Chapter XXVIII: The United States in Asia 316 (5)

There is a system of philosophy used as a thesis for happy books in the United States, somewhat akin to New Thought, which can see no evil in any thing or any person. The heroes and heroines of such books being depicted as living in happy American homes, insist that everybody should be happy and can be happy, merely by seeking happiness. But while these youngsters are being happy, father is making money, and somebody does a deal of work that the machinery of government, and the machinery of modern life, may be kept going. And such books sell by the millions to American people. Happiness should not be the result of wearing mental blinders. For the curse of Russia was not the Czar, but the peasants _Nitchyvo_--“no matter.”

XIV

THE CITY OF CONVICTS

My first impressions of Chita were good. It had an excellent though dirty station, and the buildings were substantial, most of those in the business district being of stone or brick. There were two big Russian churches, a synagogue, and a Mohammedan mosque, two local newspapers being published intermittently, banks which did not at that time boast of their assets, trade-schools, high schools, and a school conducted by the clergy but which was temporarily closed, its building having been commandeered by Ataman Semenoff, the chief of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks, for an officers’ school. The population was between fifty and sixty thousand. There were two fairly good hotels, the better one held by Semenoff as quarters for his officers and their families.

The streets were wide and laid in straight lines. And oddly enough, in a country which we assume to be buried in snow during the winter, to walk the streets meant to sink ankle-deep in dust. All the snow I saw in Chita was a mantle of fine particles on ground which was not disturbed by traffic. It was too cold to snow.

We found the officer I was to relieve in the Hotel Dayooria. The room was dark, because the single window was an inch thick with frost. But there was an electric drop-light. On the window-sill were tea, sugar, bread and a mess-kit. The scant furniture was dangerous to use, for the Bolshevists had gone through the hotel and wrecked it.

I was offered a room for myself and interpreter which was bare of furniture, the walls stripped clean of paper, the window repaired poorly, at the rate of twenty-five rubles per occupant, or at the then rate of exchange, about five dollars a day for both.

The halls were filthy dirty, and the odors nauseating. The toilet on the main floor had plumbing, but not water, and it had been in use for several months. There was no light in it, and its ventilation was attended to by the door which opened into the dirty hall. The place made its presence known throughout the building, and neither proprietor nor Russian guests felt that there was anything out of the ordinary in their surroundings.

To travel over the country and find such conditions everywhere, regarded by the native population as normal, and then to hear of epidemics which were being fought by the Red Cross doctors, and thousands of dollars in medical supplies and medicines being shipped into the country as gifts from the American people, made me wonder if it would not be better to first use a knout on those responsible for insanitary conditions beyond description or belief.

There was a great clamor about the danger of typhus, and our medical men, military and civilian, were much concerned about its spread. There were slips of paper distributed, printed in Russian, telling what to do when afflicted with typhus. It was described as a disease caused by body vermin, and urging personal cleanliness. I have seen many Siberians read that warning, while they casually scratched themselves. Generally speaking, the people regard lice as things which create a slight discomfort, but are not worthy of much attention--about on a par with flies.

One thing the Siberian does thoroughly--he takes a funeral seriously. He turns it into a dramatic pageant, and no detail is overlooked. But he will not turn his hand over to take any precaution against disease, or the conditions that create it. I asked several Siberians, merely to get their attitudes, if it would not be well to improve sanitary conditions. “You will all be sick and die,” I said to one man.

“We may be sick, but we will not die,” he said. “What if we are sick? The Americanskys are sending medicines to cure us.”

Probably if we demanded good sanitary conditions before we would supply medical goods, we would be interfering with the people. But if we were going to contribute medicines to a locality at home which allowed breeding spots for disease all over the locality, I am willing to wager that we would demand an improvement of the sanitation, and see that it was accomplished, even if we had to use some kind of force.

One of my first duties was to call upon Lieutenant General Oba, commanding the Japanese division, with headquarters at Chita. The Japanese staff occupied a four-story department store which covered an entire block. This building had been swept clean of its contents by looting Bolshevists.

It happened that the Chief of Intelligence in our forces, had been in Chita several days, and was preparing to return to Vladivostok. He went with me to Oba’s headquarters, and we took with us a Y. M. C. A. man who had been a missionary in Japan and who spoke Japanese well.

In the hall there was a wooden dial on a table, with a wooden arrow. In sectors of the circle, were written Japanese and Russian sentences, arranged so that when you read the Russian sentence which applied to the officer you wished to call upon, and turned the arrow to that sector, it also pointed to a translation in Japanese. Then the guard on duty learned from this automatic interpreter, your business, and sent your card in to the proper officer.

We were conducted to a room where we removed our heavy coats and furs, and presently we were ushered into the presence of Oba. He is a small man, of dignified but unassuming manners, and most amiable. I liked him extremely. If I remember correctly, his foreign training was French, and I missed the Germanic bluntness and the striving for dignity which so many Japanese officers have as the result of acquiring or copying German military manners.

Most Japanese officers who attain high rank are in addition to being accomplished soldiers, astute diplomats. At least that is the impression they give me. It may be that what I ascribe to astuteness, is in reality an avoidance of discussing many of the things which other foreign officers will discuss together with more or less frankness. Silence is often mistaken for great wisdom. It may be wise to be silent--if one wishes to appear wise. In a newspaper experience covering nearly a quarter of a century, I have sometimes found many men supposed to be oracles, merely to be clams. Once they could be induced to talk, their limitations were apparent.

I would say that Oba has all the French love of conversation, and in addition is most frank. There was no reason why he should plunge into a discussion of Japan in Siberia, and there was no reason why he should be more than formally polite. Yet every time I had occasion to call on Oba, he made me feel thoroughly at home, and such occasions proved to be in the nature of a pleasure rather than an official ordeal. His abilities as a soldier I do not doubt, but I believe he would serve Japan well as a diplomat.

Technically, it was proper to call first upon Ataman Semenoff, but at that time he was confined to his bed suffering from the wounds inflicted by a bomb thrown at him in a theatre of Chita. So we called upon his chief of staff, General Verego. There was much intrigue in Semenoff’s little army of some five thousand, and Verego lost his power in time, and went away to Harbin.

We also called upon the head of the civil government, or who would have been the head of the civil government of the province had there been any civil government--a Mr. Tashkin, who at one time was a member of the Duma. He proved to be a typical Russian statesman, including whiskers and glasses. His keen eyes impressed me as being able to see and understand many things, and I felt that he was only biding his time till certain military autocracies could be pushed into the background. He is the type of man upon which Russia will have to depend for statesmanship, when it gives up government by the sword.

Oba, Semenoff, Tashkin--to me, those three symbolized the situation in Siberia. Oba, to a certain extent, with the power of the Japanese Empire behind him, stood behind Semenoff; Semenoff was at outs with Kolchak, who in Omsk proclaimed himself the Supreme Ruler of Russia; Semenoff had fought the Bolshevists with his little army while Kolchak remained inactive in Harbin; Kolchak, the way cleared by Semenoff’s army, jumped ahead of Semenoff to Omsk and became the chief of all Russia in theory; Semenoff, ambitious to set himself up as a local prince if not ambitious to be the dictator of all Russia, resented being called upon to subordinate himself to Kolchak and have his wings clipped.

Kalmikoff, being a Cossack, stood with Semenoff so far as he dared, he in turn backed by Oi, the Japanese commander at Khabarovsk. The United States stood aloof, merely pleading that all parties come to agreement. Tashkin remained quiet in the background, holding the thin thread of his civil power.

Semenoff was charged by Kolchak with treason, and blocking the railroad and cutting the wires near Chita. Semenoff denied the charges, and some of his own supply trains were held up near Harbin by General Horvat, head of the Chinese Eastern section of the Trans-Siberian. Horvat is said to have taken that action to aid Kolchak in forcing Semenoff to put his army and himself under the orders of Kolchak. In the meantime, while these forces should have combined and been whipping the Bolshevists, the latter were gaining strength and cutting Russia’s throat.

My chief dined with a Russian family the night he left and expected his train to arrive about ten o’clock. His interpreter went to the station and learned that the train would be in about seven. So we sent hasty word to the colonel, and he left the dinner and hastened to the station. We pried our way into the usual crowd of refugees and sat on the colonel’s baggage in the evil-smelling restaurant.

Seven o’clock came, but no train. Inquiry resulted in the information that it would be there “Sichass,” or presently. The train came at two the next morning. It was stuffed to suffocation, as usual. The station commandant fought his way into a second-class car, found a compartment with accommodations for four persons which held eight, and routed them all out. The passage in the car was so jammed with people that we had difficulty in getting in, and had to pass the baggage over the heads of the crowd. And the eight who had been evicted, together with their food and cooking utensils, stood around and cursed the commandant.

In order to reach the train, we had to first climb over ice-covered freight cars, which stood between the passenger train and platform. The night was dark, the tracks were coated with ice, and everything was slippery. But we managed to transfer all the colonel’s belongings, and left him with a guttering candle in his compartment. A Chinese colonel and his interpreter were put in with him, and the train pulled out for Vladivostok. Werkstein and I went back to our hotel, and to bed. We represented the United States in Chita. The next morning two of Semenoff’s officers were found assassinated in the streets--their backs had been blown out in the frozen fog of the night before.

XV

ATAMAN SEMENOFF

It will be remembered by the reader that the officer whom I relieved at Chita, feared assassination. I have no reason to believe that he did not have good grounds for his fears. Naturally, I assumed that I was taking over his dangers, when I took his post. And despite the presence of Semenoff’s army, and his armored train in the railroad yards, there was a feeling of uneasiness in the city. Sentries were posted in the centers of the streets, and kept their little fires burning every night. There were rumors every day that the Bolshevists in the city were about to rise and slay, or that Bolshevist bands were going to swoop down upon us from some other city, and complete the destruction they had begun before Semenoff drove them away.

And the fact that the man who threw the bomb at Semenoff in the theatre was a private in one of the Ataman’s infantry regiments, kept the officers on the alert. The bomb-thrower, who said his name was Bernbaum, was reported to have confessed coming from Irkutsk where he had drawn the number which delegated to him the killing of the Ataman. He asserted that he had been instructed by the “Maximalists” or Bolshevists, to go to Chita and join Semenoff’s army, and wait his chance to kill. His bomb killed a woman in the Ataman’s box, and wounded several men, the Ataman suffering several wounds from bits of the bomb.

There were stories of mutinies among Semenoff’s troops, and there were whisperings that all of Semenoff’s officers were not loyal. Most of his men were mercenaries anyhow, and the bulk of his forces was made up of Mongols, Buriats, some Russians who were truly anti-Bolshevist, and many who had wisely attached themselves to an organization which gave food, clothing and shelter in exchange for carrying a rifle and doing guard duty.

When the bomb was thrown from the gallery, one of Semenoff’s officers jumped up and cried: “I will have everybody in the gallery shot, if you will give the order, Ataman!”

“No, no, we must not do that!” replied the stricken Ataman. But there were many arrests, and shortly afterward there were several executions. Later, the actual bomb-thrower was arrested while escaping toward Blagoveschensk. I never learned his fate, but heard that he had given several names to the Ataman’s officers, and that the men mentioned were not far from Chita. I suspect that on one of the nights I was being banqueted, there was a shooting party.

I had sent word to the staff that when the Ataman had recovered, I wished to pay a formal call. We had not recognized Semenoff as an official governmental head, yet we did make calls on him, just as we talked with anybody who could give us an inkling as to what was going on. Instructions were in general to meet everybody on a friendly basis, but to take no sides.

One evening I got word that the Ataman would see me. I set out for his residence with a Russian civilian agent, who had come from Manila with the expedition. His name was Nicholas Romanoff, a name which amused many of the Cossack officers.

But Mr. Romanoff knew the Ataman intimately, and Mr. Romanoff kindly suggested to me the things I should say to the Ataman, just as no doubt he suggested to the Ataman what the Ataman should say to me. This state of affairs indicates to some extent the ease and ability of American officers getting an absolute American viewpoint on Russian affairs, and the Russian and Cossack officers being able to understand fully the American attitude.

I considered it about as satisfactory a proceeding, for Russian and American interests, as getting a kiss through a plate-glass window. I imagine that the interpreters got satisfaction, for they were automatically turned into diplomats, and controlled both sides. And the power granted them, made it possible for them to reflect the point of view from which they might acquire for themselves the most prestige. But in the case of Mr. Romanoff, there was every evidence that he displayed discretion and tact. He was the personal interpreter of the Chief of Intelligence, who had brought him to Siberia from Manila. And Mr. Romanoff had known Siberia well before he had changed it as a place of residence, for the Philippines.

At that season of the year we lost the sun about four thirty in the afternoon, and it was getting quite dark as we approached the Ataman’s residence. We were halted by the sentry, and on explaining our mission, were admitted to the hall. Here we were met by officers of the Ataman’s personal staff, and after the usual bowing, and heel-clicking, left our furs, and were ushered into a large drawing-room. The room was richly and tastefully furnished. The high-posted walls were hung with splendid tapestries, and the floor beautifully carpeted.

There were a few pieces of black furniture, which appeared to be of the ornately-carven Chinese variety. The whole effect was more oriental than Cossack, though of course the real Cossack is probably more oriental than anything else. And, in fact, I had heard that Semenoff was more of a Mongolian than a Cossack, being according to report, a Prince of Van. The only place of which I know named Van is in European Turkey, though there may be a Van in Mongolia.

The Ataman entered, on crutches. I saw a stockily-built man, of medium height, wearing Prussian blue trousers rather small at the bottoms of the legs, suggestive of being habitually worn with boots. He had on slippers. His face was heavily-jowled, very dark, his chin chubbily-protuberant in the Rubens style. He wore heavy drooping black mustaches, his black eyes keen and somewhat suspicious, his hair suggestive of scantness on top, and a Napoleonic lock down over his low, broad forehead.

His photographs were always made so as to bring out his Napoleonic points, which I had heard he prided himself upon. He was credited with carrying a book in his pocket which told how Napoleon acted in every situation which required a decision, and that when he had to decide anything, he first consulted the book. Evidently my visit brought up no point which required a Napoleonic decision--at least, I did not see him consult the book while I was there.

I was bowed to a chair, and the Ataman let himself down gently on a couch. He seemed a trifle worried, but he may have been oppressed by pain. He had only recently induced the banks of Chita to loan him several million rubles to pay off his army--and a local banker had called on me that day. After we had talked a little, and I had told the Ataman that I had heard of his ability as an organizer and leader of armies, and of his prowess in battle, he appeared relieved, and pulled the lock on his forehead down a bit more.

The lady who presided over his Chita household came in. The slight view I took of her as I rose and bowed, leaves me no recollections. Even had I desired to be courteous to a woman in her position, discretion counselled as little notice as possible.

I had heard that more than one Russian officer with an admiring eye for “wives” of other officers, had been picked up dead in the streets. A sharp look from the Ataman, and the hostess did not linger. I remember that she did not have on the pearl necklace for which the Ataman was said to have paid several hundred thousand rubles in Harbin, at a time when he was short of money for his troops. His domestic régime was reputed to cost him as much for upkeep as his army. Perhaps, after all, I was not introduced to the lady who got the pearls.

I had a cigar, and we talked of safe trifles. I was there some twenty minutes. And as we passed through the line of sentries about the Ataman’s palace-like mansion, into the cold crisp air, I saw on the plain below, thousands of lights burning in rude log huts. It was all so typical of Asia--few palaces and many huts. One man, with an army at his back, “borrowing” from the banks to cast pearl before swine. What better conditions to breed Bolshevism? But the same conditions exist among the leaders of the Bolshevists, who merely play the mobs against the military exploiters of the people, to get control of the banks and the money, and to have wealth for spending in the same style. Thus the ignorance of the people prevent them from escaping exploitation in some form or another. We of the United States think that it will be settled by waiting for the people to organize themselves, so that they may express their will. It is a case of waiting till new generations have been educated.

People have said to me: “There maybe disorder now in Siberia, but I believe that the common people know what they are doing, and will do what they want to do.”

They know what they are doing in the same style that the country yokel at home knows what he is doing when he goes to New York and buys at bargain prices several lots in Central Park. The difference between what he is doing, and what he thinks he is doing, costs him dearly. The Bolshevists the world over are in the hands of a crafty lot of confidence men.

XVI

FAMINE IN CHITA

There had been much discussion at home in the newspapers about famine in Siberia, and in Vladivostok this fear of famine was uppermost in the minds of diplomats, military chiefs, and civilian relief agencies. In fact, there was every evidence in Vladivostok that the inland cities of Siberia were already suffering from hunger, and with a severe winter ahead, there was much apprehension for the country people.

The refugees pouring into Vladivostok, clamoring for food, depicted a state of starvation in the towns from which they had come. And data on food-prices gleaned from refugees and the inland press, as well as reports by travellers, all combined to strengthen the belief that famine faced the whole country.

And my first meals in Chita made me suspect that there was much truth in the reports that Mother Hubbardsky’s cupboard was bare. I went to dinner with my chief the first evening in the city. We sought the best restaurant and scanned its menu with care; and after considerable pains we were able to order a meal--a modest one--at a cost of about twelve rubles each. Our rubles had cost us a dollar for eight in Vladivostok. So our dinner amounted to a dollar and a half each. Then we spied four scrawny, spotted little apples pyramided on a plate on the counter. We ordered them, ate them, and asked for our bill. The apples alone had cost us thirty-six rubles--or a dollar and twelve cents each!

An officer has to pay for his own food. In Vladivostok at the officers’ mess, three meals a day cost a dollar and a quarter. In Chita, six dollars a day, without apples, was the prospect ahead. My orderly was allowed a dollar and a quarter a day for his subsistence. With that, he could buy exactly one poor meal. The situation was rapidly losing its humorous aspect. After all, was Vladivostok right about that famine? Yet all along the line I had seen an abundance of food for people who seemed to be eating all the time. Evidently there was a wrench in the machinery somewhere. It was a case of “Who’s looney now?”

We stocked up immediately with rye bread, cheese and dried fish--all purchased, the orderly said, from peasant women near the station. The faithful Werkstein had brought with him a little sugar, some tea, chocolate in bars, and a few cans of army beef. He turned my wardrobe in the hotel room into a pantry; and with a samovar from the kitchen, prepared my meals. It was well below freezing in the room, and I usually wore my furs. There were forests all around the city. But no one could be hired to cut wood. Was not everybody free? (How I wished that our Congress would ship me a consignment of those parlor Bolshevists who were in the United States preaching the beauties of Bolshevism!)

One evening, some of Semenoff’s officers asked me to go to their garrison mess. “A little Russian supper,” they explained rather apologetically. The supper began at nine. We sat down at a tremendous table covered with dishes, and glasses in groups. There was a startling array of bottles. Presently a delicious soup was served. Then came soldier-servants bearing great salvers on which were fishes the size of young whales--decorated with fantastically carved vegetables. Next arrived coveys of quail and partridge. Viands strange and barbaric followed--dishes that suggested China and Arabia, others of Cossack origin. O shade of Lucullus! O Herbert Hoover!

The Cossack band in an adjoining room played national airs. The different kinds of glasses were emptied in as many toasts. And to my great relief, the speeches began. I say relief, because naturally, I thought the meal was over. Not so. Still the heaped salvers came. By now, I had reached the point where I could only weakly pretend to eat. My hosts watched me like hawks, insisting that I rally my appetite. They showed irritation when I demurred faintly. They demanded that I eat and drink to prove the unlimited friendship of the United States for Russia. And I wondered how our diplomats had ever survived the hospitality of such a country.

At last I saw that my only hopes lay in a limit to the Cossack capacity. Again and again, I told myself, “They have reached it!”--only to realize that what I had suffered was but a prelude to the feast.

At about three in the morning, the vodka and wines having been exhausted, champagne was served--in large, stein-like glasses. And a British officer who had just come to observe conditions, was startled when Irish porter showed up in stone jars. “Why!” he exclaimed, “We don’t have this at home any more! In England it’s a fond memory. And here they have it by the case!”

A little supper! And there was one such about every night. I had come looking for famine: I began to fear I would die of over eating. One could be forgiven a chuckle. The staff in Vladivostok had expressed some remorse over having to send me away from a mess which boasted three courses and a choice of two canned fruits for dessert!

But what about the proletariat of Chita? These officers were eating, but were the poor starving to death in cold weather? I visited the open-air free market in a square of the city. The peasants were selling cabbage, dried salmon, salmon-roe, spheres of cheese, rye and white bread in tremendous loaves, quail, partridge, pheasant, beef, pork, sausage, frozen milk and frozen soup--precisely the things I had eaten at the “little supper.”

The prices ran high. But--the people had plenty of Bolshevist money. However, this money was greatly depreciated in value. Nevertheless, the vendors at the market expected as many of my Imperial rubles for any purchase as they asked the residents of the city, who, of course, had local currency. So now I understood that the apple which I had bought in the restaurant at a dollar and twelve cents (or nine Imperial roubles), would, at nine roubles Bolshevist money, have cost a resident of Chita, only about ten cents. What had happened to me, can best be expressed in this wise: A man takes silver dollars to a city where disks have been stamped “One dollar,” and where the merchants do not care whether he gives them tin or silver--the price is the same! So the apples were not high; the explanation is that money was plentiful and cheap. And now I understood why Vladivostok was worrying over interior statistics. The department heads mistook high costs reported in Bolshevist rubles, for lack of food.

But those statistics related mainly to sugar, tea, salt, candles and other staples, commonly regarded as necessities, but turned by the speculators into luxuries. Most of the Siberian speculators are of the pack-peddler variety, because freight shipments are costly, and the goods liable to loss. One Chita shipper paid seventy-five thousand rubles for a car in Harbin to move sugar to the Trans-Baikal. The engineer got one thousand rubles to haul it; the conductor of the train got one thousand rubles to insure the car’s being cut off at Chita; and I heard that the side-track was rented to the shipper while the car was being unloaded. He assured me that he had doubled his money in spite of paying so much “grease.” But the railroad men, who are opposed to “Exploitation of the masses,” thought they were making the capitalistic speculator pay the “grease!” Those railroad men had not been paid for six months, and some of us Allied officers worried about it, and gave the crews credit for staunch loyalty to the Russian cause by sticking to their jobs. Also, a large Red Cross train went up the line and presented these poor, starving magnates who ran the trains, with new clothing!

Captain B----, a Russian serving Semenoff, invited me to his room in the hotel for tea. His wife brought from the wardrobe baskets of cookies and candies. Trunks disgorged tinned fish, bar chocolate and tinned milk. In one corner of the room was a sack of sugar; in another were sacks of flour. Those living quarters resembled a corner in the warehouse of a wholesale grocer. And everybody was stocked up like that. Moreover, they all had orders with the local dealers to send them more provisions whenever more arrived. It was a case of everybody his own grocer. I had found the Chita stores bare. No wonder.

I never saw any famine in Siberia. In fact, the only place that I heard it discussed was in Vladivostok. There, the flocks of refugees, seeking free food and shelter, were responsible for the belief in it. No doubt many of them did need aid--especially the women and children. And in the handling of those needy, our Red Cross did gallant service. But among the refugees were hundreds of able-bodied men who found it pleasant to be refugees. These men were not likely to report that the districts from which they came were plentifully supplied with food. And as these men kept pouring in from all parts of the country, a consolidation of their reports presented a false picture of conditions.

What I looked for in the interior of Siberia, contrasted with what I found, was happily, if ridiculously, disappointing. But in 1920 a similar hunt might result less humorously. To feed men stops their work; to stop work stops production. And lack of production spells future need. So next year,--who knows?--it may be possible to find famine in Siberia--if meanwhile the people of that country consume their total reserves on the strength of our promise of generous aid. In my humble opinion, the United States should avoid, in Siberia, all Christmas-Tree talk.

XVII

NEW YEAR WITH THE JAPANESE

New Year’s Day, 1919, began for me at fifteen minutes after midnight, with a thunderous knocking at the glass door of my room. This was rather disconcerting, for there had been rumors the night before that the Bolshevists were going to rise in the city, and slay. The glass door, with its colored paper stuck in the panes, was not ideal for siege purposes; but it had certain advantages, in that I could shoot through it while the Bolshevists were breaking it in.

I got out of bed without making any reply to the summons. I had opened the tiny trap-door in the wall which served as a ventilator, and the room was well chilled, for there was no heat in the radiators. It was about fifty below zero outside--and about the same inside.

Turning on the electric drop-light at my desk, I put on my purple dressing-gown, and slipped my automatic into its pocket. Then I unlocked and threw open the door, stepping discreetly to one side, a habit one soon acquires in a country so free and equal as Siberia.

The hall was quite dark. I made out a figure close at hand, and in the light from my electric lamp I caught the gleam of gold shoulder straps. A Russian officer clicked his heels, bowed, and spoke my name in good English.

I bade him enter, supposing he was an officer sent by the Ataman. But he had just reached Chita by special train from Omsk, and was bound for Vladivostok. He came to tell me of a Bolshevist uprising in Omsk, some ten days before, which had been put down. Many Bolshevist prisoners released from the prisons by their friends outside, had been shot.

This news did not surprise me at the time. I had been told three weeks before that the Bolshevists would rise in Omsk on that very date, release the prisoners, and attack the Kolchak garrison. I made an effort to recall who had foretold the uprising, and remembered a drosky-driver who spoke English with whom I had drunk tea in a station down the line. On the supposition that he was merely boasting for my benefit when he claimed to be closely in touch with the Bolshevists, I had let the story pass as idle talk, for if one attempted to report all rumors, a dozen secretaries would be required by every officer in the country. But now I realized that the drosky-driver was in reality in the confidence of the Bolshevist leaders at Omsk, several thousand versts away. He had foretold the exact date of the uprising now reported to me.

My Russian officer’s train had encountered Bolshevists at two stations, and from the second his train had been run back for the purpose of reinforcing his guard. When he ran down the line again to where his progress had been opposed, he got through without difficulty, for in the meantime the Bolshevists had been driven away.

Having warned me of these facts, he was obliged to hasten back to his train. With a click and a handshake he was away, and I went back to bed, not quite sure I had not dreamed a chapter from a book with a Prisoner of Zenda flavor.

I shivered myself to sleep, having been chilled to the bone while I listened to the adventures of the Russian officer, and carried on, as the British say, till Werkstein came thumping at my door at eight to tell me that I must hurry to catch a train for a New Year’s celebration at a station some sixty versts away, where some of Semenoff’s garrison was to make merry. Of course, it was thirteen days before the Russian New Year, but the Cossack never misses an excuse to celebrate anything.

I found myself with a violent headache, due to having taken cold while sitting directly under the ventilating trap, which I had forgotten to close while I talked with the Russian officer. Doubtless his haste to get back to his train was induced by the terribly cold air flowing into my room, but he had been too polite to call my attention to the open trap. He must have thought me most inhospitable.

The prospect of going away to a celebration was not alluring as I looked out the window and saw Chita almost completely hidden by a frozen fog. It was nearly sixty below zero, and rapidly getting colder.

Werkstein ordered the samovar, and I had tea in bed. I do not wonder that the Russians drink so much tea. We drank it all the time in Chita, and my ordinary day’s tea-drinking ran as high as thirty hot glasses. The effect was not good on my nerves, and I discovered that I had become garrulous. Tea and much talk go together, which is why the Russian produces conversation in great quantities.

Mr. S----, the missionary Y. M. C. A. man, came to kindly offer his services as an interpreter in case I would go to General Oba’s reception at his headquarters at eleven. I am afraid that Mr. S---- suspected the towel the faithful Werkstein had insisted on putting about my head, but he was too broad-minded a gentleman to hint at his suspicions.

The Oba reception lured me. It was but a couple of blocks away, and if I still felt badly when I got there, could leave and return to bed. So I got up and shaved, and dug out a white shirt. After all, a white shirt is a wonderful thing, especially if it comes out of a package wrapped by one’s wife on the other side of the world, and redolent of a subtle but familiar perfume.

I also decided to discard temporarily the tremendous boots I had been wearing, and got out my dress boots and spurs, considering them the only fitting footwear with a white shirt and stock. Besides, a soldier on a diplomatic mission cuts rather a sorry figure unless he can produce the proper metallic click with his heels.

So away with Mr. S---- to General Oba’s. Japanese sentries at the door of the former department store, wearing bands over their noses to keep them from freezing, came to the present arms smartly. We went up the stairs and strode down a long hall. Little staff officers, smart as paint and most affable, took our cards, and spoke in Russian to Mr. S---- who startled and delighted them by responding in their own language.

A bevy of Japanese orderlies abased themselves and took our heavy coats. The Japanese machine moves with noiseless precision, and without any waste motions--one, our garments; two, bows and clicks; three, this door, please.

The door opens. Oba stands just inside, smiling a welcome. Clicks, bows, handshakes. The season’s greetings. We enter. The room is decorated with wistaria vines and Japanese dwarf trees. At a long table running down the center of the room, and laden with bottles and food, Japanese and Cossack officers are standing talking in various languages and eating and drinking.

A Buddhist priest, chaplain to Oba’s forces, wearing a conventional frock coat, with an embroidered stole-like green and gold collar thrown over his shoulders, addresses me in English, and tells me that he lived seven years in Vancouver. He says I must have a potion of saki from a lacquered saucer, presented by a Japanese soldier. The liquor is poured from a vase-like china bottle. The Japanese custom, I am informed. As I move down the table after drinking the saki, bowing deeply the while, everybody clicks and bows. I meet another priest, who does not speak English. Mr. S---- informs me that he is the head of another Buddhist sect, and kind of an hereditary pope.

A Russian doctor, wearing mufti, but displaying a couple of orders of the old Russian régime, tries me in German, then Italian. We get on quite well for a time, when he breaks into English--“My son--four years Yokohama in school--she talks very good English--one, two, three, four years. I study English two months.” I congratulate him on his ability in English after such a short period of study.

Japanese captains come smiling, to inform me that they do not speak English, whereupon they proceed to do so with amazing facility. It is the Japanese custom to deprecate their own accomplishments.

I am urged to drink a glass of vodka with a Cossack officer, and at the same time a Japanese officer asserts that he will be overjoyed if I will drink with him a thimble full of saki. Another Japanese comes with a bottle of brandy and holds out a glass for me, and on the other side of the table a Japanese holds up a bottle of French wine and informs me joyously that it is “White Wine,” and that I must have some with him. While this is going on a Japanese soldier, egged on by the Buddhist priest, is pouring me a glass of Sapporo beer because I have mentioned the fact that I was once in Sapporo, Japan. I now have a half circle of filled glasses before me, and in order to avoid drinking them all at once, profess great interest in a dish on the table which appears to be filled with raw shark, the skin still on the pieces.

The Vancouver priest tells me it does not taste good, and makes a grimace, but he says I must eat it, for it is Japanese custom. I do so, while all my friends who have poured out liquors for me, wait patiently for me to consume the contents of the various glasses. I have visions of myself carried back to my hotel on a board, and wonder how diplomats ever attain long lives.

The Russian doctor catches my eye across the table once more. He goes around the flank in great excitement, grasps the arm with which I am feeding myself raw shark, and informs me in stentorian tones: “My son--four years Yokohama--she speaks very good English. I study two months.” I swallow the shark and congratulate him.

My eye roves. It cannot evade the semi-circle of friendly eyes which wait like wolves ready to attack, in case I do not drink from the glasses before me. I take a sip from each glass, bowing deeply each time I pretend to drink. I feel that while I may not be a brilliant success as a diplomat, I have unsuspected possibilities as an acrobat. I discovered muscles in my back which I never knew before that I had--and they were getting tired. Everybody bows in triumph as I sip from the last glass, and I am sure that the mixture of liquors I have absorbed has poisoned me--if it has not, the shark will!

Once more the polyglot conversation is resumed. I eat chestnuts from a plate, and note the orders and decorations worn by Russian and Japanese officers--colorful insignia gained some fourteen years before on the millet plains of Manchuria, not so far away from Chita. I think of the legions of dead burned like cord-wood, or buried in trenches, of Nogi and his sacrificial battalions before Port Arthur. And Nanshan and 304 Metre Hill, and the Baltic fleet fathoms deep in the sea of Japan--the Czar, whose stupid stubborness led to that stupid war--I wonder if he is really dead in a well.

General Oba comes to me. He speaks appreciatively of the way in which the United States “managed” the war with Germany. I reply through Mr. S---- that the Allies appreciated what Japan did for them in China and the Pacific. I am a bit taken aback at being thanked for winning the war, but I suppose I represent the United States, and must not take the splendid compliments too seriously.

I wish General Oba a happy New Year, and great prosperity for his nation. My group of friends dispersed discreetly when Oba approached. He takes me to the other end of the room to explain some of the things he has there for the New Year festival. The knot of rice straw on the wall with white strips of paper hanging from it, is a Shinto symbol, and a prayer for good crops.

On the little table before it is a pyramid of fruits, shrine-like with two larger rice cakes upon the pyramid--an offering to the gods who make the rice grow. On them lies a strip of fishes skin, symbolical, if my memory serves me right, of plenty. As the word for plenty and the word for joy are nearly the same, the skin makes a pun. The Japanese are fond of puns, and play upon words. Rampant against the pile of food stuff is a red lobster, symbolical of agility, and on top of all, two Japanese oranges which make another pun.

Then we went to the door letting in from the hall, and outside, where Oba explained the pine tree, bamboo poles tied along its hole, and the blooming plum shrub at the base of the tree. General Oba says: “This bamboo signifies that a man’s character must be upright, the tree signifies long life, for the pine grows to great age, and as the plum bush blooms early, coming to flower despite the cold of early spring, it stands for perseverance in the face of adversity.”

Japan is a land of beautiful symbols. These stands of triple symbols are shown before every home in Japan on New Year’s Day.

We return to the guest table, and I thank Oba for his kindness in explaining the various decorations. We have a thimble of _saki_, and bow. He turns to speak to a Cossack officer, and the smiling little Buddhist priest with the green stole comes to chat with me again. Once more the Russian doctor comes to tell me of his son in Yokohama and how well he speaks English. He drags me to a great Japanese map of Russia on the wall and shows me how close Japan is, and then with an all-embracing sweep of his hand, informs me that America is far away across the Pacific. I agree.

A Japanese officer looks at the map, and comparing the size of Russia with the little island Empire of Japan, observes whimsically that Japan is very small. I tell him that greatness is not always measured by size, and wonder if in an effort to be polite to Japan I have not given Russia a left-handed compliment. But the Japanese bows and hisses, evidently well pleased.

Cossack officers with great swinging sabers, more like scimitars than anything else, come and shake hands with me solemnly, and rattle their spurs. Once more the Buddhist priest takes me in tow and swears I must drink one more drop of saki with him if the cordial relations between Japan and the United States are to be preserved. We preserve the cordial relations between the two countries, and the thought of myself on a board recurs--I begin to fear that the Russian doctor across the table, now regarding me with serious mien, is about to dash around the table again and tell me once more about his son in Japan.

I decided that it is time to go, and spying Oba near the door, I work my way toward him, and when he is disengaged, come to attention with my loudest click. We bow and shake hands. I step backward four paces, about face, and find myself in the hall. Staff officers come forward in a rush and make a great ceremony of my coat and furs, and I go down the hall amid a perfect orgy of bows, while the bayonets of sentries in the long hall shoot upward at the present, to do me honor. I plunge out into the frigid air. East and West have met, and I like General Oba and his staff.

When I returned to my room, I got word that General Knox of the British Indian army was in his train at the station. I went down to call. His train had arrived from Vladivostok, and he was on his way to Omsk. I found a group of British officers in splendid first-class coaches, and palatial dining-car. They fairly hustled me into that dining-car, and on came the tea and jam and cakes.

Colonels, majors, and captains wearing service stripes which proclaimed the fact that they had been in the war a long time, sat round and talked. I noted many of the red chevrons which marked their wearers as members of the gallant old “Contemptibles.”

Britain never loses a chance to turn a slur into an honor, and every officer and man who was at the front or on the way over seas to fight for the motherland at the time that the Kaiser referred to England’s “contemptible little army” gets the red chevron on his sleeve which allows him to call himself a “contemptible.” Those are the little things on which a great nation is built.

These officers were as jolly and unassuming as a lot of school boys. I like the way in which the British can, at times, forget rank and put behind them the things they have done. They decline to take themselves seriously--yet they manage to make the rest of the world do so.

Other nations take themselves seriously, and have something in their manner that suggests with more or less menace that you must have the same attitude toward them. But the British have welded an empire out of many queer nationalities with the simple idea that a gentleman does not have to insist that he is a gentleman--the instant he does so he ceases to be a gentleman.

I do not believe the British have always been right, but they have been right often enough to win my admiration. And the best any nation can do is to try and be right all the time. Standards of conduct for individuals and nations are always changing, despite the assertions of many people that “human nature cannot be changed.” Quite true, but human nature which displays barbaric tendencies can be controlled.

At one time a man had to get drunk to be a gentleman, and he had to fight a duel if challenged, or challenge to a duel if he suffered what he considered insult. Human nature has not changed, but we have changed the standards for decent human conduct. And some day there will be no wars because human nature is willing to meet the new standards we shall set up. In the meantime, we cannot end wars by throwing away our own guns and allowing the other fellow to keep his. We must evolute by education rather than by legislation, though continual legislating internationally will advance the education by providing a free interchange of ideas and a setting up of international ideals.

I did not have the pleasure of paying my respects in person to General Knox, for I think he was calling on Ataman Semenoff. But I left my card. As I walked back to my hotel in the Siberian twilight, I passed a Siberian _moujik_ staggering drunkenly from the effects of vodka. And as I went on after letting him have all the road to pass me, I philosophized in an amateur way in this wise: What is the difference between this Siberian _moujik_ and me? Why should I feel myself his superior? Was it anything that I myself had done? No. The difference between me and the drunken Siberian _moujik_ lay entirely in the fact that I had been luckier than he in my ancestors. My progenitors established, and left to me a form of government which meant opportunity instead of oppression. I had begun life as a factory boy, but not as the descendant of a line of ignorant serfs.

The men and women of my race who had stood for freedom ages before I was born, were now dust in ancient graves. They had wrested from King John of England the Great Charter of human liberties, and from German George the Third, freedom for the American colonies. The _moujik_ had only just begun to think of freedom, and was making rather a mess of the job. If his ancestors had begun to fight for freedom a thousand years before, I would not be in Siberia wondering what was to be done. This was the real Siberian twilight--the twilight which precedes the sunlight of full freedom, a twilight which reveals queer goblins, and bizarre shapes burning and slaying through the night which must come and pass before dawn.

These musings were undoubtedly due to having been entertained by the kindly Oba, and then the startling contrast of having been made to feel at home with the hospitable British--or maybe it was the raw shark I had eaten which made my mind wander.

XVIII

DIPLOMACY AND--MICE

In a previous chapter I mentioned Captain B----, a Russian serving in Semenoff’s forces, who had his room in the Hotel Select full of food. This officer, and his wife, a frail little woman who had been desperately ill and was still in the convalescent stage, became my closest friends in Chita.

Every afternoon at four I was in their room for tea, and Mrs. B----, who was an accomplished musician, played Russian operas and sang. The piano had been borrowed from the wife of a Russian doctor living in the hotel. Mrs. B----’s few sheets of music were all that were left to her from a large collection, after several encounters with Bolshevists, in which the most of her baggage had been stolen or confiscated. This couple had spent the previous year in flights from various cities. They had escaped from Odessa, from Ekaterinburg, from Irkutsk--from countless places. And many times they were in deadly peril.