telegrams or letters. All day our little party stood round in the sheds and waited, except when they went to the dock-workers’ mess nearby for lunch. I had occasion to go aboard the _Sheridan_, and finding the room to which I had been assigned, put a deck-chair by the door, on the side away from the dock, and spent the afternoon reading, while Smith kept the others herded together on the dock.

On five o’clock in the evening of September 2, 1918, the _Sheridan_ cast off her lines and we pulled out into the bay, to anchor, with the _Logan_. At eight o’clock, under cover of darkness, the _Sheridan_ got under way and began moving toward the Golden Gate. I made out the _Logan_ astern, without side-lights, but a single light at her mast-head to mark her position.

We moved out at low speed secretly. As we came abreast of Fort Scott, we made out red and white lights ahead, drawing in toward our bows. We had been careful to burn no lights in our cabins, and refrained from smoking on deck. We were willing to do everything to prevent being torpedoed, and we realized that if we were to sneak away in the night, we must take every precaution against being discovered. This was war, you know.

The lights we had seen approaching drew nearer, until they were close under our port bow. Somebody said it was a destroyer which was to convoy us. We now heard the propeller of the strange craft threshing the water as she stopped her way, and then a raucous voice bawled at us: “What ship is that?”

Silence from our bridge.

Once more, in tones that could be heard from Lime Point to City Hall, came the challenge out of the dark: “What ship is that?” And the swaying red light below took on a baleful gleam.

“We’ll have to answer the blasted fool,” somebody growled on the bridge, and a cross voice replied: “The _Sheridan_.”

“What?”

“The transport _Sheridan_,” came an exasperated bawl from our bridge.

“All right. Proceed to sea,” was the answer, and once more the propellers threshed and passed astern, seeking out the _Logan_. We now knew the boat to be a harbor patrol, guarding the entrance to the bay. We appreciated its protection, and extreme care for two transports trying to get away from San Francisco filled with troops. We wondered if that happened to be the way the Germans sneaked out of their ports.

Presently we heard the _Logan_ challenged, as we had been, and the reply from her bridge.

There were still more thrilling things in store for us. We saw the beam of a searchlight from Fort Scott playing across the Golden Gate. We expected that when we came within its range, it would lift and let us pass. Instead, its beam was turned full upon us, and stayed on us, lighting up the whole vessel till it looked like a floating hotel drifting out to sea. It must have been a wonderful sight from the hills of San Francisco. We went into the smoking-room, where the steward had hung bath towels over the ports to conceal all lights, and lit cigarettes with due precautions against showing the flash of the match. We had to go somewhere to get out of the glare of that searchlight.

Soon we felt the heave of the Pacific under us, the engines settled down to their work to twist behind the miles between us and Vladivostok, and we were off to the war, feeling as if we had stolen somebody’s chickens. We had gotten away about as secretly as a three-ring circus.

III

JAPAN TO VLADIVOSTOK

Our transports put in at Hakodate for coal. From San Francisco, something had been wrong with the _Logan’s_ engines. What it was, she would neither tell by wireless, nor signal by wig-wag. We heard everything from a story that German spies had tangled fish-nets in her propeller, to a yarn that bearings for her engines had been forgotten on the dock. But the result was, that the _Logan_, which had been armed especially to protect us, lolled behind, at times dropping below the horizon, and we slopped around in the Pacific with steerage way, waiting for her to catch up. This continued day after day, and we burned deeply into our coal supply.

For some reason, we could not get enough coal in Hakodate, and after a couple of days, pulled out for Otaru, Japan, where we stopped another two days, and went ashore again. When we had exhausted the sights of the small city, some of us went on to Sapporo by train, and saw that provincial capital.

While we were ashore, a typhoon came up, and the _Logan_ dragged her anchors, and came near to piling up on the breakwater. Several Japanese coaling the transports from barges, were drowned.

On our return from Sapporo we found the roofs of Otaru rather dislocated, a high wind still blowing, and no chance to get back to ship that night. So some of us slept in the native hotel of the town, and enjoyed the novelty of sitting on the floor for a Japanese breakfast, while cross crows in a garden cawed at us and the gold fish swam in the pretty pool of the court. The rickshawmen gleaned fortunes from nearly a thousand soldiers on holiday with plenty of money to spend.

That morning was rainy, and the streets were deep with mud. Coming down to pay my hotel bill, I found a tall, lanky Kentuckian in an argument with the proprietor, who, of course, spoke no English. The lieutenant in command of the military police, a man who spoke several languages, was doing his best to straighten out the difficulty, while the Kentuckian, in his gray woolen socks, held up a pair of muddy shoes which he regarded with contempt, the while displaying a marvellously wicked vocabulary.

I lingered to see what it was all about. The Kentuckian modified his language in my presence, which I rather deplored, for it was chilly in that entrance and his remarks raised the temperature. On entering a Japanese house or hotel, one must remove shoes and put on slippers. Some fifteen or twenty shore-bound soldiers had remained at the hotel. When they came down in the morning, they found their heavy marching shoes stiff from the mud of the previous day, and shrunken. The result was that the first applicants for shoes in the morning preferred the larger sizes, and took such as fit them, regardless of who happened to own them.

The Kentuckian appeared to be the last one down, and all that was left for him in the way of footwear was one pair of wet shoes, size six. When I came to look at his feet, I understood his predicament--he wore at least size eleven. I got into a corner and had a discreet laugh. For years before I had been in Japan with troops when I was not a captain, and had some appreciation of the pranks of the enlisted men.

“What you ought to do,” I said, keeping as straight a face as possible, “is to get a pair of Japanese _geta_, and walk to the ship in them--they will keep you out of the mud.”

He looked at the wooden footwear I pointed out, with cleats under the soles four inches high, and snorted, feeling that he could take liberties with an officer who seemed so neighborly.

“I ain’t hankerin’ none to walk on them damned stilts, capting,” he said, and I gave up all ideas of having any amusement from seeing him navigate through the mud with his big toes thrust through the straps of the wooden sandals. Secretly, I hoped he would attempt it, and lose the sandals in the mud.

“Then take a rickshaw,” I suggested. “If you’re out of money, I’ll pay for it.”

“Couldn’t git me to ride in none of them baby carriages,” he said, and holding out the pair of infantile shoes to the Japanese proprietor, demanded wrathfully that his own shoes be produced.

“No got, no got,” wailed a clerk, distractedly. The lieutenant of military police once more plunged into a discourse that sounded as if it might be Japanese. The audience listened respectfully, but disclaimed all responsibility for what the soldiers had done. They had not been able to prevent the other soldiers from taking the shoes that had been selected from the collection that morning.

The Kentuckian disgustedly threw the shoes into a corner and started out. I hailed him and suggested that he take the shoes with him and exchange them aboard the transport. He assented doubtfully, and to the amusement of the Japanese population, they saw a tall American soldier walking down the muddy streets in his stockinged feet, carrying his shoes in his hands, and making an oration. They were sure the American was mad--Americans have such queer ways!

From Otaru we sailed for Vladivostok, crossing the Sea of Japan. It was foggy weather, and we proceeded leisurely. The _Brooklyn_, lying in Vladivostok harbor, got us by wireless, and the military staff demanded information as to why we were so slow. They seemed in great pother and we felt that we must be desperately needed.

This call for speed puzzled us, for the wireless flashed news to us that the Bolshevist front had been pushed back, and was now five thousand miles from the coast--at the Volga River. This news was disappointing for an expedition which was properly keyed up for immediate action, and was dreaming of landing under shell-fire or some other dramatic phase of real war. And the medal-hounds cursed their luck!

Our first sight of Vladivostok as we sailed up through the Golden Horn, was of a peaceful city nestling among craggy hills, but bloated beyond its natural size by acres of sheeted piles of war-stores. This great fringe of covered stores resembled mushrooms which had come up in the night around the city.

Bluejackets aboard the _Brooklyn_ hailed us with loving derision as the _Sheridan_ felt her way to the dock; they joked us about our machine-guns lashed to our after-bridge, and suggested that we check our shooting-irons “at the door” in order to avoid trouble.

Our impressions of the people we saw on the docks were favorable. Friendly-looking Russians in boots and whiskers, right out of our old school geographies, and wearing the same belted blouses we had seen in melodramas about exiles to Siberia, gathered to watch us disembark. And Cossacks in sheepskin caps as big as garbage cans, smiled at us good-naturedly.

Immediately the gang-plank was down, one of the commanding general’s aides hustled aboard, and we were sure that now the fateful news was to be told us--we must prepare for action immediately, probably get ready to go those five thousand versts to the Volga River to which the “front” had backed up. He proved to be a merry chap, with a Harvard accent, a fine sense of humor, and a swagger stick.

“Where have you been all this time?” he demanded, as he shook hands with Major Samuel I. Johnson, of Hawaii, born in Russia, the officer commanding troops aboard the transports. We crowded around, expecting to hear a history-making remark, once our delay was explained.

Major Johnson suggested that perhaps the delay might be better explained when the _Logan_ docked. “What’s up?” he asked, keen for the reason of the fretting of headquarters.

“Nothing’s up,” laughed the aide. “But we’re all gasping for our mail. We thought you’d never get here.”

“Any fighting?” asked a particularly war-like officer.

The aide laughed merrily and then informed us of the Intelligence Division that the busiest time we would have each day would be when we made our morning toilet. Smith, self-appointed assistant to the General Staff, almost collapsed at this news.

“What’s the price of ham and eggs?” shouted a practical-minded doughboy from a porthole to a soldier on the dock.

“How long will it take us to get into the fighting?” persisted one of our belligerent officers.

“What’s the words for ‘How much’ in this Rooshan language?” called a serious-minded machine-gun corporal to a sergeant ashore.

“‘Skulky stoy,’” replied the sergeant, and then betraying his disgust and disillusionment, added: “Aw, you won’t see no war here--only thing you’ll fight is the grub. Them skirmishes up at Nikolsk is all over. The Bolsheviki are clear to the Ekaterinburg front, and still runnin’. And the only kind of fool money they got here is postage stamps with pictures on ’em of the Rooshan Cee-zar.”

“I thought the Rooshans was off that feller for life,” said the corporal.

“Don’t you think that because they put the crusher on him, they don’t want him. They don’t know their elbers from breakfast without a boss. How you expect anybody who says ‘da-da-da’ for ‘yes’ to have any sense?”

Who says an army is not supposed to think? Our army does--our doughboys in Siberia could have given pointers to statesmen at home. It is a good thing to bear in mind.

Somebody asked where we were to be quartered, and we learned that we had better remain aboard the transport till quarters could be arranged. Of course, the officers with troops went to the nearby stations with their commands, some being sent to the Suchan Mines, some to Khabarovsk, where were the headquarters of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, and others distributed to units stationed along the railroad. But fifteen officers and fifteen field clerks of the Intelligence Division had no more homes than so many jack-rabbits.

The Chief Intelligence Officer came down to the transport and interviewed us, and gave us a chance to size him up. He had been in the country several months, had seen much of the fighting of the Cossack chiefs against the Bolshevists up the line of the railroad, and had a good grasp of the situation. But under our policy of “non-interference,” there was little use for grasping anything--the chief job was to keep hands off all Siberian affairs.

That afternoon I rode up to headquarters, passing through the muddy streets swarming with pigs, till the Svetlanskaya, Vladivostok’s main street, was reached. Then our automobile whizzed up hill and down dale over this Broadway of Asia, passing soldiers of many nations en route--French, Czechs, Russians, little black Annammites from the French possessions, Italians, Canadians, British, Japanese, Cossacks from the Don, the Urals, the Ussuri, the trans-Baikal, and bluejackets from Japanese, French, British and American warships in the bay.

The city of Vladivostok itself presented a spectacle that would have brought joy to anybody who yearned for a job as a professional philanthropist. For “The Mistress of the East” had jumped her population from the normal, which was forty thousand, to about one hundred and eighty thousand. Refugee barracks on the edge of the city were filled with people from the interior. Trains came jammed to the last shelf against the ceiling, and poured battalions of travellers into the Trans-Siberian station, where they settled down to sleep in the corridors regardless of the throngs marching over them. They looked like rag-bags come to life--these hungry, dirty, tattered people from the hinterland, a human caravan in a panic. They smelled like a circus menagerie.

Among them were many typhus victims. Beside these sick camped the well--with little complaint--and set up housekeeping on any available floor space. Some who had perhaps an aristocratic taste for privacy, or who found the air of the waiting-room a trifle spicy, filtered out to other habitations. There were, of course, no vacant rooms at the hotels or elsewhere.

Money could not always buy shelter and rarely seclusion, since the average sleeping chamber accommodated all the way from five to a dozen persons. Even billiard tables commanded a good price as places of repose. And shows lasted till dawn, so that people who slept in the daytime could be amused while sitting up all night. Thus, when one-half of the population got up in the morning, it met the other half going to bed.

Judging by conditions in Vladivostok, it was obvious that a terrible state of affairs existed in the hinterland. The refugees, clamoring for food, said so. Statistics of food-prices, gleaned from the refugees as well as from the inland press, proved a state of famine.

The Svetlanskaya is along a bench of the hills over the city, and affords a fine view of the harbor. Our headquarters were in a store-building close to the bay, across from the department store of Kunst and Albers, the chief mercantile organization of Siberia, with chain stores in the principal cities. The building our _stab_, or staff, occupied, was a brick structure of two stories and basement, and resembled a library building. It had been used as offices and store-rooms by Kunst and Albers.

When I reported, I was told that I could register at the base, from which I had come. Back at the base they told me to register at headquarters, so I never did register, but went back aboard the transport.

That night I received orders to proceed to all stations, under verbal orders of the commanding general, and in connection with certain intelligence work, to call the attention of the troops to the Third Liberty Loan. A Russian-speaking orderly from our own army, with an unpronounceable name, was assigned to me. I called him Brown. I was told that I must have my baggage aboard a troop-train leaving the base at eight o’clock that night for Khabarovsk, but that I could board the train at ten o’clock at the city station of the trans-Siberian.

Having no quarters, I put all my possessions, consisting of bedding-roll and two lockers, into a box-car of the train with the aid of field clerks and German war-prisoners. We got it out of the transport and aboard the train at the last minute--or what I thought was the last minute. I was later to learn that there is no necessity for hurry in Siberia.

But the train did not come out of the yards to the depot. Not that anything was wrong; it was simply that the engine failed to appear. All through the frozen night, a couple of locomotives wheezed up and down and whistled signals. Russian railroad men blew horns interminably, and there was every evidence of laudable activity. The American major who was to have charge of the train delivered a line of profanity with all the fervor and efficiency of the old regular army. But the Russian station officials--lay down on benches and went to sleep!

It was five o’clock in the morning before that troop-train of box-cars rattled up to the station, and another hour of horn-blowing and whistling before we were finally under way. Then we blew out the guttering candles and lay down on a shelf in a dirty car.

IV

TOWARD KHABAROVSK

When morning dawned, we found ourselves rolling along at about ten miles an hour over a plain, with wooded hills in the distance. The fields were brown and sere, for it was then the first week in October, and the air was feeling the first chill of winter.

About nine o’clock we reached Nikolsk-Ussuri, where the railroad splits, one track, the Chinese Eastern, going across Manchuria to the Siberian border, and the other, the one we were to follow, proceeding to the north through the Maritime Provinces as far as Khabarovsk, where it crosses the Amur River north of that city, and then runs to the northwest well inside the Siberian border, with a branch line running down to Blagoveschench. The main line then goes to Kerak, and crossing the Shilka River, joins up with the Chinese Eastern over Manchuria, at Karimska, a few versts to the southeast of Chita, capital of the province of Trans-Baikal.

At Nikolsk, as it is commonly called, I had my first experience with a station restaurant. There was a Japanese troop-train in the yards, also a train with Chinese troops. Our six hundred odd soldiers had their own kitchen-cars and messed while the train stopped. After their night on shelves built into the box-cars, they were glad for a chance to stretch their legs and exchange pleasantries with their friends in other cars.

The station restaurant was thronged. My orderly went with me, and we pushed our way through crowds of refugees, Cossacks, Japanese officers and all the motley crew assembled there and clamoring for food. We managed to get some cabbage soup, which we had to defend against the flies, for no one ever kills or traps a fly in Siberia.

The city itself is a couple of versts from the station, for when the railroad was built it appears that the engineers took every precaution against getting too close to cities; they simply laid out their lines for the right of way, and if the city happened to be near, well and good; if not, the city would have to come to the railroad.

It was here that I realized for the first time how vague and unlimited is the Russian word _Sichass_, which means anything from presently to some time in the dim future. I desired to visit the city, to look over the German war-prisoner camp, to investigate the train full of Bolshevist prisoners, including men, women and children. But our Russian conductor, drinking tea in the station, warned us that our train would move “_Sichass_”, so I went back to my car and waited, not daring to get far away.

We were there for several hours. Russians came and looked at us, and we looked at them. They regarded us with friendly eye, but scowled and muttered when they encountered a Japanese soldier. It was apparent that the wounds of the Russo-Japanese war are not fully healed, and in the face of the hatred which meets the Japanese at every turn in Siberia, the little soldiers from Nippon display a splendid discipline. We heard that this discipline is limited to places where their conduct is under observation.

Every minute, during the time our train lay in the yards, it appeared that departure was imminent. A bell at the station tolled once, and the conductor and engineer blew horns at each other. Presently the engine whistled.

In half an hour or so, two bells tolled from the station, which caused the conductor and engineer to break out their tooting again. This done, they finally decided to load the engine tender with wood, and leaving the job to a pair of Chinese coolies, went away to the station to have another round of tea. In another half hour, they were back, three bells toll, the conductor unfolds carefully a green flag and waves it, rolls it up, and pulls a big bottle of snuff from his boot-leg. Having regaled himself, and sneezed solemnly, he blows his horn again, the engine toots, and after a while, the train moves reluctantly.

Our train stopped on the plains to have ashes drawn from the fire-box. The train crew made tea and lunched. When there was no more tea to drink, and no more gossip to talk, we moved along again.

We stopped eight hours at one station. After two hours waiting, we attempted to ascertain the cause of the delay. It appeared that the engineer had some friends in that town, and had gone away to drink tea. How soon might we be expected to proceed? “Sichass.”

At first this sort of thing is a joke to the stranger in Siberia, in time it becomes an exasperation, but finally you learn to submit and become a Russian, and take no count of the passage of time. Their utter abhorrence for anything approaching a definite statement is most puzzling.

For instance, if they know the exact time a train is supposed to arrive or depart, they refrain from telling the traveler. Some say this is a natural characteristic of the people. I ascribe it to fear of being blamed if there is a delay caused by circumstances over which they have no control.

Under the old régime, if a station-master or a conductor, stated that something was going to happen at a certain time, and it did not happen, they might be whipped or otherwise mistreated by superiors for telling a lie. So they transfer the worry of delay to the traveler, and keep their own skirts clear of trouble.

There is another fact which must be considered, and that is, that to men in prison, time means little. Next week, or next month or next year, will do as well to perform some duty. Siberia was a great prison, and this disregard of time must be in the blood. Ordinarily the Russian is most affable and hospitable, once he knows you for a friend, but to a stranger, his attitude is most impersonal and careless.

As the train stopped from one to fifteen hours at every station, I was able to spend considerable time in the various depots. Their restaurants were thronged with “famine-stricken” peasants, weighing some three hundred pounds gross each, enthusiastically discussing freedom--the while they sprayed themselves with cabbage soup. Hunger! I never want to look upon such hunger again! More: Never again do I want to hear it. (Who would guess that goulash is a high explosive?)

Eat! I will back the Russians as eaters against any other race of eaters in the world. The way an average Siberian can mistreat roasted partridges, hunks of defenseless beef, and loaves of pneumatic rye bread is painful to recall. Their cruelty lies chiefly in the fact that they insist upon talking while they eat. The Siberian is the champion three-ring talker of the universe. He talks politics so well that he can prove himself a liar--then start all over again, which explains why he has to call for outside help in order to settle anything. And if the outsider asks him to stop talking and do something, it makes him mad.

Why work when one can talk? Work is for slaves. Only the Chinese and the women work, (Apparently these are not free). Talk is the chief product of Russian activity along the trans-Siberian. When combined with gastronomics it is thrilling.

The Allied officers in Siberia were misled as to the character of Siberians who appeared to be mere louts, dressed out of the rag-bag. In particular, the Americans in Siberia were inclined to judge the people with whom they came in contact by the standards of dress in the United States. But the Siberian who looks like an animated scare-crow may be playing international poker. And he is willing to let us laugh at him if he can fool us.

These days in Siberia, it is a mistake to think that because a man has on old clothes he is poor or not educated, or unskilful in intrigue. For--he may be dressed badly in order to protect himself from the Bolshevists; or he may himself be a Bolshevist, and his apparent beggary makes him appear harmless.

I found that a surprisingly large number of Siberians (drosky-drivers, station-restaurant attendants, brakemen and many others who might be easily mistaken for _moujiks_) can speak good English--but will carry on long conversations through an interpreter! One man who had used these tactics, later on leaned down in a station to stroke a cat, saying, “Hello, kitty, where did you come from?” Such men invariably wanted information as to how many American troops had landed at Vladivostok, and what we were planning to do.

We were terribly handicapped by having to depend upon interpreters; I had one Russian-American soldier-interpreter who carried on a conversation of some twenty minutes with a Russian from whom I sought information and when I asked what was being said was told that the Russian “wasn’t saying anything which was worth while.”

But he didn’t know that standing with me listening to the conversation was a British officer who spoke Russian perfectly who then informed me that my soldier and the Russian had discussed the United States and the American expedition in Russia in the most uncomplimentary terms.

Later on my soldier admitted that he agreed with the Russian in a diatribe against the United States, but that he had done so for the purpose of drawing the other fellow out and getting his ideas. He excused his telling me that the conversation had been of a nature that could not interest me because he did not think I was interested in knowing that this particular Russian regarded the United States as a nation of capitalists, and as such the enemy of all Russians. And all the time these Russians continued to smile and bow and assure us of their friendship and their appreciation of what the United States was trying to do to reunite Russia and build it up as a democratic nation.

In fact, the Allies in Siberia have been surrounded by an army without uniforms or other visible military equipment, without any apparent machinery of organization. This army has the ability to vanish without being missed, to reassemble when and where it chooses, to set up a front if it so desires, or, if it sees fit, to dissolve again, concealing itself once more under the wings of the very host which is seeking to overcome it. To a very large extent it is an army of passive resistance.

This vanishing army entered the cities occupied by the Allies, and, in the guise of refugees, or “loyal” Russians, received food, clothing and shelter. Under the protection of the Allied guns, it spent the period of bitter cold weather in comfort, perfecting its plans for the on-coming Spring, carrying on its propaganda of hostility against the Interventionists, and mingling with the troops which had come half way round the world to render it harmless.

The Bolshevists are operating with a strategy of organized disorder.

Their vanishing army acquires weapons by various methods. A truck-load of Kolchak’s machine-guns at Omsk disappeared while in transit from one barracks to another, and the men who were making the transfer dropped from sight.

Some of our own officers and soldiers know how the Bolsheviki added to their own supply of pistols. It has been estimated that ten per cent. of the American officers traveling with orderlies had their automatics either taken by stealth or snatched from the holsters in crowded railroad stations.

One of these officers expostulated with a thief. “Here!” he shouted. “That’s my gun!” “Well, you’re wrong,” was the reply in good English; “it’s mine, and you’d better not start any trouble here.” It seemed good advice.

One story going the rounds is to the effect that an American officer of high rank, while pushing his way through a jam of people in a station, followed by his orderly, was startled by a cry from the latter. His pistol was gone!

“Gone!” said the officer, crossly. “You ought to know better than to lose your gun! Where did you wear it?”

Meekly the orderly indicated the position of his holster on his right hip.

“But you shouldn’t wear it so far back,” growled the exasperated officer. “Keep it well to the front like mine. Look! Here!” And he slapped his own holster, worn well to the front on his belt. Then the red of chagrin spread over his face. “Lord!” he cried. “Mine’s gone, too!”

Another American officer, traveling in the compartment of a car, had as a traveling companion a youthful officer ostensibly from a Cossack regiment. He was a most ingratiating young man, and admired the Americans for their willing aid to Russia. Our officer’s belt and pistol were hanging on a hook. As the train approached a station, the Cossack rose, called attention to some aspect of the landscape outside, and shaking hands with his fellow traveler, went his way. The pistol also went his way.

It was about this time that I began to ask myself, Where is the real front? Now I was suspicious of the delays in restaurants, the blocking of trains, the roundabout droskys, the street-cars that broke down, the misinformation which sent us astray, the balking telephones. It appeared like a perfect system of sabotage--covert warfare.

V

BOLSHEVISTS AND BATHS

The slow progress of our train gave me many opportunities to talk with Siberians who had been to the United States. Compared to the natives who had never left home, they were highly intelligent, but much of their mental agility put them in the class of people described by Artemas Ward as “folks who know a lot that ain’t so.”

All those who had been to the United States with whom I talked, said the United States was “No good--a capitalistic country.”

I frankly asked them why they thought so. They had worked in the steel mills, the packing-houses and in the factories, and instead of becoming “Americanized”, as we at home so proudly boast about our immigrants, they had apparently lived, worked and talked with groups of their own countrymen, and outside of picking up enough English to get along with, had become no more American than if they had remained in the heart of Siberia.

They had all the patter of the agitators against the “capitalistic classes”, for which they can hardly be blamed, for from the time they landed on our shores till they left, they were exploited in various ways, every advantage being taken of their ignorance and helplessness in a strange country.

And when they came to explain why they thought the United States to be no good, invariably they backed their original statement with tales of hard labor for poor pay, and then informed me that the newspapers of the United States admitted that we had no democracy, that we were a nation of “wage slaves,” and that revolution was coming soon in my country.

One of these men had pamphlets issued by a strike-leader in Lawrence, urging violence against the mill-owners; clippings from a Chicago paper which told of deplorable conditions in the districts inhabited by steel-workers of Pittsburgh and outlining a plan for improvement. But in reading the clipping, the Siberian overlooked entirely the fact that bad conditions were described for the purpose of guarding against reproducing them, and to take some action to correct the evils. He read with understanding only those paragraphs which stated that conditions were deplorable, and were soon to be eradicated.

And this paper, fighting editorially against exploitation, he described as part of our “capitalistic press.” He interpreted its printed protests as mutterings before a coming revolution. The editor, undoubtedly striving to aid and uplift the working men, perhaps never dreamed that what he printed would be used as propaganda to prove his paper part of a “capitalistic press.”

Another clipping from a radical sheet printed in the middle west, described the mounted constabulary of Pennsylvania, as “Cossacks, organized and supported by capitalists, to cut down the workers.” This man did not know that this state police force is maintained and supported by the state--he read the caption literally and believed that it was a private punitive force in the hire of the mill-owners. He also believed they were Cossacks!

Freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, are two of our greatest liberties. But when Russians who have been to the United States, can return to Siberia and tell the population that we are worse than Russia, and that we are going to have a revolution, and read to the people sensational statements and half-baked and distorted information, at the same time that we are in that country trying to prove our friendship for them and asserting that the United States is a free country, something is wrong. That is the state of affairs which confronted us from the first in Siberia.

I do not maintain that our systems are perfect. I have much sympathy for the “working classes,” having begun life as a boy in a factory, served in the ranks of the army and before the mast in ships.

“Ah!” said a Siberian to my interpreter, waving his hand in the direction of vacant ground near a small river, “If the Americans would only build a factory here for us, and make jobs.”

“But you are opposed to capitalism,” I said.

“Yes,” he nodded. “We are fighting it.”

“If an American built a factory here, it would take money-capital.”

“Oh, yes,” he said.

“The Russians have burned a lot of factories.”

“Yes.”

“If a factory were built here would you burn it?”

“Maybe we would.”