Chapter XXVIII: The United States in Asia 316 (7)

Of course the Siberians are friendly to the United States--remember that the American officer whom I relieved in Chita had been threatened with assassination. This officer was a foreigner, who by faithful service in our old regular army, had acquired a commission in our native forces of the Philippines, known as the Philippine Scouts. I am not sure what his nationality was--a Pole or a Ukranian. I think the chief objection to him was the belief in certain quarters in Chita that he was a Jew.

The United States makes a mistake when it sends a Jewish official to represent it in any foreign country which is anti-Jewish, not because the Jew is incapable in any way, but because the nation he represents is forgotten, and only the fact that he is a Jew, is remembered. We of the United States who have no racial or religious prejudices against the Jew find it hard to realize the hatred that is held for them in a country like Russia.

Since my stay in Siberia I am convinced that the hatred of the Jew is neither racial nor religious at bottom. It is based on a resentment of any person or race which is ambitious, which has foresight, which attends to business, and so gets ahead. The Chinese in Siberia are hated as much as the Jews, though not so badly persecuted. This is because, as I understand it, the Chinese attend to their business while the native is sleeping off the effects of liquor or late hours. The Siberian dislikes anybody who represents “unfair competition”--the doing a full day’s work. I believe the Japanese are hated chiefly for the same reason--being up and doing, looking ahead, preparing for the cold winter during the warm summer. All lazy persons resent the man or woman who works. The Siberian was born lazy.

The general Russian workman in a factory will not work a minute more than he is compelled to. I read an article by a Russian woman in this country who ascribes this laziness of her countrymen to an artistic temperament--they need a certain amount of dreaming, and their spiritual condition is better than that of the American, who is always too busy to enjoy life and understand the inner meanings of life. That may be so, but I believe that the average American working man who arrives at his work punctually and quits with the whistle, gets as much of the “inner meanings of life” as the Russian who reaches the factory an hour late, and then wants to assassinate the owner of the factory because the boss scolds the Russian for being late. Maybe this yearning for assassination is indicative of understanding the inner meaning of life.

To disagree in Siberia means to desire to kill. That is one reason why the _sobranias_ were full of rollickers every night in Chita. To sit in a theater beside a man who is laughing at a play while you yourself laugh at the same things he does, prevents anything in the nature of a disagreement. Two men can get drunk together with a certain degree of safety, but in Siberia if they should meet sober and begin to talk about government, they might fight a duel. Perhaps they would rather remain alive than to attempt to agree on how the nation should be conducted.

While I was in Siberia I read in an American newspaper that an American member of Congress demanded information as to why the United States was not coöperating with the Russian Zemstvos in organizing a nucleus for a representative Russian government. If he had been with me the day I read of his demand, I could have taken him and shown him a zemstvo so drunk that its members did not know their first names. The only way in which anybody might have coöperated with them, would have been to buy them a bottle of vodka. This was their way of killing time while waiting for our government to make up its mind on Siberia.

In answer to my suggestion that the Siberians of Chita should have gathered to discuss government in their _sobranias_, they might well state that if they attempted to discuss government in any way than to pass resolutions in favor of Semenoff’s government, they stood a good chance of being executed with dispatch. It would be a fairly good answer. Especially, as the United States merely showed mild interest when Semenoff executed a batch of people. If the United States as represented by the Siberian expedition, the commander being so instructed and properly backed up, had told Semenoff that he had not yet acquired the right to execute anybody and that he would not be allowed to usurp that right, that would have been coöperation with the people of Siberia. But coöperation of that kind might be interpreted as interference, and we were pledged by somebody not to interfere with the Siberians.

So the Siberians took good care, and wisely, not to interfere with Semenoff. But we remained in Siberia with our forces, and proved ourselves to be so gentle and considerate of others, that certain Siberians have dared to interfere with us to the extent of killing some of our officers and soldiers.

The Semenoffs and the Kalmikoffs did not love us any more because we did not interfere with them; the Siberians did not love us because we did not interfere with these petty tyrants; but we would have won the love of all hands if we had done something--that is, all hands but the Bolshevists, and since we have probed into their works at home, I doubt if we seek their love. At least the Bolshevists would have learned to respect us if we had done something beside invite them to the Prinkipo conference, an invitation which they greeted with loud laughter and other demonstrations of their scorn for our good intentions.

So the _sobranias_ of Chita, and other cities in Siberia, served to while away the time for the populace, while they waited for the United States to make up its mind about what to do in Siberia. If we had taken a definite stand, and demanded that the Siberians show us what they could do while we protected them from themselves and the Cossacks, the _sobranias_ might have been filled with committees, and delegates, and people learning something about what they must do to have a government, instead of being filled with revelers.

If we think we can wait till these people meet our ideas of what government is, we are making a great mistake. We must show them. They have been kept ignorant for centuries, in order that they might be kept in subjection. They have not been educated, because the ruling class wanted cheap labor. Cheap labor becomes very expensive labor when it destroys the employer, the factory and the government. Cheap labor that listens to such arguments as the Bolshevists give it, is a mighty costly commodity to any nation, whether that labor is native or imported.

XXI

POLITICS AND PRINKIPO

All the time that I was in Chita, Ataman Semenoff and Kolchak were at odds. Kolchak, accusing Semenoff with interfering with railroad traffic at Chita and so hampering Kolchak’s “All Russian Government” in Omsk, issued his famous order in which he denounced Semenoff as a traitor. And while that order stood, Kolchak or Kolchak’s officers, asked Semenoff to send his forces to Irkutsk and other points toward Omsk to anticipate Bolshevist uprisings which were threatened.

Semenoff declined to lend his forces so long as Kolchak branded him as a traitor. He denied that he had interfered with trains bound to or from Omsk, and denied that he had cut telegraph wires or held up messages.

On January second, Ivanoff-Renoff (Ivanov-Renov), “Commanding General of the Siberian army and Ataman of Siberian Cossacks,” according to the card I got from him, arrived in Chita in a special train with a staff. He had come from Kolchak to treat with Semenoff, and find out on what terms Semenoff would join Kolchak against the Bolshevists.

I called upon General Ivanoff-Renoff. He was at tea in his dining-car, with three or four of his staff. He is a tall, soldierly man, with thin face, clean-cut jaws, and most alert and intelligent. He impressed me as being the ideal type of Russian general in appearance. Proud without being haughty, frank without conveying the idea that he sought the good graces of anybody for the purpose of misleading them, a manner of quiet determination which suggested that he would not hesitate to be cruel if necessary to gain his ends, he looked every inch the commander. He wore several imperial orders.

“Commanding General of the Siberian Army and Ataman of Siberian Cossacks” was rather a wide and all-embracing description, considering the fact that Semenoff commanded some five thousand men supposed to be Siberians, and was himself a Siberian Ataman in Trans-Baikal. There probably was some conflict of authority, yet the Trans-Baikal has been represented to me as not being really Siberia. However, stand Ivanoff-Renoff beside Semenoff, in civilian attire, and on the instant I would select Ivanoff-Renoff as a Siberian Cossack chief, and hire Semenoff for a motorman. I do not mean to imply by this that Semenoff’s abilities do not go beyond his being a motorman, but merely wish to state that, compared with Ivanoff-Renoff, Semenoff does not contrast favorably with the other.

At that time, it was reported that Trotsky had said that the Bolshevist government would control all Russia in six months. I had my interpreter quote Trotsky to Ivanoff-Renoff. He smiled grimly, and said: “Before then we will have hanged Trotsky.”

Ivanoff-Renoff remained several days in Chita. I heard that Semenoff offered to join forces with Kolchak if the latter would withdraw the “traitor” order, but that in no case could he coöperate with Kolchak while that order stood. I do not see that Semenoff could take any other stand.

Ivanoff-Renoff investigated the charges that Semenoff had interfered with supply and troop trains for Kolchak, and I heard that he reported to Omsk that there had been misunderstandings, or exaggerations, and that the charge should be withdrawn against Semenoff, together with the “traitor” order. It seems that Kolchak was not satisfied with this report, and in time Ivanoff-Renoff departed for Vladivostok, and was reported to have broken with Kolchak because Kolchak did not take his recommendations in the proper spirit. It was said that a commission would be sent by Kolchak to take the matter up in detail, which I suppose made Ivanoff-Renoff feel that his services were of no more value to Kolchak. It would be absurd to suppose that I knew the real truth of what was going on.

Both parties were probably playing for time, and keeping the Allies confused. And all hands were waiting to see which way the cat of the Peace Conference in Paris would jump. There was a new rumor in the corridors of the Hotel Select every fifteen minutes. If I had attempted to report them to Vladivostok, it would have taken a dozen private wires and as many expert operators. But I did put considerable credence in the rumour that Grand Duke Michael was in Harbin waiting for the “proper time” to accomplish a coup d’etat and take the throne.

As a sample of Asiatic intrigue, while Ivanoff-Renoff was in Chita, it was rumored that Semenoff was going to Harbin for a conference with some mysterious person. It was also said that the Ataman needed the services of a surgeon, as his wounds from the bomb were not healing properly. Two days later it was reported that the Ataman had suffered a collapse and returned to his bed, and that the trip to Harbin was postponed indefinitely.

As a matter of fact, a couple of private cars of the Ataman had been run up on a siding close to his residence, and the night that he was supposed to be back in his bed, he secretly boarded his train, and was whisked down the line. And his staff officers who remained in Chita were gravely informing me that the Ataman was at home and feeling very ill.

This demonstrates the amount of dependence which could be put in information given out by Semenoff’s headquarters. It reveals the reason why Americans and Russians were not coöperating to the puzzlement of our statesmen at home. As a matter of fact, Semenoff went to Harbin, and then went on to Vladivostok. And I so reported to Vladivostok.

Yet while Semenoff’s train was lying in the yards of Vladivostok, and our own headquarters were watching for him, headquarters got a story that Semenoff was still in Chita, and certain staff officers were rather peevish that they should be misled as to the whereabouts of Semenoff. They were told that Semenoff happened to be in their front yard, and to look a little closer for him there. They did, and found him.

It was about this time that news reached us in Chita that the Bolshevist leaders had been invited to meet at Prinkipo with the delegates of the Peace Conference. Our dispatch was translated into Russian by our Committee on Public Information in Siberia, and telegraphed to all the Siberian newspapers.

The effect was similar to letting loose about my ears a hornet’s nest. A Japanese staff-officer came to my room in haste to ask what it meant. He seemed afraid that the United States intended to recognize the Bolshevist government. And he was extremely puzzled, which of course reflected the attitude of General Oba, which was that after the Allies had come into Siberia to restore order the United States appeared about to take sides with those creating the disorder.

In any event, the United States appeared willing to treat with Bolshevism, a fact which would strengthen Bolshevism. All I could say was that the Prinkipo invitation was obviously based upon conditions of which we in Siberia knew nothing, and that it was likely that the text of the message as we received it, had been garbled in transit.

The humorous aspect of the invitation was that “all parties” were invited to be in Prinkipo, in the Sea of Marmora by the first of February, or some fifteen days after the invitation was issued. Considering the fact that it had taken me thirteen days to travel from Vladivostok to Chita, a distance of two thousand versts, fifteen days for all delegates from Russia and Siberia to get to Prinkipo revealed the fact that those who set the date were ignorant of the conditions of travel in Siberia--or bluffing diplomatically.

So the Japanese were perturbed by the Prinkipo invitation--that is, as perturbed as a Japanese permits himself to be.

The effect on the Cossack officers of Siberia, was to fill them with suspicion toward the United States, to make them feel that we were not playing fair with them, and to give them the impression that they had been betrayed into the hands of the Bolshevists. In other words, that the Bolshevists were right, and that all anti-Bolshevist forces were wrong.

The information we got was to the effect that President Wilson recognized a state of revolution in Russia and desired no counter-revolutionary action.

“But we are counter-revolutionists,” expostulated an officer high in the councils of Semenoff. “We have been fighting the Bolshevists from the first, and always will fight them. This information that your president is willing to hold a conference with a lot of robbers and murderers, spread broadcast over the country, gives the Bolshevists a standing they have never had before. And that is not the worst of it--we have in our armies men who have been Bolshevists, and who have been more or less argued out of it. These men are now beginning to suspect that our representations to them against Bolshevism are false, and we may have mutiny in our forces. It has been hard enough to fight Bolshevist propaganda, in and out of our armies, but this thing has made us afraid that we cannot hold the former active Bolshevists and Bolshevist sympathizers whom we have won to our side. Even if nothing is done toward a conference, this invitation in itself will do our cause great harm, and the Bolshevist leaders much good. We feel that the United States has turned against us, or will in time recognize the Bolshevist government.”

All I could do was to state that President Wilson was the head of my government, and commander in chief of our army, and that no matter what course he pursued, no matter what orders he or his subordinate officers issued, I should obey. And that if I were in a position to know his intentions and all the facts in the matter, my personal opinion could have no effect upon my obedience to orders. And that I could not enter into a discussion of decisions made in Paris or elsewhere regarding the policy of the United States. Also, that I had faith that the United States would act consistently with its history and aspirations, and for the good of Russia. I asserted that the invitation to Prinkipo might be a desire to get the Bolshevist leaders to define their position regarding Russia, and to commit themselves to a line of action--in other words to state their ideas and ideals. And if their desires did not meet approval, then we would take a stand against Bolshevism and the Bolshevists. But my arguments did not reassure him much--he felt that all the damage had been done.

Now I found a new spirit among those persons who were known to me as Bolshevist sympathizers. I had had many frank talks with some of these people, and had listened to their arguments in favor of Bolshevism. These people now became almost insolent. They told me in effect that I ought to go home, as my president had taken preliminary steps to recognize the Bolshevist government, seeing that it would be useless to combat the Bolshevist rule. They were right, and I was wrong by being there in their country, and what was I doing, they asked, walking around with a pistol in my belt. My answer to this was, if my president felt they were right, and that the presence of American troops in Siberia was wrong, my president as commander in chief would withdraw the American forces from Siberia. All my Bolshevist friends had to do, and all I had to do, I told them, was wait for that order.

For an officer who was practically on diplomatic duty, it was rather a peculiar position--far inland in Siberia, with all parties suspicious of him and his government. The Bolshevists regarded me with more open hostility, the anti-Bolshevists not quite sure I was a friend, the principal Allied power in Chita somewhat hurt and suspicious that it might be discredited in Siberia, and such Russians as concealed whatever partisanship they secretly held, discouraged and believing that their country was to be betrayed to the Bolshevists by the nation which they looked to for the most aid and moral support. And American officers and civilians were scattered through the country, practically alone, and far from supporting or protecting troops.

For a couple of weeks the Hotel Select buzzed with noisy discussions in which the principal word was “Americanskys.” More than ever, I felt that any nation sending its forces into a country, should know what it intends to do before such troops are sent. And if it gets an expedition into a foreign country and finds that conditions have changed which leaves the purposes for which the expedition may be used, in doubt, the expedition should be put into transports and sent to its own territory. No man should expect to be a leader without being willing to make decisions, and assume the responsibility for his decisions. The man who is not brave enough to make a decision, should be retired to private life. The quality of a man’s decisions is the only test of his leadership, regardless of what his uttered ideals may be. Good intentions with bad decisions will ruin a nation much more quickly than autocratic ideas wisely expressed in action.

The United States must expect leadership in all its executive branches because the will of the people in our vast country regarding foreign affairs solidifies too slowly for the man in power during a crisis to follow public opinion in matters which touch upon the safety of the nation. National good must stand above the good of parties.

I was more discouraged by the views of the Prinkipo invitation than were the Siberians or the Japanese. They suspected my attitude, for I had always expressed myself as opposed to Bolshevism. But the Cossacks had difficulty in understanding my reticence regarding my private opinions and my avowal that I would stand with my political chiefs. Probably they thought I should ferment an American revolution!

The Japanese understood better, I think, loyalty to government. Probably, knowing I was anti-Bolshevist, they expected me to commit hara-kiri.

XXII

FAREWELL TO CHITA

The routine of every day ran along about the same as ever for about a week after the Prinkipo invitation to the Bolshevists had unsettled our little world in Chita. But I noted a decided coolness from all parties, or so it seemed to me. My old stock phrases about the “friendship of the United States for a great and reunited Russia” did not ring so true when I got up at banquets to say something pleasant.

And as the toasts to President Wilson and the United States at these affairs became less frequent and less fervid, I began to feel like a wet blanket at joyous occasions to which I had been invited. But I will say that the Russians and the Japanese covered whatever chagrin they felt in fine style and never relaxed their kindness.

At about this time there was a complete upheaval in Semenoff’s staff. New officers got into control, and the old ones, with whom I had been on most friendly terms, went into retirement, which generally took the form of a trip to Harbin, or an absence explained by a necessity for a jaunt to some other city. This new staff, with one or two exceptions, struck me as being composed of the less capable officers in military administration, but well schooled in intrigue. In effect, it seemed to me that Semenoff was gradually drawing to him such officers as gave him the worst advice. Some of them were of a very low type of mind, and distinguished themselves at banquets by their ability to get so drunk that they had to lean on the table when they stood up to make maundering speeches.

I remember one officer who sat at the head of a great table and represented the Ataman while Semenoff was out of the city. He was in a drunken stupor, with his head resting on his chest, when the Cossack band in the next room broke out into a loud and rattly patriotic air. The host roused himself and got to his feet. He showed every sign of being inspired to utter profound thoughts. He put up a swaying arm, as a signal for somebody to stop the band, and when a young officer ran out into the next room, the tune did stop abruptly. Meanwhile, the presiding officer hung in stays for a full five minutes like a ship waiting to come up into the wind. Suddenly the bandsmen, evidently feeling that the silence in the next room should be covered, broke out again in music. It was checked none too politely.

Once more the officer gathered himself, and managed to blurt out the single word: “Russians!” Then he lapsed into silence. The band exploded, so to speak, beginning on the very bar on which they had left off. Somebody hurled an empty vodka bottle into the next room, and demanded silence. The band stopped. This intermittent playing sounded for all the world like a gigantic phonograph being stopped and started while somebody tinkered with its machinery.

Our officer uttered a sentence in Russian, swayed and sat down heavily in his chair. He was asleep by the time he touched the seat. Another officer felt that he must fill the breach and cover the failure of his superior. He was not quite so drunk as his chief. He strode to the balustrade of a balcony, dragging behind him his heavy saber, which had become unhooked. He raised his arm to command attention, and the sudden readjustment of his center of gravity threw him heavily against the balustrade. He lost his balance and fell off the balcony, a distance of some ten feet to the floor.

But the floor was merely a landing at the head of a long stairway. In getting up he missed his footing, and tumbled the length of the stairs, his descent being accompanied by the musical rattle of his saber. The cooks in the kitchen picked him up, and somebody ordered the band to resume playing, which it did, at the very note where it had last left off. No one dared to laugh.

In itself, this incident may appear trifling. Yet it must be borne in mind that at the table was the governing body of Chita, less the Ataman himself. But the Ataman’s brother was there, a distinguished-looking man wearing a Japanese order. And he was not drunk. Mr. Tashkin, the head of the “civil government” of the province, was also present--sober, quiet, dignified. I wondered what he was thinking while this orgy was going on.

And Japanese officers were present, jolly but self-contained, spending most of their time explaining to some insistent Russian officer that they could not drink any more champagne. And all the Russian speeches were of a most patriotic character, and told of the wonderful things in store for Russia under the flags of Ataman Semenoff.

Marvels were to be accomplished by all those present to restore Holy Russia to her greatness before the world. The soldiers serving the tables were quiet and sober. It did not take gigantic brain power to understand that Russia would never regain any great powers with Semenoffs set in the saddle.

And I managed, quite by mistake, to get into the kitchen in the basement when I went down for my coat and cap. There I found at an early hour in the morning, a group of poor old men and women in dirty rags mechanically going about their work of cleaning dishes and mopping the floors. And they looked at the Americansky officer with inquiring eyes. Somewhere in their brains I suspect they wondered if the Americans were upholding Semenoff’s régime. It looked that way. Was I not a guest at the banquet?

This exposition of what was going on in Chita may appear to be bad form on the part of one who was a guest. But in effect I was the United States at that banquet, and the people of the United States were paying me as an officer to learn as much about Siberia as I could, and the people of the United States have a right to know what I learned.

My hosts knew I was an official guest, and their hospitality was not really hospitality to me in the proper sense, but an attempt to gain my esteem by proving to me that they were good fellows. They thought that champagne would gain for them a favorable report from me. But the future of Russia, and more particularly future relations and understandings between the United States and Russia, should not rest on the good-fellowship of wine. I can report on the splendid hospitality of the Siberians, as dispensed on their own understanding of hospitality. I cannot say I would commend Semenoff’s officers as suitable administrators. It is quite likely that while the band was playing, they were having several persons executed in a grove. Festivity has been known to be used as a cover for firing squads.

Semenoff and others had lost hope that the United States would coöperate with them against the Bolshevists, and had turned to other agencies from which they might expect financial aid and moral support.

We demanded that an ideal government be formed before we would recognize any. If an actual honest and competent government had been formed I doubt if we would have recognized it, because no government could, or will be formed, which will not be criticized by some Russian faction. And all some Russian had to do in order to discredit with us any government or leader that rose, was to whisper that such was “monarchists,” or “not representative,” or “reactionary.” And all of those charges would be true, for the simple reason that in any group of Russians which can be gathered together there are bound to be among them some who are monarchists, or not representative of all Russia, or reactionary.

Kolchak formed a government at Omsk in November, 1918. He has not been recognized yet by the United States. Some say he is a monarchist in his sympathies. A former officer of the Czar’s fleet, his training and sympathies are bound to be monarchistic in tendency. He feels that a firm hand is necessary in dealing with the Russian situation. If we had recognized him promptly, and backed him up, Semenoff and Kalmikoff and other lesser lights would have had to adhere to him at once. All power for the regeneration of Russia would have been coördinated, and all ambitions of Cossack chiefs to become local princes, would have been swept away. They would have had to join the parade, and the other Allies would have been willing enough to follow our lead. And a lot of bickering and killing would have been stopped.

For that matter, to give Semenoff and Kalmikoff their due, if they had been recognized, with limitations of their authority, those leaders would have given up much of their petty intriguing from the first, and swung into line behind the United States. They would have listened to our advice.

The whole question when our expedition first landed, was “What will the United States do?” The answer in a couple of months was: “The United States will do nothing--let us start something ourselves, which will repay us for the trouble we have had fighting the Bolshevists.”

So the secret trading began, the forcing of loans from banks got bolder, there was aid which we deprecated from certain quarters to these Cossack chiefs. We played a dog-in-the-manger game, with Christmas-Tree decorations in the form of Red Cross aid, and Y. M. C. A., and Committee on Public Information, and Trade Boards. We conferred and commissioned and sent official representatives in military uniform to various places to make friends, while Bolshevists killed off a vast population, and Cossack chiefs, under the plea of exterminating Bolshevists, executed personal enemies.

We sent two or three hundred railroad engineers into the country, they all thinking that they would be in the army. When they applied for government insurance, they were told they were not in the army. But they wore the uniforms and insignia of our army officers, and when some of them wanted to get out of the country and go home, they were not allowed to quit their jobs. Members of this organization told me that they had been given to understand that if they insisted upon resigning, they could do so, but that they need never again expect to hold a job with an American railroad. And the Russians said that Russian money was paying the salaries of these men--and that these Americans were there to steal the railroad from the Russians. That may sound absurd. But such absurdities thrust at men in Siberia are not pleasant. They reveal to some slight extent the difficult environments in which Americans found themselves in Siberia.

So while in January the temperature hung around seventy degrees below zero, the social atmosphere was about as cold. Some weeks before, having replied to a request that I class myself for discharge or for permanent commission in the army, I had requested discharge.

On January twenty-sixth, in reply to my classification request, I got orders to return to Vladivostok as soon as an officer who was to relieve me, arrived in Chita. I had offered my services for the war, and the war was over.

I immediately informed my friends that I was leaving soon for the United States. General Oba’s chief of staff gave a Japanese dinner at headquarters, and invited the British officers and me. We had a most enjoyable time, free from the drunkenness which marked Siberian affairs. In fact, it was my most enjoyable official function in Chita.

I made my official call on Oba the day of my departure, and he came to my room to say farewell. I was sincerely sorry to say good-bye to him.

Captain B---- and Mrs. B---- had planned to go to Vladivostok before I was relieved. They delayed their departure in order to go with me. And we went in the private car of a Russian colonel who was going to Harbin. He was in Semenoff’s service, but I surmised that he was too high a type of officer and gentleman ever to get very far in the councils of the Ataman. I did not remember having met him before in Chita--a rougher element held the front of the stage most of the time.

As the colonel’s car was in the yards, we did not have to sit in the station and wait for the train which was due to arrive from Irkutsk at nine o’clock in the evening of January 31st.

It seemed to be the coldest weather I had ever experienced when with Captain B----, Mrs. B----, and Werkstein, I set out from the Hotel Select. There was a gentle breeze blowing--a barely perceptible movement of the air--which intensified the seventy-below temperature. In the five minutes we were crossing the square before the station, walking against the pressure of a zephyr barely strong enough to stir a feather, the tears ran out of my eyes and froze on my cheeks, and my nose was frost-bitten before I could get the fur band of my cap across it.

I looked back at the line of shops and restaurants. The lights were shining through a gray haze of frozen fog, the doors were shrouded with arches of icicles like entrances to fairy grottoes.

We plunged into the dark labyrinth of lines of cars in the yards. A private train of Semenoff, with the palatial coaches of the old days, protected by a few stamping sentries. Nearby was the Ataman’s armored cars, with the muzzles of field-pieces and machine-guns jutting out over the steel sides which were gleaming white with hoar frost in the pale light of the chilled stars. A dim light spilling from our private car, revealed letters a yard high painted on the end of an armored box-car, in Russian “Cemehobr,” or Semenoff.

I could see in the distance, lights in the upper rooms of the Ataman’s residence. Probably a council of state was being held--or only an informal gathering of women who had recently been brought up from Harbin. Above the clamor of the crowds of refugees in the station, I heard the howling of wolves in the hills.

We got aboard the colonel’s car, and went to bed. The train which was due at nine that night to pick us up, did not pull us out of the city of convicts till nine in the morning of February 1, 1919.

I was started on my journey for New York, exactly on the other side of the world. I was content.

XXIII

CHITA TO VLADIVOSTOK

In about five days we reached Manchuria Station, also known as Mandchuli. At this station we had to change trains, for it was the end of the Baikal division of the railroad and trains for Vladivostok were made up there.

This line being the Chinese Eastern, all stations had our American officers on duty, these men being railroad men serving in the Russian Railway Service. Though we had come this far in the private car of the Russian colonel bound for Harbin, it was advisable to arrange for room in the Vladivostok train where the train was made up, for it would be next to impossible to get accommodations out of Harbin.

I had asked my telegraph operators at Chita to notify by wire the American officer on duty at Manchuria Station the time my train left Chita, and to have him hold for me a coupé, or sleeping compartment, in the proper Vladivostok train. But my operators gave the time I went aboard the private car as time of my departure, saying I had left on Number Four at nine in the evening of January thirty-first. But the Number Four which picked up our car did not leave till nine the following morning. And we made such slow progress, being five days in getting to Manchuria Station, that reservation had been made for me on the Vladivostok train departing the morning before I arrived.

As we pulled into Manchuria Station in the gray dawn of seven o’clock, I saw the frost-covered steel cars of the Vladivostok train lying alongside us. It was due to leave at nine o’clock.

We hastened out of our car with our numerous bags, boxes of food, and cooking utensils. Captain B---- stood guard over our property, Mrs. B---- went to the crowded station restaurant for hot tea, and I went to the telegraph office to find which compartment of the Vladivostok train had been reserved for me. I passed the train on the way to the station, and it was already packed full of people--in seats, aisles and on platforms.

Nobody in the telegraph office had ever heard of reserving anything for me. Neither had the sleepy men in the station-master’s office. I asked for the American officer to whom I had telegraphed--he had been sent to Harbin to hospital, ill. (He died there immediately.) Yes, there was another officer in his place--name unknown, whereabouts unknown. He generally appeared about nine o’clock.

Hastening back to Captain B---- with the bad news, we visited the Vladivostok train to see if we might secure some space. That is, we went near to it, and watched mobs fighting to get aboard every car. It was hopeless. The weather was fifty below zero. We saw the Vladivostok train pull out at nine, leaving us in a swarming station, high and dry on our baggage, to wait till nine o’clock the next morning.

The Chinese customs authorities demanded my lockers, and collected eighty-four rubles in customs duty. A long line of Russians and Chinese, which reached the entire length of the long and dark corridor in the station, waited before the closed ticket window--to buy tickets for the train leaving twenty-four hours later. Many of them had been camping there for days, having food brought to them from the restaurant, in order to buy tickets, which incidentally, gave them only the right to try and get aboard the train.

We breakfasted in the restaurant, it requiring two hours before we were served. And we waited more than an hour before we could get a seat, while Russians and Chinese held the seats and read newspapers over a single cup of tea.

Shortly after nine the American railway officer appeared, and told me that he had reserved space in the Vladivostok train the morning before. As we had not claimed it, he had come to the conclusion that we had not left Chita at all, so did not make any reservation in the next train.

In disgust Captain B---- suggested that we go to the local _sobrania_ and kill time eating. We walked there, some dozen blocks distant, in the face of a gentle breeze, which intensified the bitter cold.

On the way, Captain B---- chanced to look at me. Without warning he shoved me toward a small snow bank, and thrust a handful of snow into my face, rubbing it in hastily. My nose and cheeks were freezing, and I did not know it. But before we reached the _sobrania_ I was chilled to the marrow, and shook so hard after I had sat down at a table, that the dishes rattled. My teeth chattered for a couple of hours, and my shivers were so violent that I had difficulty in drinking the hot tea I ordered. In fact, I shivered violently for two days and nights, though I sat nearly all day in the _sobrania_ restaurant with my back against a slightly warm wall-stove.

We spent the night once more in the colonel’s car, but were up before daylight in order to begin our offensive for space in the next Vladivostok train. With Captain B---- and Werkstein, I ran down the whole length of the train as it arrived in the terribly cold morning with only the light from the frozen stars, seeking for the best cars. We identified the steel cars from the wooden ones by their coats of hoar frost.

The great mob in the station surged out and attacked the train before the sleepy passengers began to get off with their baggage. Immediately there was a terrific jam.

We fought our way into a car, inch by inch, shouldering through the disembarking passengers and clambering over their bundles and bales. The first compartment we could get into was still full of sleepily-protesting passengers, six being jammed into a compartment designed to hold four. The place was in a filthy condition, floors, berths, and window-ledges being covered with food refuse, cigarette stubs, dirty papers, candle-wax, mud which had melted out of ice tracked in at various stations. The single guttering candle revealed it to be in a condition worse than a pig-sty.

“We will hold this,” said Captain B----. “You remain here and I will see the provodnik and pay him to clean it, and see that it is locked. Then we will move our baggage in.”

He returned presently, having given the provodnik twenty rubles for cleaning, and surety of possession. I suggested that my orderly be left to hold it against the mob already swarming in and thrusting the door open as they passed to look in. Captain B---- said that it was safe enough, and that we would breakfast at the station while the coupé was being cleaned, when we would begin moving our baggage. I doubted the safety of this move, but as he was running things and asserted that the station master was a friend, I felt assured that he was right.

After breakfast, still before dawn, I sent my orderly to get our tickets. He came back saying that the line was so long that he could not get to the window. Inquiry developed the fact that I could get a military pass by seeing the Czech officer in charge of transportation. We found him far up the railroad yard in a third-class car, with a lot of his soldiers eating their breakfast. He sat on a shelf and scribbled a pass.

Now our baggage must be moved to the coupé we had set aside in the Vladivostok train. I left my orderly to look after the transfer with the aid of a hired porter, and hastened to the compartment we had chosen.

On the way through the crowd I met Captain B---- who went with me. We found the car a seething mass of humanity, struggling with their boxes in the corridor, and making a fight to gain entrance to every coupé which had been preëmpted by the earliest, luckiest and strongest of the travellers.

To our surprise we found the coupé which we had hired cleaned, full. There was a burly Russian soldier, a Japanese officer, and a pair of Russian civilian speculators lying in the berths, and the whole place was crammed with baggage. They protested wildly at supposed intrusion.

Captain B----, being in Russian uniform overcoat with gold shoulder straps, informed them all that they must get out, as he had reserved the coupé. This met with violent opposition as the party inside was well settled.

Captain B---- called for the provodnik, and as that worthy could or would not come, he seized the baggage nearest at hand and began pitching it out on the heads of those in the corridor.

I managed to get a window open, and he pitched bags and grips out on the mob outside. The effect was magical. Our squatters needed their personal effects more than they wanted the coupé, and they dashed out to salvage their things, expressing themselves in Russian and Japanese as not at all admirers of Captain B----.

I was left holding the fort. Captain B---- hunted up the provodnik, and with a few properly placed kicks, induced him to once more clean the coupé. He tearfully announced that there was no outside lock on the door.

Finally, we got our baggage in after a lot of labor and fighting, and never left that coupé unguarded for a minute the next three days on the way to Vladivostok.

Late one night the Russian conductor managed to get in on the plea that he wanted to see our tickets. He at once announced that he was going to put two more passengers in the coupé, and that the lower berths would have to be shared, despite the fact that it was plain there was barely room for us to get in or out, or to turn round once inside. Captain B---- referred him to me telling him that the coupé was reserved for an American officer, and that he himself had nothing to do with the matter. I lifted myself on one elbow, and reached for my pistol holster. The conductor and his two villainous passengers faded away, and presently we heard a rumpus in the next coupé, where the two men were installed over the protests of some women.

Of course, the conductor probably got a thousand rubles to provide quarters for the two men, whether they had tickets or not, as the speculators pay well for accommodation. They made themselves so obnoxious in the coupé which they got into that the women occupants were forced to get off the train at the next station and wait twenty-four hours for the next train.

At every station we were besieged by incoming passengers, who would thrust the door of the coupé open and insist that they be allowed to enter, and when we refused, they made insulting remarks. Then they camped on their baggage outside the door and sang ribald songs all night, or thrust burning cigarettes through the aperture we left for air by opening the door an inch and keeping the chain on. Or they took occasion to block us in the passage if we attempted to leave the coupé.

In order to allow Mrs. B---- to leave the coupé, I had to carry my pistol in my hand ahead of her, and wait for her to come back. And while the three of us got off at stations for tea, my orderly was left with his automatic in his hand to keep off all comers. We never pointed a gun at anybody, but having it in hand, it prevented burly Manchus, Russians and others from insisting that they had a right to come in.

At one station down the line where we were to get coal for our engine, we were delayed several hours because there was no coal. The mine was not far away, but with typical Siberian procrastination, the coal was allowed to run short at the station. When a train arrived which needed coal, it was time enough to order an engine and a dozen coal cars to proceed to the mine, load up, and return with a supply. So we lay in the yards, and kept other trains at other stations waiting, till we had coaled and released traffic in both directions. The branch line running to the mine could have kept the coal yards full, with a switch engine and one coal-car, but that would require planning ahead, and doing something before it was actually necessary to do it.

At another station, we waited five hours to change a hot “brass” on a journal. This job at home takes some ten minutes. As I watched a poor Chinese mechanic scraping the bearing in forty-below weather, using a primitive tool, I realized that the “hordes of cheap labor in Asia” need not worry us at home. This mechanic would put the semi-cylindrical bearing into the journal-box and take it out. Where it showed oil stains, the metal had to be scraped away to get a good fit for the bearing. He always scraped too much off where the oil showed it to be ill-fitting, and of course, when he put it in again, oil revealed that the spots which he had not scraped, now stuck up. So he scraped these spots away and repeated the process.

We were held up one night at a tiny telegraph station on the plains. After six hours wait, Captain B---- and I attempted to ascertain when we might expect to go on. We learned that there was a wreck two versts ahead. There were two cars off the track--freight cars. It developed later that the reason we had to wait so long to get two freight cars off the track, was due to the fact that some cases containing books had been smashed in the wreck, and the books scattered along the line. Before that freight train would come in, these cases had to be repacked and renailed till they presented their original appearance as near as it was possible to make them, by Siberian railroad men working with a single old lantern which burned lard-oil. While they tinkered with cases of books in semi-darkness, the train for Vladivostok, and all other traffic for miles in both directions, were held nearly all night. Fancy an American passenger train held till smashed cases of freight could be rebuilt and repacked!

We got into Vladivostok three days late. The transport in which I should have sailed for home departed the day before I arrived. And a notice in headquarters warned me not to go near the Trans-Siberian station because there were many cases of typhus among the refugees sleeping in the corridors! It is needless to state that I calmly went there for my baggage without worrying about typhus after living so many days in trains and stations reeking with typhus and other diseases. But one gets very finicky living at headquarters. Incidentally, there was a lot of tiger hunting done on the stairs of headquarters at Vladivostok. The whole staff became inveterate tiger hunters, and remained so, till a big Siberian tiger came down near Vladivostok and killed a bull and ate it.

On the fifteenth of February, 1919, I was aboard the Russian steamer _Simbirsk_ when it pushed out through the ice in the bay. But I was not yet out of Siberia. The stewards never cleaned our rooms or made up our berths, the ship still had the same old Siberian smell, the decks and carpets in salon and passage-ways remained consistently filthy, and we had to put to sea without an adequate supply of fresh water.

In two days I reached Tsuruga, Japan, went to Yokohama by train, and caught the _Tenyo Maru_ for San Francisco. When ashore in Japan, I found once more that the world was going on in its old way--trunks could be checked, tickets purchased which insured the right to a seat in a train, beds were clean, food came soon after being ordered. I felt as if I had escaped from an insane asylum. I had had enough of Bolshevism to last me the rest of my life. And I suggest that when any men or women develop a leaning for Bolshevism in this country, that they be shipped to Siberia. The trip will kill or cure.

XXIV

THE PEASANTS

The problem of Siberia is the peasant-minded population. I use this term to avoid confusion with what is the popular conception of “peasant,” that is, a tiller of the soil, a rude and ignorant farmer or farm-hand, the human being described in Russian as “_moujik_.” The mass of the people is peasant-minded, whether working in cities or in the wilderness. The fact that those in the cities have acquired urban characteristics, does not to my mind prevent them from having mental calibers on a par with the rural population when it comes to knowledge of government, or minds revealing any alertness toward new ideas or reaction to anything with which they are unfamiliar. This vast population appears to be mentally static.

The stupidity of these people never ceases to amaze Americans. Many of our soldiers who were Russians and had been for years in the United States, apparently must make a great mental effort to comply with the simplest request. Their brains seem to be congealed. And the Siberian, asked a simple question in his own language by one speaking Russian perfectly, acts like a man rousing himself from deep slumber before he can comprehend the question, much less answer it.