SIBERIA TO-DAY

SIBERIA TO-DAY

BY
FREDERICK F. MOORE
LATE CAPTAIN, INTELLIGENCE DIVISION, GENERAL STAFF
A. E. F. SIBERIA
AUTHOR OF “THE DEVIL’S ADMIRAL”

ILLUSTRATED

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1919

Copyright, 1919, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1919, by
THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY
Copyright, 1919, by
LESLIE’S WEEKLY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

The attitude of mind with which a writer approaches his subject is the core of his book. My purpose in recording my observations and impressions while serving in Siberia is to tell such citizens of the United States as may be interested some of the things they may want to know about the Siberians.

This is not a “war book,” nor an account of thrilling deeds, nor a history of our expedition in Siberia, but a book in which I have attempted to bring to the public a realization of the difficulties under which our officers and men performed, and perform, their duties in that land. These difficulties are partly inherent in the Siberians themselves, partly the result of the chaos following the Russian revolution and Bolshevism, and partly the result of a lack of policy for Siberia on our part.

The people of the United States undoubtedly feel sympathy for all Russia, and desire to aid it in some way; President Wilson, we all know, burdened with the world war’s problems, seeks a solution of the Russian situation which will give the people of Russia the fullest possible means of attaining national liberty.

Officers of high rank in Siberia, and correspondents, came more closely in touch with exalted personages than did I, who traveled practically alone and mixed mostly with the peasants. Had I been with military and civil commissions, traveling in private cars, I might now have an entirely different viewpoint on the Siberian problem. I know Siberia as a land of peasants, rather than as a place where I met governmental chiefs and heard the discussion of international policies.

I do not claim to hold the secret of just what would, or will, bring Siberia an ideal state of affairs in government. I deal only with what came under my personal observation, and draw my own conclusions, with the hope that from my impressions there may be gathered some hint of a better understanding of some of the problems which confront our government.

I have no apology to make for an excessive use of the first person singular, for it was my intention as I wrote that the reader should travel with me and see through my eyes the things he would like to see. It is not necessary, of course, to agree with my conclusions, which have no political or other bias, no animus toward those who have been responsible for the conduct of the war or who have directed the affairs of the nation in a time of stress. Where strong feeling on the Siberian situation is displayed, it springs from nothing else but a desire to see our nation acquit itself well in the eyes of Asia and the world.

I am but a volunteer reporter, attempting, as I write a report, to inject editorial opinion. I spent several years in the Far East in our regular army and as a correspondent, in the period when our arms were making history on a small scale in the Philippines and China, so my viewpoint on Asia was not gained wholly during my stay in Siberia. And I believe it is time that we get a better understanding of Asia, and seek to have Asia understand us.

I am indebted to Captain Donald Thompson, the noted Kansan war-photographer, for the illustrations in this book.

Frederick F. Moore.

New York.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

SIBERIA TO-DAY

I
EXILED TO SIBERIA

“Let me see your palm!”

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

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

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

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

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

My smiling major sobered suddenly.

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

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

Another serious examination of the lines in my palm.

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II
THE SECRET “GETAWAY”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence from our bridge.

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

III
JAPAN TO VLADIVOSTOK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE AMERICAN ARMY MULES ARRIVE IN VLADIVOSTOK
FOR DUTY

STREET SCENE IN VLADIVOSTOK WITH BAY
IN THE DISTANCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV
TOWARD KHABAROVSK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bolshevists are operating with a strategy of organized disorder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V
BOLSHEVISTS AND BATHS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, yes,” he said.

“The Russians have burned a lot of factories.”

“Yes.”

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

“Maybe we would.”

“Then how can you expect a man with money, which is capital, to come here and build a factory, if it is likely it would be burned?”

He pondered this. “We might only take it away from him,” he decided.

“But Americans do not go round building factories if they are going to be burned, or taken away by the workers.”

“Why not,” he asked. “All Americans are rich. They ought to build factories for the poor people, to give them work. You do it in America.”

“But a factory to keep running, must make a profit.”

“We do not believe in profits,” he said, his face lighting up at the happy thought that he had met my arguments.

“I do not believe you need worry much about them,” I retorted, and left him scratching his head.

As we proceeded north, stopping occasionally at vast wood-piles to replenish our engine, we crossed limitless plains.

I had a paper from home. It contained an editorial on the menace of famine in Siberia. I read it. Then I looked out of the window—and tears came to my eyes. Famine! There it was! From horizon to horizon, on either side of the train, stretched vast plains dotted with shocks of wheat—unthreshed wheat.

The sight of that wheat made me shudder. It reminded me of the fact that the people at home, bless their Christmas-tree souls, were conserving wheat, and sending some to the starving proletariat of Siberia to cure them of Bolshevism. What the various governments struggling with the problem did not realize was that the Siberians were also conserving wheat! For the shocks I saw were not a one-year crop. On those plains were stacked up the crops of two years!

Some wheat had been threshed. Now and then, near stations, I saw it piled up in sacks—acres of sacks, ten high. The top sacks, as a rule, were rotten, having been there for months. “Nitchyvo! The Americanskys have come, and all will be well.” The drosky-drivers fed their horses freely from the piled grain. The field mice had established their winter homes in the piles, thus realizing some of the benefits of Bolshevism.

Why, you ask, was this wheat not moved? The station sidings were indeed full of freight cars. But refugees were living in those cars. In other cars Allied troops were quartered. Troops being moved required cars. Allied commissions travelling up and down for political or military reasons used any remaining engines. Naturally the wheat could not be moved!

Our train reached Khabarovsk about two o’clock in the morning, and we remained in the cars till mess. Then the troops were turned out in full kit, and carrying their bulky barrack-bags stuffed with all their belongings, we began the march to the Russian barracks some three miles distant.

It was a warm and sunny morning. The roofs of the city became visible as we tramped up toward the high ground, covered with the brick barracks built by the Russian army, and beyond the town shone the wide reaches of the Amur River. The city had been captured from Bolshevist forces but a month before, and the Twenty-seventh Infantry, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Morrow had hastened to get into action with the Japanese, but arrived too late. The Bolshevist forces resisted up to a certain point, and then melted away. They became peasants working in the fields—and the Japanese asked these peasants where the Bolshevists were!

So although Khabarovsk was accustomed to a large Russian garrison in normal times, and had already become accustomed to the American doughboy, our column attracted considerable attention. And I was sorry that transportation had not been arranged for the men’s heavy bags, which they packed on their shoulders in addition to their regular marching kits, for six hundred men bent under baggage, struggling up the hilly roads, do not present an inspiring spectacle.

We Americans in foreign parts do not seem to care anything for the psychology of the land in which we are operating; we are intensely practical, and entirely too sure that the American way of doing things is the best way, and take no account of the effect we may create upon foreign peoples—overlooking the fact that first impressions are most vital.

Now Asia is a land in which the bearing of burdens marks one of the lowest caste. The Siberian is Asiatic in his viewpoint, being so closely in touch with China and Manchuria. And, as in China, to be seen carrying heavy burdens when there is no necessity for it, means that a man’s standing is ruined; no matter how smartly he may dress, or how decently he may comport himself, or what he may do to show his superiority after he has been seen at what is considered debasing toil, the Asiatic never forgets that this foreigner has been a bearer of burdens. He carries forever that impression in the back of his head, on occasion dares to be insolent, and judges by that standard all people of that race.

And to go into Siberia, with an army, claiming to be a democracy in which all men are free and equal, yet with men who are “conscripts” in the sense understood by Asia, and then display those “conscripts” doing the work of pack-animals, is most confusing to the Siberian, the Cossack, the Chinese, and Japanese. They cannot understand our assertion that all are equal, or that many men of the United States have willingly responded to a “draft,” and are willingly submitting themselves to the orders of their officers in order to maintain freedom and equality. We say one thing, and demonstrate another. I once tried to explain this phenomenon of all serving the common cause, some in the ranks and some as officers, to a keen Chinese servant who had been in Hong Kong and knew English well. When I had finished, he looked at me, and reaching for the skillet to fry some eggs, remarked, sagely: “You talk lie.”

If the regimental band had been at the station that morning in Khabarovsk, and the heavy baggage left to be hauled by wagons, and the men had marched to the barracks under arms with swinging strides and heads up, it would have been worth several million dollars to the United States in Asia—and worth much to the men themselves. It would have raised our troops in the estimation of Japanese and Russians. Instead, our column toiled along, resting every few hundred yards, and resuming the march with a series of painful grunts and muttered curses.

As we climbed the last hill, a flock of geese swung in ahead of us, and marching in splendid style, led us to the entrance to the post. There the column remained in the road for an hour, while the regimental band came and played in honor of a party of Japanese statesmen who happened at that time to be calling on the commandant, Colonel Styer, and making an inspection of the city. This, of course, was a necessary and proper honor to pay the guests, and accounted in part for the fact that we had to arrive without music; but as the visitors were not long in the post, our departure from the station might have been deferred till the music was available. After eight days in crowded box-cars, that band was most inspiring when we did hear it, and the weary doughboys were soon chaffing merrily, glad to have found their new home.

In discussing these matters, I wish it understood that I am not criticizing any individual, but the people of the United States so eager to make a good showing abroad and to convince foreign peoples of our good motives and our army so careful not to offend, seem to need something in the way of a code to follow so as to learn to put the best foot forward when away from home.

The British, having had so much more experience with Asiatics, have learned the value of good impressions, and by observing what we may consider trifles, have held and administered the affairs of many lands in the East more by these trifles than by actual force of arms.

I know that our attitude has been in the Philippines, Cuba and elsewhere, “In time these people will learn that we mean all right.” In time they do. But we send an army into foreign countries in much the same manner as a man might attend a first formal dinner in boots, a fishing coat, and a woolen shirt, and on entering the dining-room, trip over a rug when preparing to bow to the hostess. In time, he might establish the fact that he was a man of some breeding. Most people, both for their own comfort, and the comfort of hosts, would prefer to display their breeding first, for some of the guests might leave before the uncouth one had a chance to prove that he was not a boor.

Once the details of turning over the reinforcements were accomplished, with the major who had commanded the train, I took a drosky, and sought the best bath-house in the city. How that vehicle ever held together was a mystery to both of us. The roads were both rutty and full of yielding mud, and as we galloped toward town, first one of us and then the other was in danger of being hurled out to the black pigs along the streets.

The cost of a “bolshoi” or grand bath, was two rubles each, and being provided with soap and towels, we were escorted to a room containing an old sofa and a dressing table weak in the legs. The attendant brought us a small tub of water, for what purpose I have not the slightest idea, as the room adjoining contained a bath-tub of Russian dimensions, a shower big enough for an elephant, and all the pipes full of blazing hot water. The Siberian does not bathe himself—he parboils himself.

The temperature of both rooms was exceedingly hot and humid, so that in a few minutes all our clothing was moist and clammy; and to make matters worse, the ambitious attendant came in and hurled buckets of water over the big marble slab, which was heated by pipes, filling both rooms with a stifling steam. I opened the windows promptly, to his great horror, and drove him away as gently as possible with the one Russian word I had to fit the occasion—“Scurrai,” and he scurried.

When I had laid my clothing out on the ancient sofa, I realized that the place had not been swept or dusted for a decade. I made a mental picture of the limitless number of people who had divested themselves of their garments in that very spot. It was not such as had gone on their way, clean and rosy, which worried me, but what they had left behind, to inhabit temporarily the crevices of the sofa. So I hastened my bathing under the shower, and dressed as rapidly as possible, after discreet shakings of all my wearing apparel.

The clerk below regarded me with surprise when I went down. He thought I had not bathed at all, but had come back to make some complaint. He did not realize that I had hurried to avoid complaints in the future, when he might not be present to get the benefit of my vocabulary. I am sure he thought me most tentative about my bath, and not a particularly clean man.

It takes the ordinary Siberian about an hour to get himself properly tender. For some strange reason, known only to the inscrutable American mind, I had failed to cook myself a full two rubles worth, and had surrendered my room to a Chinese who did not appear to be a regular client, judging from his lack of grooming.

The major had been as precipitate as myself, having been duly influenced by my active imagination. Once more we risked our lives in the drosky.

VI
HETMAN OF THE USSURI

Khabarovsk is a city of probably sixty thousand population, and picturesquely situated in a sweeping bend of the Amur River, its streets being laid on a bench of land overlooking the river. The barracks occupied by the American and Japanese forces are on still higher ground arranged on a plateau, with the dull reds and browns of the city roofs shining below.

It is a provincial capital, the most important north of Vladivostok, and the chief center of the Ussuri Cossacks. The first thing to catch the eye on the morning we marched up to the post, was a yellow flag flying from a pole across a gully from the American headquarters, with a black and fanciful lower-case y upon its field. Y in Russian has the sound of our double o, and so was the initial letter in Russian for Ussuri, thus the flag marked a Cossack garrison quartered inside the stockade beyond.

AN AMERICAN DOUGHBOY HELPING MAKE SIBERIA
“SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY”

NIGHT VIEW OF VLADIVOSTOK HARBOR FROM HILL
OF THE CITY

Yellow is a favorite color with the Cossacks. Their officers wear Prussian blue riding breeches, with wide yellow stripes, similar to the breeches worn by our own cavalry officers before the khaki days. Their tunics were well-cut, but almost any color seemed to serve, as long as heavy gold cloth shoulder straps with elaborate embroidery on them, could be procured.

Boots and spurs, and the characteristic high busby of white or black lamb-skin with the wool on, completed the costume. These bonnets are not always circular, but are flattened out, and then worn with the flat sides front and back, and tilted to the rear, giving a rakish effect. The cloth tops set into the wool are frequently of gorgeous colors, some being bright purple, some gold, some red, so viewed from behind, the Cossack is a colorful personage. Viewed from the front, on a charging horse, and with lance or saber point first, they generally get the road to themselves.

The men of the ranks looked to me more Mongol than Slav, and resemble somewhat the American Indian, having high cheek bones, black straight hair worn rather long, broad but low brows, but their faces lack the acquilinity of our aborigines. Most of them struck me as being stolid, stoical persons, rather sure of their positions as belonging to the warrior class, and while according to our standards, inclined to swagger a trifle when among the lower classes, quiet enough unless interfered with. Among the Siberian peasants they had the bearing and demeanor of masters of the situation, and contrasted with the peasant, I would prefer that the latter have more self-assertion in a dignified way, rather than the inevitable skulking manner which they take on when they come in contact with persons whom they recognize as superiors.

Khabarovsk was filled with the men of the local Cossack hetman, Kalmikoff, known to our forces as Ataman Kalmikoff, a title which appears to be derived from the Turkish, just as the name “Cossack” is the Turkish kazak, or robber. The accent falls upon the last syllable, and the Russian spelling follows the Turkish, so that “y k” worn on the sleeve of a soldier marked him as an Ussuri Cossack.

I was living in the quarters of Lieutenant-Colonel Morrow, as his guest, with the regimental adjutant of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, and a young regimental supply officer. Colonel Morrow had commanded the column which hastened to reinforce the Japanese division in the action south of Khabarovsk, but the Bolshevists dissolved after a desultory fight, and the infantry, fresh from the Philippines, did not get into the battle. At that time Colonel Styer, commander of the Twenty-seventh, was in Vladivostok in command of the expedition, General Graves and his staff not having arrived.

Colonel Styer was now in command of the American forces at Khabarovsk, and I found him all that is meant by the term “an officer and a gentleman.” I can say the same of all the officers of the Twenty-seventh that I had the pleasure of meeting. And Colonel Morrow, in whose house and company I spent my pleasantest days in Siberia, I found to be a hard-fisted soldier of the old school, who knows his business and expects everybody in his command to know it likewise, or give the reason why. He knows the American soldier down to the ground, and is the type of officer the enlisted man delights in—an officer who realizes their difficulties on campaign, talks to them as a father, and never allows any doubt to arise as to who is boss.

On Sunday morning, October 6, 1918, Colonel Styer kindly sent word to me that Ataman Kalmikoff was to conduct a ceremony incident to the organization of a new regiment of Cossacks, and inviting me to attend with the staff.

An orderly brought a horse for me at the appointed time for departure, and as I mounted, I felt the thrill that can only come to a man who, after a lapse of thirteen years, again finds himself in an American army saddle and an American army horse between his knees.

We rode down through the gullys and over the decrepit bridges, into the town, and dismounted in front of the big Russian church on a cliff over the Amur. Here we found a long line of Cossacks on their horses, drawn up in single rank across the street from the church, facing the little square. There was a great throng of Siberians, keeping at a respectful distance from the raised lances shining above the heads of the shaggy ponies.

Here we were introduced to many Russian officers in the service of Kalmikoff, nearly all of them wearing orders of the Czar’s régime, and some of them wearing orders gained on the Manchurian plains not so long ago, in action against the army of Kuroki.

General Oi, the local Japanese commander, and his staff arrived, and he and his officers were all introduced to us. Among those there that day was a lone British officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Roberts. I am not sure that this dignified and canny British observer did not see more, and understand more, of what was going on, than all the rest of us Anglo-Saxons. This statement is not made in derogation of the abilities of American officers as observers, nor as a compliment intimating a superior craft in international affairs on the part of the British officer, but occurs to me as due to the lack of anything approaching a “policy” regarding Siberian affairs on the part of our administration.

Not knowing what we were expected to do beyond avoiding as far as possible any action which might be interpreted as “interference,” our interests did not extend beyond the dramatic effect of what we were there to witness. To us, it was merely a show, possibly with something of an historical interest, as it had been said that by presenting the colors to this regiment of Cossacks, Kalmikoff was acting as a sort of godfather at the “birth of the new Siberian army.”

But the British, with India so close to Russia, and an age-old suspicion of “the man who walks like a bear” in the backs of their heads, watch Russian affairs with deadly earnestness, for to lose India might be the first break in the chain of the British Empire. So to Colonel Roberts, a gaunt and elderly officer typical of the men who have built the best traditions of Britain in far-flung empires, this was more than a mere entertainment of a day. At least I got that impression, as I observed him—politely punctilious, yet with roving eyes which saw, and weighed, every trifling incident.

I felt that our attitude was the vaudevillian one of “I don’t care.” No doubt, if one of us had written a detailed report of what happened that day, and had dared to draw conclusions, and had sent this report to, say, our own General Staff, it might have been filed. But if we are going to deal with international problems, we must begin to regard foreign affairs seriously, and leave to the cartoonist his humorous conceptions of foreign peoples. We are somewhat inclined to regard humorously the deadly earnestness of the British in dealing with queer peoples, but the British know that queer peoples are sometimes the most dangerous. We persist in using them for comic opera material, and then wonder why we cannot analyze promptly, and take proper and decisive action to meet a crisis.

As we stood there in the morning sun, with the wide river below, there was a sudden stir, and the lances of the Cossacks became more rigid as the troops came to attention.

From round the corner, we heard the clatter of galloping hoofs, and suddenly, Kalmikoff swooped into view, mounted on a superb black horse.

Rising in his stirrups, with saber upraised, he cried in Russian, as he passed at full gallop, a hail which was interpreted to me as: “Ussuri Cossacks! Your commander comes!”

And from the line of horsemen, came the reply, yelled in unison, “We are glad to greet you,” and the lances, with their pennons, shot upward.

Kalmikoff whirled back, dismounted, and strode into the church. A band blared the new Russian anthem. From the church now came a column of acolytes in white robes, some bearing crucifixes before them, some swinging censors, all led by mitered priests, who were intoning chants.

The band became silent, an altar was set up in the square before the assembled troops, and a Russian mass was said. Kalmikoff and his staff stood at one side with bared and bowed heads, and on the opposite side, General Oi, and his staff at attention. In line with the Japanese, were Colonel Styer and his staff. But General Oi, as fitting for the ranking officer, stood a trifle to the front, in such position that he was almost directly in front of me, and as he bared his head, I was conscious of his shaven poll gleaming between me and the altar. He is a short, stocky, sturdy-looking man, with round, shaven face, of most martial bearing, and bears himself with quiet dignity.

Thrust up behind the altar was the gorgeously colored and embroidered standard of the new regiment. The priest, in chanting the mass, at times removed his mitre, and his long black hair fell over his shoulders, equalled only in length by his heavy beard. The choir nearby sang the responses, and their voices were most sweet.

I watched Kalmikoff. A young man, said to have been born in 1884, he is scarcely more than five feet tall, slight of build, with bluish eyes, and a small mustache. He wore a saber, and a small pistol slipped into the loop of a strap hanging from his belt, rather than a holster—a pistol so small as to suggest a derringer. His aspect was proud and military, but he did not make the figure one would expect to see head of several provinces of Cossacks. However, he is reputed to be very brave, a good commander, and a dashing leader of irregular horse, such as the Cossacks are. I heard that in the charge, if any of his men attempted to ride ahead of him, he promptly cut them down with his saber.

He had made himself a Major General, it was said, and we understood that he was civil and military governor of the Ussuri district. His claim to the title of Ataman I never understood fully; some said he was hereditary chief of all the Cossacks of that section, and some said he had been elected to that position by the Cossacks, while others maintained that he had set himself up as the local prince, with no more to back his authority than a small band of partizans who were organized into a military staff, chiefly engaged at that time in executing everybody who opposed his rule.

Already, reports were coming down to our headquarters that protests were being made by the civilians of Khabarovsk, that many people were being executed by Kalmikoff’s orders without trial, and that the victims were merely such personal enemies, or such persons as might question Kalmikoff’s authority.

But our position of “non-interference” with Russian affairs, made it difficult for our staff to either advise Colonel Styer, or for Colonel Styer to take any action other than to make official inquiry of Kalmikoff as to the executions. Not that I infer Colonel Styer or our staff found it difficult to obey orders, but Kalmikoff happened to be one of the “Russian people,” and how could an American officer interfere with Kalmikoff’s executions without interfering with a Russian?

And at that time, Kalmikoff’s exploits in fighting the Bolshevist forces were uppermost in the minds of some of our officers, and it appeared that what Kalmikoff did at that time was considered by some subordinate officers to be indicative of his abilities as a ruler. I heard one young officer say while I was in Khabarovsk the first time: “The Ataman is a smart fellow. He sits at his desk in headquarters, and when a couple of prisoners are brought in, he looks at them with those snapping little eyes of his, and waving his hand, says: ‘take ’em out and shoot ’em.’”

That, to some minds, may be proof that a general or a ruler is great; but I could not see that government by firing squads by Kalmikoff is any better than government by firing squads under the Czar. It all depends pretty much upon who is going to be shot, and what the person is to be shot for.

If it happened to be a man of the city who privately expressed an opinion that Kalmikoff had no business executing peaceful citizens, who was to be shot for expressing that opinion, the procedure as I see it, is in line with Villa and similar bandits who keep in the public eye by having the power and machinery for wholesale human butchery.

The fact that a man may be brave, dashing, and wear a picturesque hat, has nothing to do with a judgment of his abilities or his morality. Government by machine-gun may be necessary in certain cases, but it means that the ruler who has to resort to such tactics has oppressed the people, or has not made proper use of the printing-press—in other words, has not educated the people over whom he rules, in the proper ideas.

I consider Kalmikoff a young upstart, not at all concerned with what happened to Russia, but attempting to take power to himself in a crisis, and then aping the worst elements of the old régime. And I believe that his interests were largely material, and in such form that the gains financially might easily be taken out of the country. Because he had fought the Bolshevists, in no sense assured me that he was at all what he posed as being—a Russian patriot, working for the rehabilitation of a great and united Russia. I may not have been alone in this measure of the man, among the American officers, and in speaking only for myself, I do not wish to imply that I was the only one to so gauge his character.

To return to the ceremonies, when the mass in the square was over, the priest blessed the colors of the new regiment, and threw upon them holy water. Then he presented them to Kalmikoff, who half knelt to receive them, with a blessing. Standing, and thrusting up the flag, he made a speech to his troops, in which he said, among other things, that they were always to guard it with their lives, as true Russians.

The color-bearer rode forward and took it from the Ataman’s hands, and then the lances were hoisted, and the Cossacks cheered both flag and Ataman.

After receiving the congratulations of the officers assembled, Kalmikoff invited us to review his men with him, and we mounted and rode down the street to the position from which we were to review the force.

As we rode along, we observed three Russians on the sidewalk with their hands bound behind their backs, being hustled along by Cossacks, and we heard whispers that they were to be shot. But we discreetly pretended not to see these prisoners, and wheeled in our horses to let the new regiment pass.

The Cossacks approached in column of fours, their new flag in the lead, and Kalmikoff took the salutes of the commanders. The men of the First Ussuri Regiment, as it was called, were a motley lot but undoubtedly were good cavalry of the irregular type. Their uniforms were a queer mixture of stuffs, and at times, it was hard to realize as some squads passed, that this was really an army. It looked more like a gathering of the clans from the hills and plains, and most of them needed a haircut, as well as a shave. But they looked proud and determined, and able to over-awe any mob of civilians that might gather to riot, or to do good work charging or raiding an enemy of neater and more soldierly appearance. Their arms showed good care, but their long-haired Siberian ponies probably never had felt a brush. Altogether, it looked like an army that had been sleeping in its clothes for weeks, instead of a regiment turned out in a capital city to get official baptism.

In passing, I wish to state that a few months later, these very troops mutinied against the severity of Kalmikoff, and seeking protection from Colonel Styer, were disarmed. I heard that the Japanese commander demanded the arms, claiming them as property of the Imperial Japanese Government. So the lack of discipline so apparent on the day of the “new Russian army’s” birth, rebounded upon the commander, and indicates that on that day he held his power by a very thin thread.

After the review we went to what was apparently a hotel, judging from the sign, but which was reputed to be Kalmikoff’s private residence. He had probably borrowed it, after the style of Cossack chiefs usurping power. We lunched there, while the band played in an adjoining room. At the head of the table sat Lieutenant General Oi, at his right, Colonel Styer. Kalmikoff’s officers, in the seating of the guests, happened to put me beside Kalmikoff’s chair, half way down the table from General Oi, the seats between General Oi and Kalmikoff being occupied by a Japanese colonel, and a Japanese staff captain.

As it turned out, the lunch was in the nature of a compliment to General Oi, and in due time Kalmikoff made a speech in Russian, in which he thanked General Oi for the aid the Japanese forces had rendered him, making it possible to establish this regiment just formed. Kalmikoff spoke no English. After each sentence, an interpreter gave the translation in Japanese, another interpreter gave us the English of it.

General Oi responded likewise through an interpreter, and as he spoke, gazed steadily at the opposite wall, waiting patiently for his staff officers to render his remarks into Russian and English. We understood that he wished the new Russian army success, and pledged the help of his forces in making it a success.

There were considerable international politics being let loose in that room. In effect, the Japanese were backing Kalmikoff, and when we came to protest against Kalmikoff’s actions, we were really protesting what appeared to be actions advised by the Japanese; at least, it is safe to draw the conclusion that, owing General Oi what he asserted he did, Kalmikoff was not running counter to General Oi’s wishes. And I have heard it said that whenever Colonel Styer asked Kalmikoff to explain the reasons for executions, Kalmikoff went directly to General Oi’s headquarters before making his reply to Colonel Styer.

I do not bring these matters in as a criticism of the Japanese. I cite heresay and such facts as I know, to show that the Japanese were stronger politically in their situation in that part of Siberia, than we were. It may be safely assumed that General Oi was acting according to instructions, and from that I deduce that the Japanese government had a policy of upholding all forces avowedly and surely anti-Bolshevists. It may have been the correct policy. At least, Kalmikoff knew that he could depend upon the Japanese to back him up in putting down the Bolshevists. He had no such assurance from our government.

It is human nature to lean to the side which declares itself, and the Japanese made no secret of the fact that they were backing Kalmikoff with arms and money, and standing in the background while he consolidated his power. This means that the Japanese were really in control of things in the Ussuri, and for wanting to hold that control, I do not blame them, considering that they had large military forces in the country, and were there as enemies to the Bolshevists.

The Japanese took sides. This meant that at least one side knew them as friends. In our case, the anti-Bolshevist forces of the Russians, then chiefly the Cossack forces, were confused by our attitude of grouping all Russian factions and classes together, with what appeared to be a distinct leaning to the Bolshevist side. The result was that real anti-Bolshevists suspected our motives and were most cautious in taking us into their confidence. But the Japanese had the full confidence of the anti-Bolshevist leaders, and to have the confidence of either side in such times, gives a decided advantage in getting a grasp of the situation.

I have no means of knowing the motives of the Japanese in giving financial and military assistance to the various Cossack chiefs. I have no particular reason for assuming that their motives were anything but what they claimed them to be—to put down Bolshevism. I do doubt that the Japanese motives were wholly to assist Russia in rehabilitating itself as a great and powerful empire; I do doubt that the Japanese Imperial government, sought or seeks to see Russia a united and powerful republic. Russia has been a source of worry to Japan for many years, and the many barracks built in Siberia since the Russo-Japanese war, have not had a tendency to remove that worry. For if the war had not broken in 1914, or if it had ended without smashing the régime of the Czar, Japan would have felt the weight once more of the Bear’s paw.

The bigger cities of Siberia are cities which have grown up round new brick barracks. There are literally miles of these barracks all through Siberia along the railroad. These quarters could not have been necessary for an army of the size contemplated by this construction, merely to keep order in Siberia.

It is plain enough that Russia contemplated revenge for the Manchurian fiasco. The Czar undoubtedly intended to throw a vast army into Siberia, move it against Japan, throw another army into Siberia behind in reserve, and keep hammering Japan till the island Empire was destroyed or rendered harmless in a military and naval way. He was waiting for a new fleet capable of coping with Nippon’s navy. And Japan knew it. I have doubts that she wishes to see that menace once more in her back yard, and under the present system of competition between nations for territory, I do not blame her for wishing to protect herself. Her methods are another matter.

VII
FROM KHABAROVSK TO USHUMUN

A glance at the map shows that a wedge of Manchuria runs up into Siberia. Khabarovsk is at the northern point. The Amur, flowing in a general westerly direction, bending southerly along the northern boundary of the Manchurian province of Tsitsihar, and then turning to the north sharply as it comes in contact with the province of Kirin, runs up the westerly side of the wedge, and from Khabarovsk flows almost due north, where it empties into Amur Gulf, near the Siberian port of Nikolaievsk, opposite the northern end of Saghalien Island.

The Amur branch of the trans-Siberian railroad crosses the Amur River a little to the north of Khabarovsk, and almost parallels the river, but at a considerable distance to the north of it, crossing many tributaries of the Amur flowing from the north. The red line marking the railroad, superimposed on a standard wall map, shows no railroad stations till Kerak, some fifteen hundred versts west of Khabarovsk. And the sectional Intelligence map which I had, was little better, for the spelling of the towns was so radically different, that except for the larger places of simple spelling, I gave up using it except to orient myself by identifying the various small rivers.

Where the name of the town was transformed into English by our Russian map-makers, and then the station-sign in Russian betrayed no special affinity for the Anglicized version, I found many towns which were apparently astray. Like the navigator who having made a landfall was told that the port he was approaching was Karaka, said: “Impossible! Karaka is two hundred miles to the south of here on my chart!” when my interpreter told me that we were arriving in Poperoffka, I looked at my map and said: “Impossible! Unless the Bolshevists have brought Poperoffka here and tied it till they want it.”

There was a company of the Twenty-seventh at Ushumun, our farthest north. I had a limited time in which to reach this company, and with one train a day running, on uncertain schedule, I must needs leave Khabarovsk to complete my itinerary in time.

But there was talk at Khabarovsk that this company would draw down the line, though the time of its departure was uncertain, and its destination unknown. At headquarters of the Twenty-seventh I could get no definite information, a fact which puzzled me, until I learned that the movement was to be directed by the Japanese commander, General Otani, and that Colonel Styer, in command of the regiment, was waiting for orders as to the movement.

I decided to proceed in accordance with my orders, and from detachments of our troops seek news of the force supposed to be at Ushumun, and either catch it, or go to where it was.

So with my interpreter, I embarked on a passenger train, late at night. We got a “coupé” or compartment, fitted with berths for four persons. It was a so-called “sanitary car” of the second class, and clean and comfortable. The car appeared to be empty except for us, till morning, when we found a Japanese captain and his orderly in the next compartment.

At Nikolsk, on the way to Khabarovsk, and at Vladivostok, there were American officers in the stations, members of the so-called Russian Railway Service, known at home as the Stevens Commission. All were expert railroad men, and telegraph operators, and their presence in stations made travel simple enough. But after leaving Khabarovsk, I found the stations in charge of the regular Russian staffs, and a Japanese staff, the latter with their own telegraphic service. I had been under the impression that every station had officers of our corps, and as I found them missing over the Amur branch, I was puzzled, in addition to being hampered for news and a means of keeping in touch with my own headquarters. At that time this corps was serving only on the Chinese Eastern line, but I did not know it.

An instance of my helplessness may be shown by the fact that the conductor of the train told my interpreter that our car was going through to Ushumun, and that we did not need to make any change at Botchkereva, the junction point for the branch running south to Blagoveschensk. We arrived at Botchkereva about daylight, and I hustled out to the station, leaving my bedding and baggage in the car, as we had been informed that we would have a stop of an hour to wait for a train coming from the south.

I had so far received no information concerning the expected movement of the force at Ushumun. I now resolved to telegraph in Russian to Major Miller, the commander, to learn of his plans. We translated into Russian this message: “Please advise if you will be at Ushumun to-morrow, as I am on my way to see you.”

My interpreter and the Russian telegraph operator now engaged in a long debate, and as I was about to inquire into the reasons for it, the interpreter turned to me in consternation and told me that we must get our baggage out of the car as promptly as possible.

We fled down the tracks, and while the car was already moving out, dumped through the window without waiting to roll it, my bedding, grips, and supplies of sugar and tea and other groceries, along with the interpreter’s blankets and kit.

While we were thus distributing our property along the railroad, the interpreter told me that the car was going on the train to Blagoveschensk. He also said that he had learned of this sudden shift of the car by overhearing the Japanese commandant’s interpreter at the station order the Russian station-master to so switch the car, because the Japanese captain in it desired to go to Blagoveschensk. If that order had not been overheard, our kits, so vitally necessary to us, would have been whisked away, locked in the compartment. And our conductor had assured us, by all the saints in the Russian calendar, that the car was bound for Ushumun!

While we jettisoned our property from the car-window, the Japanese captain and his orderly looked on in mild surprise, probably sure that we were wholly mad. In a sense we were. I refrain from including our comprehensive and utterly complete remarks on all things pertaining to the Russians, from the time of the first Michael Romanoff up to the present and into the future.

Having rolled up a fine supply of particularly sharp cinders into my bedding-roll, and placed it on the station platform, a Chinese took a liking to it, and I discovered him making off with it. I doubt if he understood English, but he did get the drift of my remarks, for he dropped the roll.

Once more my interpreter resumed the debate with the Russian operator, and the latter decided to send my message. We had a wait of ten hours for the next train, and I expected to hear from Major Miller in time to know whether to proceed aboard that train for Ushumun.

The station waiting-room, crowded with poor people either waiting for trains, or simply killing time and talking politics, was a most filthy place. According to our standards, they were in dire poverty, but men, women and children were most contented and good-natured, and carried on their primitive housekeeping on the floor, and the mothers performed most intimate services for their children in full view of the assemblage with a carelessness for the senses of their neighbors which appalled me.

Yet no one seemed to mind. Barbaric-looking Mongols, in fur boots and garments smelling of fish and raw fur, came and sprawled at the long table, and demanded tea and cabbage soup, which they disposed of like wild animals come to the kill; great hulking Russian peasants, their heads and faces half-hidden in jungles of long, matted hair, sat crouched on primitive stools, and ate the kernels of sunflower seeds by the hour, throwing a handful of the seeds into their mouths, chewing meditatively, and then ejecting the seeds in a wide semi-circle before them on the floor.

From the window I could see the rude troikas of the farmers drive up, with three horses abreast. They sat in their seats, while their women disembarked from the rude carts, crawling out of the loose straw upon which they had ridden, to unload bottles of milk, cabbage, and potatoes.

While their lords stomped about the station, drinking vodka in secret places, from which they emerged wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands, the women set up the farm products on boxes near the station, and the market was open.

The mothers in the station crowds sought the milk eagerly. Such milk, and in such bottles! The latter had evidently never seen water, but were grimy with old and sticky milk down their sides. The wads of paper and rudely whittled stoppers used as corks were loose, and milk oozed up through them, to become a feeding place for millions of flies.

In some cases the milk appeared to be sold by the drink, a few kopecks giving a man or woman the privilege of drinking from the bottle, while the seller of the milk carefully watched the throat of the buyer and counted the swallows. And I observed that the last swallow taken, consisted of all the cheeks of the buyer would hold.