Chapter XXVIII: The United States in Asia 316 (3)

With my baggage stowed in a crowded fourth-class car, holding some forty persons each determined to keep inviolate the few inches of seating space already pre-empted, I got into the open air again, and attracted by the clamor of the railroad men in the station, I got my interpreter to translate some of the conversation, which, by the vigor shown by the talkers, must indicate something afoot which would stand out in Russian history. Perhaps a new revolution, or the Czar had come back to the throne.

This was the burden of their excited discussion:

The engine is bad.

When will these accursed Japanese go away?

The weather is good.

I am very thirsty.

I have a lazy Chinese for a helper.

Ivan, who worked at Nikolsk, is sick.

Do you remember when Peter fell in the river?

The tea is good.

I will see my wife when I go back to First River.

My mother’s mother had a boil ten years ago--she cured it with ashes.

What time is it? Never mind, what does it matter?

My brother’s cow has a calf.

And the world shuddering about what would happen to the Russian people, groping amid the ruins of a shattered nation! Massacres in Petrograd and Moscow, in Samara and Perm, Vladivostok in control of Allied troops, wreck and ruin, refugees and desolation, unlimited numbers of factions quarreling to see who would pick the bones of the country, intrigue, murder and sudden death stalking through city and town, the very railroad on which they worked ready to lie down and die in its tracks, their wages six months overdue, and no telling what would happen to-morrow to themselves or their families--these people calmly discussed the birth of a relative’s calf!

And I, with several thousand other American citizens, had cast aside all the things we held dear, to come half way round the world and fight to save Russia! The American people poured men and money, to help these people, and for a long time will be paying the bills. But the Russian worried only about the temperature of his tea, and wondered why we should worry at all about him or his affairs. And the railroad men in Siberia represent the best type of working men, far above the simple peasant in mental advancement.

With a similar state of affairs at home, can we imagine the crew of one of our passenger trains finding nothing to discuss but trivial personal affairs? Yet we persisted in considering the Russian people on a par with our own in seeking enlightened government and an orderly condition of life, once they had rid themselves of the oppressing Czar and his bureaucrats.

In due time, our train moved out. The car windows were sealed tightly against any outside air. The three decks of sleeping shelves were filled with men, women and children, so completely that from floor to ceiling there was a solid block of humanity. I managed to secure a shelf for my blankets, by watching those who prepared to detrain at stations ahead, and taking the space before the new passengers got in.

The narrow aisle was so piled with cases and bags of merchandise and personal effects, that it was almost impossible to get in or out of the car. And there were battles royal at every station, as one mob tried to get out while the other mob fought its way inside. There were many Chinese, peddling with packs, carrying salt, tea, sugar and such necessities, and selling them at exorbitant prices. Instead of sugar, there was also a cheap, highly-colored candy, used to sweeten tea--and give it most outlandish flavors.

These speculating Chinese were most rude and insolent to the Siberians. I saw a pair of them drive a woman and her two children from a seat, and leave them standing, in order to get the seat for themselves. A young Cossack officer hove them out bodily, but they ran after the train and rescued their baggage. They who had been so overbearing with a helpless woman, gave a fine exhibition of cringing when they in turn found themselves in the presence of a strong and ruthless personality.

The provodnik distributed candles as darkness came on, and we rattled along through the night at about ten miles an hour, slowing down discreetly to cross temporary bridges, which had been built where the Bolshevists, as they fled before the Allies, had blown out the original structures.

The candles increased the richness of our air-mixture, and as they burned low and guttered smoking tallow over bare feet of sleepers, the odor of the salmon-roe, cached in tin cans about the car, almost lost its lusty pervasiveness. I awoke at about midnight, and though the candles were still glimmering faintly and producing a nut-flavored smoke, the salmon-roe still held its own, and asserted its presence unmistakably.

The cause of my waking was a burly Chinese, who mistaking me for a peasant as I lay on my shelf rolled in my blankets, took the liberty of heaving several of his heavy boxes in upon me, in an attempt to discourage me from occupying so much space. My reading of Darwin made me realize that it was a case of the survival of the fittest. I felt particularly fit, and when that Chinese had eliminated himself from the car, along with his baggage, I went back to sleep. I forgot in the meantime the necessity for maintaining cordial international relations with China, and made it a purely personal matter.

Incidentally, it must be the boldest spirits among the Chinese who dared travel in that part of Siberia with anything of value. I was awakened later that night by a great to-do in the car, when Cossacks at a station went through the train and looked all the passengers over, including baggage. They took two Chinese out of the car, with some bulky bundles. The bundles proved to be full of packets of paper rubles. The Cossacks debated among themselves as to whether so much wealth was not in itself evidence of criminality, and favored confiscating the money. How much was given up, I do not know, but once more the Chinese came back, settled themselves for sleep upon their shelf and we rolled merrily on.

Toward morning I was awakened once more by a big peasant who stepped upon my face, in order to climb to the top of the car. I watched him mount upward, till he was in reach of a ventilator, and I came to the conclusion that I had misjudged peasants when it came to desiring fresh air--it was obvious that this man desired to tamper with the ventilator in the ceiling so that it would provide a better opening to let out our bad odors.

But instead, before my horrified eyes, he closed it! And not satisfied with its natural tightness, he stuffed into it a Russian newspaper in which had been wrapped salmon-eggs! I roused myself, dressed, and went out on the car-platform in the crisp, cool air where I waited for the sun to rise over the bleak hills.

Before long, we came to a small yellow depot, with this signboard upon it, as near as I can reproduce with Roman letters: “YXXYMYH”--it was Ooshoomoon, or Ushumun, the y’s distributed through its system providing the oo sounds in Russian.

Not an American soldier in sight. We learned from the telegraph operator that Major Miller and his force had left the evening before in a troop-train, and had passed us during the night, going in the direction from which we came.

As for my telegram to Major Miller, the operators had never heard of it. I suppose the operator at Botchkereva had pocketed my rubles, and let it go at that. Anyhow, that is the most brilliant procedure I can ascribe to him. He was either a fool or a knave. With the people then operating the trans-Siberian railroad, the theory that they mask their knavery under stupidity has proven true with me, in the long run. By appearing stupid, and so making fools of the smart Americanskys, they prove their superiority to us, according to their Asiatic style of reasoning. They would rather pocket our money than to show to us something in the nature of human intelligence.

But my missing Major Miller was not vital, except in so far as I was concerned with the element of time. We got our baggage out of the car, and faced the prospect of spending the night and most of the next day in the primitive little station, waiting for the single train running daily, which would take us back toward Khabarovsk.

VIII

ON THE BACK TRAIL

The train which had brought us to Ushumun pulled out to the east, leaving me sitting on my bedding-roll smoking a cigarette in the frosty morning, while my interpreter went to the station restaurant to ask if they had any eggs, and if they had, would they please fry them “sunny side up.”

Physically and mentally, inside and out, I was flat. My love for Siberia and the Siberians was at its lowest ebb--I would have sold the whole country to the Cossacks at a bargain price, if I had owned it that morning. I yearned for the trenches--any place, where if a man displayed a copious vocabulary, its full depth of feeling and expression might be appreciated.

A Japanese civilian, in a bluish sort of suit, which reminded me of chauffeurs in New York who buy cast-off livery to wear as a uniform, drew near, and, so to speak, wagged his tail. (Later I learned that his outward aspect was similar to that of Japanese officers on secret service).

He spoke fairly good English, but managed to maintain an abject and apologetic manner. He informed me that he had been a barber in Vladivostok, the purpose of which remark I could not fathom--either he was attracted by the glamor of a two-day beard of reddish hue which I wore, or he mentioned Vladivostok to account for his having learned English. His progress in the language must have been rapid if he learned English there from the American troops, for up to about a month before, one might have as well gone to Timbuctu to acquire our language.

He squatted on his heels before me, and asked for a match. He being the most amiable object on the landscape, I did not resent his presence, but gave him the match, and he lit a limp cigarette with great solemnity. I could fairly hear him think of how to attack me as a problem and wring from me the most possible information.

Finally, after considerable discussion of the most commonplace weather, he got down to business. I must say that if he revealed the teachings of the Japanese military secret service, that organization is far behind the times. It was counter-espionage at its worst.

He wanted to know first where I was going. I told him that I intended to stay permanently in those parts, which put him in something resembling a panic. He recovered in time to ask me what part of town I intended to reside in. As I could see no town, I told him I intended to live in the railway station. He nearly fell off his heels, so overcome was he--for which I do not blame him, considering the station.

He assured me dismally that there was a Japanese officer, and several Japanese soldiers, already living in the station, and that there was not room left for so much as a flea’s brother-in-law. I told him that my orders were to live in that section, and I intended to do so if I had to sleep on the counter where the samovar stood in the daytime.

Now orders to a Japanese soldier, are not merely orders as we understand them--they are sacred revelations emanating from the most holy place in Japan and the heavens above. He understood that I was going to live in that station, even if I had to pitch out a whole Japanese division. He almost wept over the prospect, but borrowing one of my cigarettes, which I had most carelessly exposed, he got off his heels, and departed sadly to that part of the station where the Japanese officer in charge cooked his rice.

Presently the “barber” was back, now with a Japanese captain, who approached me as if I were a divinity. I let him approach close before I “saw” him, and then leaped to my feet and came to a most dramatic salute. He beamed upon me, and after we had got done bowing and scraping, the barber announced proudly that the Japanese officer had come to pay his respect to the American officer. I acknowledged his kindness with a bow that near broke my car-stiffened back.

The barber, who refrained now from sitting on his heels, and betrayed a most suspicious desire to look military, said that he would be glad to interpret for us, and said that the Japanese captain was most sad over my fate--I must have the steel of Samurai in my backbone to face so calmly an existence which would undoubtedly wreck my constitution, if it did not result in my death. I replied that I was a soldier, and was tempted to say that so far as I could observe, the Japanese captain was bearing up most wonderfully under a similar mode of life. But one must be extremely careful in joking with Japanese.

But I knew that in order to save my face when I took the first train bound south, I had better not carry my simulation of a desire for permanent residence, too far. So I became disconsolate, as they went on to tell of the discomforts awaiting me.

The Japanese captain took me to the little shed adjoining the station, where he lived. He had improvised a shelf a few inches from the dirt floor, and with a fire in a bucket, called it home. He gave me saki, in a thimble-like glass, and some raw fish. And he smiled and smiled as I said I could never endure such quarters. No doubt he has made a report, in which he cites the fact that American officers will not willingly endure privations on campaign. Thus do the nations get false ideas about one another.

I expressed a desire to get out of Ushumun as quickly as possible. The Japanese captain beamed. He informed me that a Japanese troop-train was coming down the line, and would pass through there in a couple of hours. If I desired to travel away on it, he could probably arrange with the train commander for transportation. Which he did.

So when a train with a Japanese battery of artillery arrived, I saw my friend in serious consultation with the train commander, and I was invited to the fourth-class coach on the rear, filled with officers and soldiers, and given a section, the soldiers being put out in box-cars with the horses and other men.

I do not care to analyze the motives which led the Japanese captain to hurry me out of Ushumun. It was obvious that he desired me far away. And my expressed intention of staying there, only increased his worry. If I had told him I intended leaving by the next train, no doubt I would have spent that day and the next night in discomfort in Ushumun station. But it is not in me to look a gift-horse in the mouth.

The section in the car assigned to me and my soldier-interpreter provided wooden shelves for six persons, the upper ones so arranged that they could be folded up out of the way. I begged the train commander to put four of the six non-commissioned officers who had been ousted for my benefit, back in their quarters, but he replied through his interpreter, and with profound bows, that the entire section was mine. And the hospitality accorded me in that car will never be forgotten. On that trip I came nearer to being royal than I ever expect to be again.

Knowing something of the administration of a battery of light artillery, I was most interested in seeing how horses and men were cared for by the Japanese. They attended to their duties as if work were sacred rites. They messed their men, fed and watered their horses, not merely well, but as if the fate of the Japanese Empire depended upon the utmost efficiency of every cog in that particular machine.

The simplicity of their messing arrangements for the men, in comparison with our own army in trains, is remarkable. We have to provide kitchen-cars, fitted up with field ranges, meat, bread, potatoes, canned tomatoes, coffee, and provide buckets of hot water for washing mess-kits. It is like a primitive travelling hotel, and our men go to the car to have their meals dealt out by the cooks. And on the trans-Siberian line, the road-bed was so rough, and the cars so light and the wheels so flattened by bad usage, it was frequently impossible to boil water over our stoves while under way. This necessitated stops en route to prepare meals and serve them, and once a train has lost its right of way by stopping in a siding, it may mean hours before the line ahead is clear of regular traffic, so that the troop-train may go on.

The mess-kit of the Japanese soldier is a metal container, about the size and shape of a case for large field-glasses. The top clamps on so that it is water-tight. A handful of dry rice, a little water, a fire by the track, and the mess-kits are thrown into the blaze.

In a short time, the soldier’s meal is ready, and after he has eaten as much as he wants, the remainder is kept hot by closing the lid. I have seen Japanese prepare their meals during a ten-minute stop by such methods. And each soldier, on the march, can carry enough dry, light rice, to last him several days. His columns are not hampered by the slow progress of heavy ration-wagons, his food is not in danger of being cut off by enemy, his service of supply presents no problem. The swift movements of the Japanese armies during the Russo-Japanese war were due to the simplicity of their transport.

On this trip I came to a full realization of the hatred held for the Japanese by the Siberian populace. It is hatred remaining as a result of the Russo-Japanese war; it is a hatred engendered by fear of the Japanese, and their ambitions regarding the future of Siberia; it is a hatred deeply-embedded in the hearts of the Russians, and of such intensity that the two races cannot hope ever to mingle with any amity.

I found it embarrassing, too; to stop in a station, and be recognized as an “Americansky” and receive the smiles and open admiration of the people, while my hosts were covertly, and sometimes openly, sneered at, and disrespectful and insulting remarks about “monkey-faces” came out of groups of peasants, made it apparent to my hosts that I was much in favor with the people, and that the Japanese were regarded as if they were rattle-snakes. It must have hurt the sensitive pride of the Japanese, but I must give them credit for good discipline, and splendid self-control, in the face of such treatment.

Had I not been present, it is likely that the Russians would have been more cautious; as it was, my presence only subjected the Japanese to insults which they might not have had to endure in the presence of a witness. But they went on about their business, as if their superiority to the Siberians was something which was beyond question--and perhaps their attitude held something of a “biding my time,” for a suitable revenge.

Standing outside the car one afternoon, beside the Japanese troop-train commander, I saw a Japanese soldier coming toward the train with two large buckets, a Siberian peasant following him closely, and calling out in protest. The soldier, aware of the fact that he was under the eyes of his commander, made no reply, but came on. Presently, as the Siberian came close enough to recognize me as an American, he darted up behind the soldier, and pulled from one of the buckets, a head of cabbage. The train commander looked on, but made no comment, though it was obvious that the Japanese soldier was stealing the cabbage. Under similar circumstances, an American soldier would have been reprimanded on the spot.

The Siberian put the cabbage on the ground, and emboldened by the passive attitude of the Japanese, once more ran in pursuit, and extracted from the other bucket, another cabbage. Having emptied the buckets of the forager, he departed with his cabbages. I wondered if he would have been allowed to regain his property if I had not been with the Japanese.

In this connection, peasants always came to my interpreter with complaints against the Japanese. But our orders were to give no heed to such complaints--in fact, not to listen to them. There were tales of murder, robbery, outrage, of isolated districts in which Japanese soldiers drove the people from their homes, and took the dwellings as quarters, confiscating all money and property in possession of the people. I can only cite the fact that these stories were told; the truth of them is a matter I am not competent to discuss.

Early in the morning we were back in Botchkereva, and stopped there while the horses were fed and watered. I went to the station restaurant for tea. There I found a young lieutenant of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, who had left Khabarovsk two days later than I did, in an effort to find Major Miller’s force.

His name was D----, and he was shivering from the cold, for it was not time to begin the sale of tea and food, though the girls were sleepily washing the floors, and firing up the samovars. A throng of refugees were standing about, patiently waiting for the hour to arrive when they might get something hot.

My interpreter and I were thoroughly chilled, but no amount of money would induce the slatternly girls to give us even hot water from the samovars--it lacked a half an hour before they would begin to serve anything. I looked at the men, women and children huddled together in corners, some of them shivering so violently that their teeth chattered, and poor, under-nourished and illy-clad children crying from cold. Why the attendants must observe such regular hours, under such conditions, I could not understand, and never will. It may be that it was a demonstration of the “rosy conditions of Soviet Russia,” which an American referred to recently in a speech at Madison Square Garden, New York, at which the beauties of the Bolshevist régime were extolled. But I wish to call attention to the fact that those who did the extolling of the Bolshevist régime were not enjoying that régime in Russia--they were enduring the hardships of the “capitalistic United States.”

The solution of the mystery as to why shivering and hungry people in that station could not buy tea from bubbling samovars till the clock struck a certain hour, probably lies in the fact that the attendants were “free,” and members of a Soviet. When it comes to autocracy, the peasant of Russia can outdo all autocrats. And curiously enough, they are most cruel to their own kind. If a pair of Cossack officers had come into that station, and demanded tea forthwith, I believe they would have had it, regardless of the time. The fact that the samovars were steaming would have been reason enough for serving the tea.

More out of curiosity than necessity, I made every plea to get tea; my train would go on shortly; I would give fifty rubles for three glasses of tea; I was ill; I must have tea then, or go without it all day. None of these arguments got the tea.

So having a supply of dry tea of my own, my interpreter took the cups from our canteens, and putting them over the little fires of the Japanese soldiers alongside the track, brewed our own warming beverage for breakfast, and invited D---- to join us.

Once he had driven the chills from his body, he told me that he had sat up in the station all night, only pretending to nap, because he had a suitcase full of rubles to pay off the men of Major Miller’s force and was afraid it might be stolen. And in order to divert suspicion from the suitcase, he had thrown it carelessly in a nearby corner, as if it did not matter what became of it, though he kept a wary eye upon it.

He said it was likely that the train to take him back to Khabarovsk might not arrive till that night. I immediately asked the commander of the train if I might take D---- with me, and he gladly assented. So when the train moved out, D---- shared a lower shelf with me.

IX

A RED SWEATER AND THE GENERAL

It happened that I wanted to get off at a little station, called Bira. And I understood that the Japanese troop-train would stop there to feed and water, making a sufficient stop for me to visit the company of American soldiers quartered in box-cars on a siding. But we whisked through Bira at an early hour, and we were well down the line toward Khabarovsk, before I learned of the change of plans of the train commander.

But I planned to leave the train the next morning, and double back, visiting our detachments on the way. Besides, I wished to locate a certain English-speaking Russian, who wore a red sweater and made it his business to work or loaf wherever we had soldiers and to mingle with them to strike up acquaintances. This man had worked several years in the United States, and he was busy at his special propaganda among our troops.

It was not so much his work and spying which I wished to investigate, but I was interested in his methods, and I wished to determine if possible who was supplying him with money and who was directing his efforts. He was not merely a man who professed a dislike for the United States, but he evidently belonged to a coterie which was well instructed as to how to build up an enmity between the Russians and the Americans.

I had talked with this man twice, or rather he had sought me out and tested my knowledge on what the United States intended to do in Russia. I had discussed matters with him as if he were what he pretended to be--an uneducated working man. As a matter of fact he had been a lawyer in Michigan, making a poor living among Russian and other immigrants, and none too ethical in his ways of making money.

Such detachment commanders as I had talked with on the way up, when asked as to suspicious characters, all declared that they had noticed no persons who appeared to be worthy of attention--and all told me of Red Sweater. The usual story about him was about this:

“There is a man in a red sweater who worked here on the track a few days, with the section hands. He talks English. He hung around our men, generally showing up at mess-time, and asking for some American food. He has ‘joshed’ the men about being in this country, but they don’t pay any attention to him. He finally went away, and we haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks. But he doesn’t amount to anything--just kind of a poor simpleton, who thinks he knows it all because he can talk a little English.”

That sounded reasonable enough the first time I heard it. The next time I heard it, I began to take notice, and a day or so later, Red Sweater attached himself to my train in the capacity of a provodnik, a man who keeps up the fires, pretends to sweep the car, and gives out the candles.

Red Sweater worked first on my interpreter, and then felt his way along with me in English. At that time, I was confident that our expedition would take such action as was necessary for the good of Russia, and in time proceed to establish a new Russian front against Germany in association with all the available forces of our Allies. Of course, this was some time before the armistice, or early in October. But I professed to be entirely out of sympathy with any American action in Russia. That attitude was far more likely to bring to my attention such Russians, or enemy agents, as secretly opposed us, than an attitude of desiring aggressive action by my country. And in their eagerness to find an American who upheld their contention, Bolshevist agents and others, walked into the little trap and revealed their lines of propaganda. It is remarkable how the person who appears to be a malcontent, attracts the professional agitators--they seem overjoyed at the prospect of making a convert, or in having their reasoning and actions justified by others not in their circle.

And Red Sweater was dangerous, not because of the falsity of the things he said, but on account of the truths he uttered, and his subtlety in perverting truth to fit his ideas and theories. It was probably such chaps, working among our troops in Archangel, which caused the reported “mutiny” in our forces there--just “kind of a poor simpleton,” saying silly things, and not worthy of attention.

Red Sweater was clever in his ways. He made no statements on his own responsibility, but always quoted the “Russian people.” As I listened to his arguments, I was led to believe that he must have held a plebecite which included every inhabitant of Siberia and European Russia, and to him alone, had been revealed the desires and intentions of two hundred million inhabitants.

“The Russian people do not trust the United States,” he said glibly, after he was assured that I was “safe.” “You are a capitalistic nation, and they know it. You say you are friends of the Russian people but the Russian people ask: ‘Why are you fighting Russian people near Archangel if you are our friends?’

“You are not fighting the Russian people here. They ask why not? And their answer is: ‘The capitalists of the United States do not fight us here, because they wish to steal our trans-Siberian railroad.’

“The Russian people say they have freed themselves of capitalists. The United States say they are free people--but the capitalists of the United States have conscripted the ‘free’ working men of the United States, and compelled them to come here to Russia to fight the free Russian working men. That is what the Russian people say. You think you are serving your country by being here. The Russian people say you are serving your capitalists, to again enslave the Russian working men. The Russian people say they have a right to run their own country in their own way, but the capitalists of the United States send an army of conscripts over here to prevent the Russian people from keeping their freedom. If the working men of the United States were satisfied with their country, would they want a Russian army to go over there, and tell them how to run it? But the Russian people know that the people of the United States did not send this conscript army over here--the capitalists did that. And for that reason the Russian people do not want to fight you--they do not want you to fight them. Japan and England do not want a republic here--they want to put the Czar back. Both those countries have thrones, and their rulers do not want to see new republics. And the reason they want to see the Czar back here, is that they can make secret treaties with the Czar, but they could not make secret treaties if we had a government of the people. The Russian people say the American capitalists sent an army here to help Japan and England put the Czar back on his throne. If he is put back on the throne, and partly by your help, are you sure that the Czar, the Emperor of Japan, and the King of England, will not combine, and some day send their armies to force the people of the United States into having an Emperor? The Russian people say to you: ‘Comrades, we understand. You, too, must overthrow your capitalists, as we have done, and control your own country for the benefit of the working men.’ The Russian people say you are not free yet--no man is free, if he can be conscripted for the benefit of capitalists, and sent to the other side of the world to fight the working men of another country.”

And some officers thought Red Sweater did not “amount to anything.” This was because they had no way of knowing that his itinerary included every station where American troops might be found, and because he was clever enough to look like a poor tramp, and wise enough to act the fool when the occasion demanded that he conceal his purposes.

He deserted my train after he had traveled far enough to plant his insidious propaganda in my mind. The next time I saw him, he did his best to get me to ask the Japanese troop-train commander to let him ride with us. I did no such thing, whereupon he concealed himself between the cars, and I was now interested to see at what point he would leave us. This was one of the reasons I was willing enough to pass through Bira.

The night following our passage through Bira, I got to sleep about ten o’clock. At a quarter to eleven I woke with a start, for no apparent reason. D---- was sleeping soundly beside me, and my interpreter was snoring on an upper shelf. The train was toiling up hills slowly, and then dashing down the other side recklessly, or so it seemed to me. Many bridges had been blown out by the Bolshevists, and small rivers and gullies were crossed by the railroad over temporary trackage, laid on amazing grades, and poorly ballasted, for the purpose of making detours around the wrecked bridges.

I felt the train making painful progress up a slope. The engine puffed laboriously. We reached the crest of the hill, and suddenly began to go down at a rapidly increasing rate, and at the same time I missed the noise of the engine, some thirty or forty cars ahead. Our car was the last on the train.

There was a terrific crash, far ahead, and then every moveable thing on our car started for the front end. My interpreter was hurled off his shelf amid all the cooking utensils and food in the car, D---- was slammed up against the side of the section, and I skidded on my elbows out on the floor, barely avoiding taking an iron support which held the shelf above me, off with my head.

The car swung round sidewise and lurched downward, and amid the sound of rending timbers, appeared to be headed for a river below. I was sure we had gone through a blown-out bridge.

But the derailed car settled over gently on its side, and came to rest. We got out as quickly as possible, not sure that the wrecked train was safe from attack by Bolshevists. Under a cold, clear sky, we saw that the train had been shattered in the center, the wreck occurring on a sharp down grade between the banks of a cut. Several of the small and light box-cars, containing horses and Japanese soldiers, had been smashed, but the damage was not great, due to the fact that the shock had been absorbed by the cars bulging upward into an inverted V. The Japanese were busily engaged in getting out horses, and in checking up their men, to ascertain if any had been killed. There were a few minor injuries.

It was too cold to linger outside long in my pajamas, and I went back to the car, and finding our electric flashlights, sorted ourselves out and went back to sleep. In the morning we learned just what had happened.

The train had broken open in the middle at the crest of the hill. The engine, with the forward half, had run down into the valley over temporary trackage. Then the engineer discovered what had happened. The tail end of his train was just gaining headway over the crest, and coming down with increasing speed. So, in order to go back and get it, he reversed his engine and came back at top speed, meeting us in the cut when we had acquired good speed from the descending grade. It was a splendid example of how not to recapture the runaway half of a troop-train.

That is an impartial description of what happened. But there was every reason to believe that the engineer, working with a confederate aboard the train, knew the train would be split at the proper place to allow the engine to get away, and then come back with the most disastrous results. And I believe that Red Sweater split the train, for when a wrecking train came the next morning to clear the tracks, the engine of our train and such cars as would travel, going ahead to the next station to allow the wreckers to get in at the smashed cars, Red Sweater rode away with the first load of battered cars pulled out.

During that day, and the best part of that night, the Russian wrecking crew worked and talked and drank tea, on a job that would have taken an American wrecking crew, two hours. Before a pair of broken trucks could be ditched, there must be a discussion which suggested the Duma in action against the Czar. But the Japanese, stoical and silent, were not fooled--they recognized as fine a piece of sabotage as had ever been produced.

When we resumed our journey, we three were nearly famished for want of food. We had brewed tea, and consumed a string-load of pretzels, and as the Japanese had not noticed that we were short of supplies, we had refrained from asking for any of their food.

Train schedules were so upset, that I figured I might as well go on to Khabarovsk, and get the next train out again to Bira. In the meantime I might pick up the trail of Red Sweater among the railway detachments strung along the line.

So we made a long stop at a station called Poperoffka, some fifteen versts from Khabarovsk. There was a platoon of Americans there, commanded by a lieutenant, quartered in box-cars. D----, my interpreter and myself lost no time in getting to the kitchen-car, where we bought canned tomatoes, potatoes, bread and coffee, and bribed the cook to prepare a meal.

There we learned that the Commanding General had passed through, bound north in a private car, with a private engine. And just as I had attacked a mess-kit full of corned beef, my first square meal in a week, soldiers came to inform the lieutenant in command, that the Commanding General was returning, and that he was leaving his private car with his staff.

General Graves was making a tour of inspection. He visited our kitchen-car, with a dozen or more officers. He was puzzled because he had just visited a station where the commanding officer had not heard of my presence in that part of the country. He was very wroth because he had found some commanding officers away from their commands on hunting excursions, and as it turned out, one of these officers had talked to me on the up trip, and later left in command one of his subalterns who had recently joined from Vladivostok, and naturally could not know I was prowling about in that part of Siberia.

I preferred to leave General Graves puzzled as to ignorance at that place about me, for if I had made too full an explanation, the officer concerned, already in the bad graces of his Commanding General, might have been disciplined. And General Graves, travelling in a special train with right of way over everything, appeared to have no appreciation of the difficulty of travel on intermittent passenger trains. And some members of the personal staff, accustomed to travel in such special trains, persisted in regarding the trans-Siberian line as if it were part of, say, the New York Central system. Being a Commanding General has its disadvantages under such circumstances.

General Graves suggested that I go back to Bira. As I had lost considerable sleep and worn out several time-tables figuring out how I could go back to Bira, I was in hearty accord with the General’s wishes on the subject. And I eventually carried them out. And certain officers, fully aware of what had happened, told the General some time later that trains on the trans-Siberian line could not be trusted to make the time between different points which the time-tables promised.

And up to the time I left Siberia, those in the know generally greeted me at mess, with: “Go back to Bira,” which always gave us a good laugh--at my expense.

And by going back to Bira, I lost the trail of Red Sweater, for the last sight I had of him, was from that kitchen-car at Popperoffka. He was evidently trailing General Graves’s special train.

X

OVER THE AMUR RIVER ON HORSEBACK

When I left Bira for Khabarovsk, I was without an interpreter, for my soldier had gone on to Khabarovsk from Popperoffka, ill. The train was so crowded that there was no room for me in any of the cars, and all I could do was load my heavy bedding-roll and grip on between the cars, and then stand outside with it.

The trip took all day, and till two the next morning. The weather was too cold for comfort, despite my heavy sheepskin coat. But a provodnik insisted that I share his compartment.

Except for a little Russian, our conversation was limited, but all through the day and night we entertained each other, exchanging English and Russian lessons. He claimed to be a Pole from Warsaw, spoke German, Polish and Russian, and his eagerness to learn English was pathetic. He asserted that his one ambition was to get to America, and said he had almost enough rubles to pay his passage, although it developed that he did not know the price of a ticket from Vladivostok to Japan, and thence to San Francisco. He probably had more than enough money to pay his passage, for the lowly provodnik absorbs much money and smuggles many commodities, from sugar to opium. And many provodniks are German or Bolshevist agents--they make an admirable system for “underground” lines of communication.

The fact that I had to watch my baggage kept me from getting meals from the stations along the line. But the provodnik filled his tea-kettle with hot water, we brewed tea, and he came in with a monstrous loaf of bread and big consignment of reddish salmon-roe. I never intended to eat the latter stuff, for I had no gas-mask, but when my hospitable provodnik plastered an inch of the stuff on a slice of bread and handed it to me, I ate the eekrah to get the bread. I enjoyed it quite as much as the baked sheep’s eyes once served me by an Arab in the desert.

We reached Khabarovsk at two in the morning, our passenger train coming into the yards in such fashion that some six freight trains were between us and the station, which is generally the case. As the freights were being shifted about continuously, it was impossible to attempt to go under them with my baggage, and when, after an hour’s wait, I got a porter, it appeared that we would spend the remainder of the night running round the tracks of the yard. For having gone a quarter of a mile to get round a line of freight cars on one track, another train on the next track would come rolling down between us and the station. It was nearly daylight when we got out of that moving labyrinth.

And the single drosky-driver at the station, knowing that he had a monopoly on my business, for all the others had departed with incoming passengers, demanded sixty rubles to take me to the American post.

Without argument, I piled my baggage in, clambered aboard, and then paid him his proper twenty rubles at the end of the journey. He did not demur--such methods proved to him that I was a personage not to be trifled with. Had I given him thirty, he would have chased me all night to get the other thirty, for to display weakness by over-payment puts one down as a person who can be brow-beaten and robbed. Generosity in Siberia stamps the stranger as a fool. And as a matter of fact, I paid him double rate, for the Imperial rubles I gave him were worth about twice the local paper money.

There was still a detachment beyond the Amur River, about twenty versts away, which I had not visited. Colonel Styer gladly provided me with a horse, and a mounted orderly to ride to this station, saving me the two days necessary to make the trip by trains. And the Chaplain of the Twenty-seventh, a hard-riding and hard-praying Southerner representative of our best type of army chaplains, said that he would go with me.

The trip was arranged while I was dining as the guest of Colonel Styer and Chaplain W----.

Once more I was in quarters with Lieutenant-Colonel Morrow, the regimental captain-adjutant, S----, and a second lieutenant, W----, who had been commissioned from the ranks after several years in the regular army. The building was large and roomy, having formerly been the residence of a Russian officer and his family while a regiment of Siberian Rifles had been stationed in Khabarovsk in the old days. We used their silver and furniture, their rich table covers, candelabra and samovars.

The walls of the house are four feet thick, with hollow spaces between connected with the flues of the many great stoves, in such way that the smoke and heat from the fires circulate between the walls before escaping from the chimneys. Fifty and sixty degrees below zero are said to be usual winter temperature there.

A stove in Siberia is not a stove at all, to use a Hibernism, but a sort of tile temple built into the wall, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The front of this structure merges with the surface of the wall, and the tiles being of various colors and designs, they add to the interior decorations. And it is startling to come in of a cool evening and touch a wall hot enough to suggest frying eggs upon it. My memories of that house are permeated by a kindly old Russian _moujik_, with long reddish beard, long hair, wrinkled and blinking eyes. Whenever one had occasion to pass him, he abased himself--he was a most pathetic demonstration of the Russian style of turning service into servitude. He seemed to spend all the day and night stuffing wood into the fireboxes.

An old soldier who had been with Colonel Morrow had charge of the servants; a soldier cook prepared the meals, and the house work was done by the blond _moujik_, a Russian woman and her daughter. It was a happy place--what the veteran regular calls “old army stuff,” meaning that everybody begins by assuming that the other fellow is a gentleman, knows his business, and attends to it without attempting to look, talk or stand in imitation of von Hindenburg. These latter traits afflict some persons new to the uniform of an officer, because many young men gained commissioned ranks without going through the “shavetail” period of their training. This term comes from the old style of shaving the tail of a mule new to the army, which serves as sort of a warning signal to such as may have dealings with him, that the mule has not acquired proper discipline and a regard for the feelings of others.

And no matter how high a cadet may stand in his class at West Point, when he comes to the army, he is a “shavetail officer,” for about a year, and admits that he has a lot to learn about army ways. This is one of the reasons why the old regular officers, and the officer fresh from civil life, have not always gotten on well together in the new army.

I do not always side with the regular. The regular army had a splendid opportunity to send back to civil life several thousands of temporary officers with friendly feelings for the regulars, and an appreciation of the professional training of the regular. Instead, in too many cases, the regular officers went out of their ways to point the fact that the new officer was only an amateur at the game of soldiering. The new officers, with a few exceptions, never pretended to be anything else. They wanted to learn, but they resented being humiliated while learning.

As it happened, the regular army of England was forced to enjoy a monopoly of the fighting in the early days of the war, with the result that the regular officers were almost entirely wiped out.

But one foolish amateur in an American expedition generally resulted in all his fellows being judged by his inefficiency and his foolishness. The regular army would not wish to be judged by its worst types. And I refer to these things here to point the fact that if our regular officers had shown the same spirit toward the strangers that Colonel Styer and the officers of the Twenty-seventh United States Infantry showed to the temporary officers of the Siberian Expedition, the regular army would hold the respectful deference of those men who have quit the officer’s uniform for civilian garb.

Before we could cross the Amur to visit the detachment near Khabarovsk, it was necessary for me to have a pass for the big railroad bridge over the river, issued by the headquarters of General Oi. S----, the adjutant, arranged it for me through the Japanese liaison officer.

We rode down through Khabarovsk, and out on a road which would take us to the bridge. A guide at headquarters said there was a passage over the bridge for horses and foot-passengers, but he did not go with us.

When we came to the bridge, we found that the “passage for horses” consisted of nothing more than loose planks laid lengthwise between the rails. And outside the rails, between the steel girders, were great openings big enough to let a horse go through, in case he shied from between the rails. And if we met a train, we would have to turn our horses and come back.

This bridge over the Amur is nearly a mile long, and consists of twenty-two spans supported by great stone piers built up from the river bed. It may be less than half a mile from the surface of the river, but it appeared to be that far above the water as I looked it over in contemplation of riding a horse across it. I had crossed it twice by train, but late at night, when I had not appreciated its grandeur, so to speak.

There is a story that the Bolshevists planned to blow it out, but that one Bolshevist leader had objected, and threatened to shoot his comrade with the explosives, if the bridge were destroyed, saying it belonged to Russia, and so much wealth could not be destroyed with his assent. That Bolshevist must have been something of a patriot, for he saved the bridge.

The Japanese guards examined my pass. I consulted with W----. The horses seemed steady enough, and I decided to attempt the crossing. So starting off at a slow trot, I led the way. My horse shuddered and snorted at first, but I did not allow him to stop and think it over.

By the time we had crossed the first span, the others were trailing behind. And everything went well, till I came to planks which were underlaid with sheets of corrugated iron. These made a tremendous racket under the impact of the blows of the horse’s feet on the loose planks, and he began to prance and refused to go on. I dismounted, and without looking back at him, led him across the bad stretch. He followed meekly, and once we were clear of the sheets, I mounted again, and went on at the slow trot. So we went over and back again without mishap, and found it not to be so foolhardy a crossing as it had appeared to be at first glance.