Chapter XXVIII: The United States in Asia 316 (4)

My orderly was now out of hospital, and I arranged to leave for Vladivostok. The train would leave at one o’clock in the afternoon. At ten, I sent the orderly-interpreter to the station, to get two tickets and book accommodations for us. At eleven we were at the station, in order to assure ourselves of a seat, for the train came in a couple of hours before it departed, and seats belong to those who get them, regardless of seat-tickets or anything else, under that system of “equality” which the Siberian has acquired.

All my effects were dumped from an army wagon, in a blinding snow storm. The Cossack commandant assured us that our seats would be preserved for us. The train came in, and unloaded its passengers, and immediately there was a wild scramble on the part of peasants and Chinese, fighting their way into the cars. The commandant was with my interpreter, finding our places, so I waited an hour, having an abiding faith at that time in the polite assurances of Cossack officers.

The interpreter came back looking disconsolate. He said the Cossack had given up in disgust--there was no room in the train for us. And the engine tooting for an early start, with my baggage rapidly becoming a snow drift!

I went to the station and found the Cossack officer. I displayed my tickets, and cited the fact that I had taken every precaution for transportation, and had taken him at his word that he would be glad to reserve seats for us. I demanded that he make good his promises.

He displayed a most laudable energy, and going aboard a car, opened the door of a compartment despite the protests of four Russian men inside. He waxed eloquent over the fact that an American officer and soldier must travel on that train. They displayed pistols, but finally gave way, and the six of us sat down in the compartment. My baggage was checked, and away we rolled.

It developed later that the reluctance of the four men inside to admit anybody was due to the fact that they were carrying large sums of railroad money to Vladivostok. And they explained to the interpreter that they had showed the pistols for the benefit of the crowds in the passageway of the car, and were willing enough that we should share the compartment with them, for if we had not, they might have had trouble with the exasperated travelers outside, who were compelled to stand up all that day and most of the night, to get to Vladivostok. As it turned out, we lived in that compartment as if in a besieged fortress. At every station, new passengers demanded admittance, and fought for some time to be admitted, claiming that there was room to sit on the two upper berths.

But the Russians drove them away with pistols, and by asserting that the compartment belonged to “the Americanskys.” And Russian women with children, scowled at me through the narrow aperture of the chained door which ventilated the compartment, losing no opportunity by looks or remarks, to express their opinions of people who came to Siberia and prevented honest people from riding in comfort in their own trains.

We got into Vladivostok about four o’clock the next morning, and hiring three Chinese carriers, I got my baggage to headquarters, and set up my cot in the Intelligence Office.

During my absence, there had been a merry rumpus.

XI

THE MACHINE THAT SQUEAKED

I found Headquarters in Vladivostok seething with secret turmoil. It seems that the Staff resented the fact that fifteen Intelligence officers had been sent by the War Department for duty in Siberia. At least the Intelligence officers got that impression, and they claimed that everything was being done to discredit them, and upset the general plan of studying the Siberian situation in detail if for no other purpose than to watch the Intelligence machine work.

Although we did not know it, there had been some minor troubles before we arrived. By the time the _Sheridan_ brought us, there had been one reorganization of the Siberian military policy, which was brought about by the arrival of General Graves, who put into play methods of procedure reflecting the administration policy of “non-interference.” This meant putting a stop to everything which called for any activity with the forces in Siberia, crushed any ambition held by officers of the Twenty-seventh and Thirty-first regiments of infantry for a campaign, and resolved the whole situation into a matter of marking time in quarters.

This is not a criticism of General Graves. What he might prefer to do, compared with what his orders were, is the difference between a good soldier obeying his orders and a commander carrying out the orders of his superiors. I believe that all concerned obeyed their orders, and no higher compliment can be paid to soldiers. If their orders are not in accordance with their personal desires, all the more credit to them for obeying. So in discussing the situation as I found it in Vladivostok, I wish to make it plain that I realized the difficulties under which the Headquarters Staff labored. Its prime business was to obey orders, not to be popular with anybody, in or out of the expedition.

When the two regiments of infantry, tucked away in the Philippines and apparently marooned from the war, got orders to leave for Siberia, there was great joy. For the regular officers it meant activity and service stripes, and probably medals, and a campaign in their records, and experience and a chance for distinction. And many of these officers, due to age, or the lottery of the service which sends some officers to the front and immures others to a tropical cloister, had given up all hopes of having a hand in the war. Suddenly a new front was devised for them, and they were rushed off to make history.

Colonel Styer was in command at Vladivostok, and at that time there was every reason to believe that there would be lively times. The two regiments prepared themselves accordingly, and were ready for swift and decisive action when they landed. With the quiet efficiency of the regular, they overlooked nothing in order to be ready for whatever developed.

This little machine was running on a high gear, when General Graves arrived. He drew the fires and stopped the engine. Presently two more transports arrived, with reinforcing troops, and our Intelligence party, direct from Washington. Our officers had presumably been selected for Siberian service because they were experts in their various lines, and necessarily being enthusiasts for their own line of endeavor, showed great interest in the situation.

They laid down a barrage of questions on the staff, ranging from where they were to sleep, to data on the available coal supply from the Golden Horn to the Urals. They had been cooped in a hotel and a transport for some two months since leaving Washington, some of them had never been away from the United States, and they brought an element of romping boyishness to the sedate, quiet and somewhat bored staff. Some of them, though captains, had never been near an army, and their civilian enthusiasms jarred headquarters.

Having quelled one epidemic of enthusiasm, the staff rather crossly and tactlessly set about stamping out this fresh access of desire for picturesque action. The staff, it was said, assumed the attitude that it was competent to run the Siberian expedition without the aid of a “lot of theorists and amateurs from civil life.”

The younger officers on duty, fresh from West Point and feeling much exalted at finding themselves wearing insignia of rank which in the old army sometimes took twenty years to attain, reflected the attitude of the elders, and two hostile camps developed in a single building. And this was the war I walked into, all unknowingly, when I came back from Khabarovsk.

I found myself “one of that Intelligence bunch,” and no matter how politely I asked for some action of a routine nature in order to carry out my own orders, I found that the wheels did not turn for me. Of course, there was not a flat refusal, but there was what might be called “mental sabotage”--my requests were forgotten till I had to resort to plain language to get what I needed.

And the Intelligence party, I was informed, had been summoned and told to “keep quiet, to betray no initiative, not to criticise, and to keep busy doing nothing.” And in order to nullify as far as possible all attempts of the individuals of the party to accomplish anything in their own lines of endeavor, the “chart” of the organization was dismantled, and each officer put at some duty with which he was unfamiliar. For instance an expert on ciphers was sent far into the interior, and an expert on maps was put in charge of several translators, though he had a most limited knowledge of Russian. And the Chief of Intelligence found himself with some fifteen officers who had been shipped half way round the world at government expense, and drawing an average of two hundred dollars a month in pay, buzzing indignantly about his ears, and doing little but making his life a burden.

Most of these officers were quartered in a warehouse some five miles from headquarters, and an irregular launch taking them back and forth across the bay for meals, with the consequence that most of the time was spent traveling or waiting on the pier for the launch.

And when the launch was taken off the run, an automobile was provided, which held five persons, to transport a dozen officers and as many field clerks, in a single trip, from and to quarters. About the time the Intelligence detachment took ship for home, a truck was provided. But in order to avoid the loss of time in going back and forth, many of the officers had hired at their own expense, rooms in crowded Vladivostok.

There is something on the other side of the shield. This obvious attempt to humiliate the Intelligence detachment, probably grew out of the reports which reached headquarters with us. The officer who had been bedeviled by Smith in San Francisco, came in the transport _Logan_.

He had apparently judged the whole party by Smith, and had given us a bad repute. However that may be, the Professor engaged by Smith as “advisor,” as told in a previous chapter, got anything but a pleasant reception when he came to report his status.

As related to me, General Graves was most indignant when he learned how and why the Professor had been thrust upon the expedition. He was told that his services were not required, and he was paid off at the rate allowed a field clerk. He refused to acknowledge the money received as payment in full, and charged poor Smith with having misrepresented his authority, asserted that he had been damaged by quitting his positions in San Francisco as undoubtedly he had been, and took the return transport threatening suit against Smith and a claim against the government.

There is every reason to believe that this incident established the “Intelligence bunch” as a group of high-handed incompetents. The Staff to my mind, had every reason for withholding from the members of the party that measure of confidence and respect which an Intelligence Department must have before it can operate with any efficiency.

A Commanding General and his staff in a situation such as confronted them in Siberia, has something else to do beside test individually a lot of officers who from previous acts by one or two of them appeared to give every evidence of having no judgment. It is safer to assume that they are all Smiths, and put them at such simple tasks as insure that they will not do something disastrous. It is also cheaper to pay them to do nothing.

In time, most of the officers were sent away to inland cities, where they remained as observers, till they signified their desire for discharge after the armistice in accordance with the terms of their commissions. And in justice to the majority of these officers, I wish to assert that they were highly efficient in their various vocations, and that most of them had distinguished themselves in civil life. One had been minister for the United States to foreign countries and was schooled as a diplomat; others were professors of history and could tell the various life-careers of big and small nations; some were ethnologists, and could give the pedigree of any nondescript person found in the motley throngs all over Siberia; many had previously been in Russia several years, spoke the language well, and found themselves in familiar surroundings. With a few exceptions, they did the duties of glorified office boys, while attached to an expedition which needed above all things, an alert and efficient system of Military Intelligence. They did their best under disheartening conditions.

XII

AN ARMY IMPRESARIO

For a week or two after my return to Vladivostok, I familiarized myself with the Intelligence organization at Headquarters. So far as I could see, we had no authority over anybody who happened to be suspected of enemy activity, or actually guilty of some act against the American or Russian laws.

When we found a man who had come in under a fraudulent passport, and had in our files data which proved him to be a Bolshevist agent, or sympathizer, we could take no action, other than hold his American passport. Then we notified the Czech commandant, and he was arrested after passing from our custody.

So we exercised no military or police authority over anybody but our own nationals, or such Russians or other foreigners as fraudulently claimed American citizenship and attempted to travel as such.

In order to watch the incoming ships, all the Allies sent passport officers aboard them, and each officer conducted the examination of his own nationals. There was a line of Russian steamers, running between Tsuruga, Japan, and Vladivostok, known as the Russian Volunteer Fleet; and a similar line owned by the Japanese. These little steamers served as ferry-boats, gathering in Japan all travelers bound for Vladivostok who arrived in ports of the Far East in liners--this was the funnel through which passed the stream of civilians who came first to Shanghai, Nagasaki, Yokohama and other ports.

And before these steamers docked, they were boarded by a Japanese, a Czech, a Russian, a British, an American and a French officer, and the polyglot lot examined before they were allowed to land. I attended some of these examinations, provided with a list of suspicious characters, and with the various interpreters in action, the smoking-room put to shame anything that must have been heard at the Tower of Babel.

But so far as we were concerned, it was all a silly farce. Technically, we had no right to examine anybody. I once asked an Allied officer the basis for his authority, whereupon he told me that the city was under martial law, and controlled by an Allied Council which delegated the powers of examination to all the Allies. But this was promptly denied by another Allied officer.

In fact, it appeared that we Americans, in an effort to avoid interference, claimed no rights of control over anybody on Russian soil, making it necessary for us in order to question suspected enemies, to resort to autocratic methods. That is, we disclaimed all intentions of interfering and asserted no authority, except this plan of going through the motions of authority, which was a taking of power which might have been granted had we asked for it.

For my part, I prefer an autocracy working in the open, to a power which denies it is autocratic and then proceeds to act autocratically without any warrant. Such methods puzzled the decent Russians, and they began to doubt the things which we wanted them to believe, and which it was essential that they believe if we were to have the confidence of the Russian people.

A few days after I had raised the question of the rights of the American officers in passport control, we relinquished by order the rights we had been exercising. When Russian or other officials held men or women as suspicious, who professed to be American citizens, they brought them to American headquarters, where the examination took place. And if the facts cited by them were refuted by our information, we could do nothing but advise the Czechs of the case, and let the latter act without any suggestions from us, thus, like, Pilate, washing our hands of the whole affair.

A Czech officer, upon being asked what he would do with a certain suspect, said casually, “I don’t know--maybe we shoot him.” And maybe they did. No doubt we had to “save our face,” and if the Czechs were willing to serve us as jailers or executioners, that took a disagreeable job off our hands.

I am not, mind, asserting that the Czechs dealt out injustice, or that we should have executed anybody or everybody arrested. I object to heads in our government who lack decision as to what should be done, and resort to chicane in attending to disagreeable tasks. I object to an expedition being sent into a country, the hands of the commander apparently tied, and yet demanding that certain results be attained in a left-handed manner so that the responsibility may be shifted to other shoulders. This country is altruistic and generous toward all other nations in trouble, and we should demand from our representatives who attend to our business, the kind of leadership we are entitled to, and the clear demonstration before such foreign peoples as we come into contact with officially, of our honest motives.

From toying with various parts of the Intelligence machine, I turned my attention to distributing fifty cases of books which had been sent to the troops by the American Library Association. Our men, living in the stone-floored Russian barracks, which were cold and damp and dirty, found these books most welcome. It was a most dreary environment for young and active men, most of them too far from the city to get any entertainment from it, and when its novelty was worn off, they found even Vladivostok dull and disheartening.

The Chief of Staff suggested that a vaudeville show be organized out of the forces, and I was put in charge of it. Some fifteen men who had vaudeville experience were detailed from various companies. And to provide something with “local color,” the Chief of Staff suggested that we might hire a trio of Cossack dancers appearing at a local cabaret known as the “Aquarium.” This show began at midnight. The Chief of Staff, Donald Thompson, the war-photographer, Mrs. Thompson and myself, attended a performance. We sat in a gallery box, and drank coffee from nickel coffee-machines to keep us awake. It was a cheap and tawdry show, and the floor below was filled with a throng of people sitting at little tables and drinking and eating. The Cossack trio--two brothers and a young woman--gave an interesting exhibition of Cossack dancing, interspersed with dialogue in Russian, which delighted the doughboys present.

In a couple of days we put on a show of our own at the Aquarium, which General Graves, and many officers from all the Allied commands, attended as his guests. We had gymnasts, black-face comedians, vocal and stringed quartettes, and a regular vaudeville program of some dozen acts, including the Cossacks, with the regimental band of the Thirty-first Infantry.

It was a “hit,” probably due to the fact that I interfered not at all, but told the performers to “go ahead and get your acts ready, tell me what you will have, and we’ll write a program.” When you want the American doughboy to do something outside his regular line of duty, let him alone and he’ll come home--he needs no Bo Peep.

The Cossacks were to provide two acts, one that they supposed to be a refined American cake-walk, done in conventional evening-dress, and the other their dance, in native costume. Of course, they took more pride in their American act than in the dance, which we wished to place in the program so that it would be the “star” attraction.

It was suggested to them that they be third on the bill with the cake-walk, to give them time to rest and get into costume for the more strenuous effort next to the finale. They agreed, perfectly satisfied, and so they were billed.

I remained back stage. To my horror, when the act preceding the cake-walk was in progress, and the Cossacks were called from the dressing-room somewhere in the cellar, they appeared in their outlandish Cossack costume and makeup. For this act they required stage-sets and improvised lighting, which of course were not ready at that time.

I told my interpreter to ask them to change as quickly as possible, as they must have misunderstood the agreement about how their acts were placed on the program. But they averred that they had simply changed their minds, and intended to do the Cossack dance first, because the regular Aquarium show followed ours, and they would have to do their exhausting dance twice almost in succession if they appeared on our bill last.

I was willing enough to announce the change, and let it go at that, but although I surrendered to their wishes, they persisted in continuing a loud and long Russian conversation behind the curtain in competition with the monologuist who was amusing the audience. Then, when it was all settled that they would appear immediately in the dance, they changed their minds again, and went below to change costumes at the moment they should have gone on.

Luckily the monologuist got several encores, and being known to many of the soldiers out front, they demanded certain of his stories, and he pieced his act out long enough to conceal the wait for the Cossacks.

This example of mental instability I found to be typical of most Siberians--they will spend hours settling a problem, and having threshed out all the details, and arrived at a logical conclusion, somebody remarks: “Maybe we are wrong after all,” and away they go again on the argument, from the beginning, getting themselves more enmeshed in doubts than ever, and finally have to quit in exhaustion without reaching any decision.

Before we could start touring with our show, the Cossacks had to go to Nikolsk-Ussuri to fill an engagement at that place. And our troupe had to get costumes and rehearse, cars must be provided for winter travel, and we had to work out songs with the members of the band.

When the Chief of Staff engaged the Cossack trio, it was at the rate of four thousand rubles a month and all expenses, food and quarters. At that time, with the current rate of rubles, which was ten rubles for the dollar, the salary stood us four hundred dollars. But having in mind the dollar basis, the deal was made in rubles. When I went to Nikolsk to advise the Cossacks that we were ready for them, rubles had gone to six for a dollar, so were more valuable--and of course, the Cossacks wanted their pay in rubles.

They reached Vladivostok late at night, and with the city over-crowded, they had difficulty in getting quarters. They were temporarily sent to a Russian house across the bay, and then a fourth-class car was arranged for them on the siding at the Base. The weather was getting very cold, the car was unsatisfactory to them, they objected to being halted by our sentries when they came to the car late at night, and despite two stoves kept going by a German war prisoner, they said they nearly froze to death.

I began to understand some of the troubles of impresarios with foreign “artists.” They objected to rehearsing with our band at nine o’clock in the morning, the only time the band had available time, because they were accustomed to getting their breakfasts at eleven--they talked the most violent Russian at me at all times possible, regardless of whether my interpreter was present or not. I was sorry for them.

At this stage of affairs, I got sudden orders to proceed to Chita, two thousand versts away, and take station as the American officer on Intelligence duty. There were no American troops there, and it was reported that the American officer of Philippine Scouts whom I was to relieve, had been threatened with assassination. My “circus” was turned over to another officer, and with my interpreter, First Class Private Werkstein, I went aboard a Red Cross train bound for the front, to take station at Chita, Trans-Baikal, where Ataman Semenoff had his headquarters with his Cossack and Mongol army.

XIII

AWAY TO TRANS-BAIKAL

Our Red Cross Train left Vladivostok just before midnight, December 11, 1918. It consisted chiefly of box-cars full of medical supplies and clothing bound for Omsk; there was an International sleeping car for some twenty Red Cross nurses, Russian women doctors, American missionaries from Japan serving as refugee workers, dentists and physicians. Some of the men had just arrived in Siberia from Manila, and some of the women from Japan, and knew little of travel on a Siberian train. There were two men sent out by our War Trade Board to investigate the supply of raw materials and the wants of the people for manufactured goods. The sleeping car compartments for four persons, had to accommodate six.

The train had been combined with a Czech train, carrying supplies for the Czech army at the front, and two fourth-class cars were provided for Czech soldiers. There was also a fourth-class car full of wounded and sick Czech soldiers, most of the latter suffering from tuberculosis, to be left at Buchedo, a station far up the line where there was a hospital.

An American Infantry captain bound for Harbin to take command of a company there, serving as guard for the consulate, shared quarters with me in one of the fourth-class cars, with the Czech soldiers, and my interpreter, Werkstein, was with me.

There was a dining-car improvised out of a small and springless ordinary box-car, by building a range into one end, cutting a door in the other, and building a table down the center. Along the sides were piled our food supplies, our bread hanging in sacks from the roof, and under the table our feet rested on frozen cabbages, potatoes, and beef.

The cook got off now and then, and having, with mere money, wheedled the “starving populace” into parting with fat pheasants, threw the dead and frozen birds into the cook-car with brutal disregard of the needs of the natives. And as a further example of dire necessity, of food shortage, I observed at one place some peasants (not pheasants) so close to starvation, that they had nothing with which to grease the wheels of their wagons but best Siberian butter! We heard about this time by cable that the Congress of the United States would be asked to appropriate a hundred million dollars for the purchase of food, which food was to be sent to wheatless and meatless Europe in order to prevent the spread of Bolshevism--that same Bolshevism which had swept Siberia “as the result of a lack of food.”

Chang, a wily Chinese, bossed the “China boys” who did the cooking and waited on the table. And a place at the table generally meant being frozen, or roasted, according to whether one sat at the end away from a red-hot stove near the door, or near the stove. And it seemed that the engineer picked out the roughest part of the road-bed to show his best speed, when we were at meals.

A doctor once asked me to pass the cheese. At the same instant, we hit a curve, and a whole round of cheese from the top of the pile of stores behind him over his head, toppled over, sailed over him and alighted on his coffee.

As we got into Manchuria, the temperature dropped to about forty degrees below zero. The door of the diner, from which emerged the warm air, was draped in great icicles, and when the door was opened, we were met by a rush of steam--the warm air meeting the cold.

The women nurses, having modern ideas of ventilation, left the windows of their compartments slightly open one night. In the morning the heating-pipes in that car were useless, for it was a hot-water system, and the provodnik had allowed the fires in the heater to go down during the night. The sleeping car, for the rest of the trip, might have served well as a cold-storage car.

With two stoves going continually in our fourth-class car, even though they burned Manchurian coal and gave off a yellow smoke, most of which escaped into the car, kept us comfortable. We were warm, if not sanitary. And when the weather got to sixty below, I gave up all ideas of hoping for fresh air while sleeping.

And during the day, at every stop, we three Americans got out for air, risking having our feet frozen in the process. The Czechs did not seem to mind--they went on with their cooking, and stoked the fires all the harder to warm the air we had cooled by opening the doors to go out.

Everything that was metal inside, became covered with heavy frost--pistols, iron braces, nail-heads, bolts. And to touch any of the iron work with bare hands, getting on or off the car, meant leaving a palm sticking to the iron.

At the same time that the water-bucket on the floor under my bunk was freezing solid, when I stood up to dress my head was in smothering heat gathered at the top of the car. And the passing landscape was obscured by tropical foliage, etched in frost, on the double windows.

In such a climate, I can well understand that the Russian peasant cares little who rules in Petrograd, for his mind is concerned only with having food, shelter and warmth. Such cold probably accounts for much of the mental stupefaction of the Siberians, and explains why the Czars held their power so long.

When Siberia was chosen as a place of exile, to cure people of thinking, the person who selected that frozen land for prisons doubtless knew what terrible cold will do to the human brain. It killed many exiles, but it acted as a preservative of their ideas, and they bided their time, waiting for a chance to get freedom, so that they might go on a spree of destruction. It will take more than a few months of education to turn such people from their age-old lessons in oppression, cruelty and annihilation.

There was a merry wag among the Czechs. He had lost two front teeth, he was poorly clad, but he relished his soup, enjoyed his sleep, and was always smiling and chattering gaily. One cold night, when we were out of coal, he dug from his boxes a gorgeous robe, blue outside and embellished with red decorations of barbaric design. It was lined with long, white Angora-goat wool. As he wrapped himself in it, he looked like some Mongolian prince, preparing for a royal audience.

This garment roused my curiosity. He said it was from the Khirgiz tribes. I asked its price, and Werkstein interpreted this:

“A man’s life.”

“Whose life?” I asked.

“The man who had it.”

“Who had it?”

“A Bolshevist.”

“Why did it cost him his life?”

“Because I killed him and took it.” The wag smiled a gentle smile.

“He got that rifle, and that pistol he has, from the same man,” said Werkstein. And the wag rolled up and went to sleep, evidently not at all concerned about the ghost of the Bolshevist who had owned the robe.

“He was in an Austrian regiment,” continued Werkstein, giving me some of the merry one’s history. “He deserted with his regiment to the Russians, for the Czechs did not want to serve the Germans. In reprisal, the little business he had at home was confiscated, his wife became crazy when his two children were taken away, and he does not know what became of any of them. He is waiting now to get back to that Austrian village, and he swears he will kill till he is killed when he gets there. He does not care what happens to him--he will get his revenge.”

And without doubt the wag will.

In about a week we arrived in Harbin, and stopped there some three days. The city appeared very dull by day, but at night the restaurants and theatres were crowded with gay throngs.

I found a young officer on duty there, who had shared my stateroom on the transport, and we dined at the Hotel Moderne. The prices were extremely high, but the food excellent. The restaurant was full of Russian officers, and wealthy civilians, for Harbin is really the center of high life for the Siberians, it being in Manchuria and somewhat safer than other cities.

Here gather all the intriguers of all factions, here are hatched the plots and counter plots of the monarchists and anti-monarchists, the Bolshevists and anti-Bolshevists of Siberia.

The man who seeks power and wishes to draw to him his adherents, goes first to Harbin to perfect his plans, and the man who has lost power, goes there to escape the fury of the populace and lay his plans for regaining his old position. It is quite likely that among the crowd at the opera that night, there were former Grand Dukes waiting till the time is ripe for a _coup d’etat_; if the former Czar is still alive, he is probably hidden away in Harbin, and if a Romanoff ever returns to the throne, Harbin will probably harbor the heads of the plot for the restoration.

Among the Russians I met there, was a nephew of Tolstoy, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant. But officers of higher rank appear to prefer civilian attire. And when introduced to them, I found that the ranks mentioned with their names, were pronounced in low tones. And it is not at all uncommon to be introduced to somebody with the name given in a conversational tone, and later to have whispered to you, the real name and title of the new acquaintance.

Judging from some of the acts of the cabaret near the Moderne, Harbin is not wholly a royalist center. A singer, in the rags and chains of a Siberian convict, sang in dismal notes the story of his sufferings, and “died” on the stage. He had to respond to a dozen encores.

But I suspected some of the excessive applause to come from persons who were of the old nobility, if not of imperial blood. Living incognito in Harbin, it might not be safe for a Grand Duke to hiss such an act, and in such a case, a man may save himself from assassination by bursting his white gloves in sympathy for a stage exile.

We took on food supplies at Harbin, and the Czechs loaded their cars with cigarettes and wine for a Christmas celebration at the front.

They had one car nearly full of cases of wine, and worried lest it might freeze. They consulted me about it, but not knowing the amount of alcohol it contained, I refused to give an opinion as to what might happen to it in such frigid weather. So they set up a stove in the car, and took turns keeping the fire going, day and night.

The hardships of a Siberian winter, with famine stalking about, can only be realized when you face the problem of keeping a whole car-load of wine from freezing in sixty-below temperature. The soldiers who were not on duty sitting up with the wine, spent the nights in my car, where I was trying to sleep. They talked about the danger to the wine--talked in ear-torturing Czecho-Slovak. They also rambled around with candles that leaked wax upon the countenances of their sleeping Allies. Rest was not for those Czechs (nor for anyone else), and their faithfulness and fortitude in preserving that wine is a thing to stick in the memory. They ought to be decorated. A certain irritable Red Cross agent came near doing it.

We passed many hospital trains coming from the front, filled with sick and wounded Russians and Czechs. And it was on this trip that I saw the awful refugee trains, with box-cars full of men, women and children suffering from typhus and other diseases.

And it was said that one of these trains, having come thousands of miles carrying dying and dead huddled together in straw, were turned back at a certain station by the Russians, because they feared contagion. And from these cars were taken many dead, frozen and lying among the sick. And from the crevices of the floors of the cars, and from the interstices under the doors, hung great red icicles!

I observed many educated Russians look at such scenes with little sympathy. At least, their attitude was that the people had brought such sufferings upon themselves by overthrowing the throne of the Emperor.

While waiting for the “second table” in the diner, I had occasion to discuss the country with a young Russian woman, bound for Perm to seek her father and mother, from whom she had not heard in a year and a half. There had been much fighting there with the Bolshevists, and she was unaware of the fate of her parents.

“My father superintended the building of this section of the railroad,” she said. “I lived with him on his private car as the line was built through this part of the country, so I know every mile well. Little I dreamed then that my great country would be ruined as it is now. Court life was so fine--the fine clothes, the nobility, the great dinners, and the imperial dances--it is too bad that all such things are gone. Maybe they will come back.”

“But the people suffered under that régime,” I said.

She looked at me with surprised eyes.

“Suffered! They were never so happy, and they will never be so happy again. They do not know what they want. I went into a refugee barrack last month outside Vladivostok, and found there an old woman who had been one of our servants for years. She was afraid to speak to me--afraid that I would be marked as one of the aristocracy, and probably suffer for it. But I talked with her--and how she wished that she were back in our happy home. She knows she was better off with us in the old days, than she can ever hope to be again. She would have lived a few more years in peace and comfort as our servant, and wanted nothing. Now she will probably have to live and die as a beggar. The poor people suffer more by this than the wealthy do--even if a few rich people are killed, and their property taken. My Russia was all right, as it was. And if I don’t find my father and mother, I am going to South America.”

As an individual attitude, the expressions of this young woman might not be regarded of much value, or at all typical of the well educated Russian. Yet I found her ideas to be general with all the better class Russians I met--that Russia under the old régime was an ideal country, and that the peasant and servant classes were as happy as they wished to be, and better off than they would be if they lived under a democratic form of government which gave them all a hand in the government.

It is an attitude similar to that held in the South regarding our negro slaves--they were better off as slaves, than they could be if free. It is a feudal frame of mind, in which it is granted that there are two classes of people in the country, those who know all and have all, and those who are inherently inferior in brain quality and so require to be held in leash, giving their labor in exchange for such kindnesses as the over-lord wishes to dispense to them.

This mental attitude toward an inferior class, held by the upper class of Russia, accounts for the American failure, generally speaking, to understand Russia and the Russians. We persist in thinking of all Russians as the same, with the exception that some are better educated than the others, when as a matter of fact there are two different peoples in Russia. One is a class which expects as a matter of course to have all the best things which the country provides, and the government is merely a system upon which hangs a social code, and which gives out orders, titles of nobility, and administrative positions which provide incomes.

In a way, the feudal attitude in old Russia was the proper one, provided the ideal feudal system was carried out; that is, if the over-lords all used their power to lift up such of their menials as gave evidence of being possessed of some mental ability.

But the feudal system as it operated, granted no mental ability to any underling, or “low-born” person, and worked with no other object than to keep the low-born submerged, and lift to power and position even worthless members of the upper class.

The son of the noble who could not pass his examinations, graduated from the university and despite profligacy and licentiousness, rose to power in the government.

The commoner, though displaying great brilliance, found himself unable to pass in his examinations year after year if he ever entered the university at all, and had to give up in despair. But in the arts, genius succeeded, and produced authors and painters--and the result was that all writers of great natural ability became revolutionists.

Through them we got our sympathy for the peasants, and as these writers understood that the lower classes were victimized and exploited by the system, they presented to us all Russians as people of great ideals--they extolled the virtues of the exploited and minimized their faults and limitations. At the same time, they depicted with great power all the cruelties of the ruling classes.

Thus the Russian peasant reasoned that he had no faults, that if he had the power he could produce an ideal government, and that because the ruling classes ruled badly, all that was needed to run the nation was a kind and generous heart. Thus also the Bolshevist leaders found it easy to take the Empire into their hands. The upper class of Russia made Bolshevism possible by keeping the lower class ignorant. And ignorance is the greatest menace to any nation--the spark in a powder magazine.

As we went eastward, I studied the people, keeping in mind the attitude of the young woman who felt that Russia was ruined because all the good things she had known were gone, and because the peasants were worse off than ever.

And I found that the peasants did not consider themselves any the worse for having destroyed the old régime; at least, they seemed willing to endure the hardships they had imposed upon themselves, in the hope that in due time things would be better.

But my feeling was that they will never live to see things bettered, no matter how long they may live. There may be less disorder of a kind, but I doubt if these people will ever escape being exploited till they have acquired a leaven of education. But to educate them in the sense by which we define education, means to change their whole mental attitude toward themselves, their country, and life in general.

To the Russian of the lower class, who has been inarticulate for generations, there are no degrees of education. He does not realize that among a thousand persons who have, say, graduated from a university in the same class, all members of which have taken the same courses of study, there is any variation of intellect, and difference in ability, any deeper sense of meanings of things in one individual than in another. Why should there be? he asks. Are they not all educated? He thinks of education, as a certain moment in which the student becomes aware of all knowledge, and acquires all wisdom. And to the primitive minds of these people, “education” means the ability to read, write, and figure.

At one station where we changed train crews, a big fellow, with a gigantic wooly cap, came into our car and sat by the stove. His assistants paid him much deference. He began to talk with the Czechs, and once set going, went on like a great phonograph. The Czechs finally ignored him, and he began to question Werkstein, my interpreter. Werkstein had difficulty in concealing his amusement at some of the things the big fellow said, and I got into the conversation.

“This chap is educated,” said Werkstein. “That is why the provodnik and the brakeman sit here and listen to him talk--they feel that they are learning something. They almost worship him because he can tell them things he has read in books.”

“What books has he read?” I asked. “Gorky, Puskin, Tolstoy?”

The conductor threw up his hands in a delirium of joy as he heard me pronounce the names of the Russian novelists. Now he could show his fellows that he could talk to the American on common ground.

But when I asked him to name some of the works of these writers that he had read, he pushed back his cap and scratched his head with a ponderous paw. He could not remember the titles--but he had read all their works. But he was utterly ignorant of anything Tolstoy or Gorky had written--he merely recognized the titles when they were mentioned.

He changed the subject by asserting that we Americans wanted all Russians to agree on a government, when we Americans could not agree on our own. I agreed that there were some differences of opinion as to government in our country, but that in general we agreed fairly well.

“Then why do you have so many presidents?” he asked in triumph.

“We try to have but one,” I said.

“You have more than fifteen now,” he replied, and dug his elbow into the ribs of a brakeman sitting behind him, to indicate that he had made a point which I could not refute.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“I cannot remember their names,” he asserted, but holding up a hand, he began to count on his fingers: “You have presidents in Brazil, Argentine, Chile, Mexico, ----.” The Czechs interrupted him with roars of laughter, and Werkstein explained to me. But he insisted that he was right.

He switched to a map of his own country, a lithograph advertising American harvesting machinery, and showing by red spots the size of a dime, the location in Russian cities of their agencies. Naturally, the spot over Petrograd was as large as the spots on the smaller cities in the grain districts of Siberia, but he proudly asserted that all these spots represented cities the size of Petrograd. No, he had never been to Petrograd, but was it not as big as Harbin?

India, he said, was somewhere near Japan. He had read of Venice, and its streets of water, but Venice was not in Italy. How could it be in Italy? Venice was somewhere in Europe, and Italy was not in Europe--the book he had read about Venice had stated that Venice was not in Italy, and he stuck by the book.

This man was educated to his fellows. “If this man should go to a small Russian town, and read from a newspaper for the people of that town, he could become mayor,” said Werkstein. “He is so ignorant that he thinks he knows a lot.” Which is not an uncommon delusion, even out of Siberia.

He was also in sympathy with the Bolshevists, having as his only argument in their favor, the fact that they were “good people.” Now this man, being a conductor, had a considerable influence over such peasants as he met, for as a railroad man he travelled much, and as an “educated man,” had read much. Many gave heed to what he said. And compared to thousands of Siberians that I encountered, his intellect was amazingly powerful.

Yet at home I found people who felt that the peasants of Siberia know what they are doing, and are actuated by a desire to create a democratic government, and that in a short time they will, and operate it. But Siberia will fall a prey to some autocrat, who will rule it by the sword, independently of Petrograd. Such a vast and such a rich territory, peopled with human beings in the darkness of the Middle Ages, can have no other fate.

Our progress was delayed for various reasons, the chief one being the fact that wrecks occurred ahead of us with startling frequency. As a matter of fact, Bolshevists, or Bolshevist sympathizers, or railroad men in Bolshevist pay, were causing the wrecks. It was all a system of sabotage, and being done to hamper the Allies in every way from opposing the Bolshevists who were fighting.

And as we came into the yards of Manchuria Station, or Mandchuli, at about daylight one morning, switches were thrown in such a way that our train, laden with medical supplies for Russian wounded and sick, and with one car full of women nurses, was derailed, and put on three tracks. The immunity which we might have claimed from being wrecked, was lost because we had combined with a Czech military train.

Our Czech commandant took a squad of soldiers to the station, and demanded the man who had derailed us. But the station-master asserted that the culprit had disappeared. So no vengeance was taken.

It was forty below zero that morning. The shaggy camels that passed us, appeared to wear great white coats, for every hair on their bodies stood out straight, covered with frost. So we had breakfast in the station restaurant, and waited through the day for the railroad men to get us back on the rails.

I found the American officer on Intelligence duty at that station, living in a Russian home, and we went and lunched with the Railroad Engineers of the Stevens contingent. One of them was an excellent cook, and we had a splendid meal, the prize of the household being a large jar of gooseberry jam. The house was fairly good, but despite its massive proportions, cold as Greenland. And in the time I spent in Siberia, I never found a house or a hotel that was comfortably warm, even when I was clad in the heaviest clothing, except the house occupied by Colonel Morrow in Khabarovsk.

We arrived in Chita, Trans-Baikal, thirteen days after leaving Vladivostok. As I looked out that morning, over a drear landscape partly concealed by frozen fog, I had in mind the thousands of exiles who had marched overland to Chita, for the city in the old days had been a distributing point for convict labor destined for the mines to the north.

It was fifty degrees below that morning. I saw a low, white plain, shut in on three sides by hills, studded with huts. The huts were marked by white pillars of steam rising straight into the sky--warm air escaping from the chimneys. The station door was shrouded with ice, and whenever it opened there was a burst of white steam outward, but upon entering there was no steam inside--only a warm, odoriferous air. Great icicles over the door, some of them a foot through, are characteristic of public buildings in that country during the cold weather.

We learned that we had passed through the city station of Chita, and had come three versts beyond to “Pervia Chita,” or First Chita, that being the name of the first station built as the building of the road progressed toward Vladivostok.

Werkstein got a man with a pony and a cart, and we loaded our baggage. Then, trailing along after it, walking in order not to freeze our feet, we skirted the railroad, and came to a railroad bridge over a gully, which was to lead us to Chita proper.

But just as our wagon approached the bridge, a Russian ran out of a hut, and let down bars, blowing a horn loudly meanwhile. Our pony had to stop, and we had to wait.

We spent the time walking to and fro in an effort to keep warm. Werkstein said there was a train coming, and the bridge guard could not let us cross after he had been warned. And the time between when the guard closed the bridge, and the freight train crossed and we were allowed to pass, was forty-five minutes. At both ends of the bridge long lines of traffic had been held up, and men and horses obviously suffered greatly from cold. But _Nitchyvo_! The people are too good-natured to protest. What does it matter? Nothing, except that I have observed in lands where people are noted for their good nature, those people bow their necks under the yoke of a foreign conqueror.