officers aboard them, and each officer conducted the examination of his
own nationals. There was a line of Russian steamers, running between
Tsuruga, Japan, and Vladivostok, known as the Russian Volunteer
Fleet; and a similar line owned by the Japanese. These little steamers
served as ferry-boats, gathering in Japan all travelers bound for
Vladivostok who arrived in ports of the Far East in liners--this was
the funnel through which passed the stream of civilians who came first
to Shanghai, Nagasaki, Yokohama and other ports.
And before these steamers docked, they were boarded by a Japanese, a
Czech, a Russian, a British, an American and a French officer, and the
polyglot lot examined before they were allowed to land. I attended some
of these examinations, provided with a list of suspicious characters,
and with the various interpreters in action, the smoking-room put to
shame anything that must have been heard at the Tower of Babel.
But so far as we were concerned, it was all a silly farce. Technically,
we had no right to examine anybody. I once asked an Allied officer the
basis for his authority, whereupon he told me that the city was under
martial law, and controlled by an Allied Council which delegated the
powers of examination to all the Allies. But this was promptly denied
by another Allied officer.
In fact, it appeared that we Americans, in an effort to avoid
interference, claimed no rights of control over anybody on Russian
soil, making it necessary for us in order to question suspected
enemies, to resort to autocratic methods. That is, we disclaimed all
intentions of interfering and asserted no authority, except this plan
of going through the motions of authority, which was a taking of power
which might have been granted had we asked for it.
For my part, I prefer an autocracy working in the open, to a power
which denies it is autocratic and then proceeds to act autocratically
without any warrant. Such methods puzzled the decent Russians, and they
began to doubt the things which we wanted them to believe, and which it
was essential that they believe if we were to have the confidence of
the Russian people.
A few days after I had raised the question of the rights of the
American officers in passport control, we relinquished by order the
rights we had been exercising. When Russian or other officials held
men or women as suspicious, who professed to be American citizens,
they brought them to American headquarters, where the examination took
place. And if the facts cited by them were refuted by our information,
we could do nothing but advise the Czechs of the case, and let the
latter act without any suggestions from us, thus, like, Pilate, washing
our hands of the whole affair.
A Czech officer, upon being asked what he would do with a certain
suspect, said casually, “I don’t know--maybe we shoot him.” And maybe
they did. No doubt we had to “save our face,” and if the Czechs
were willing to serve us as jailers or executioners, that took a
disagreeable job off our hands.
I am not, mind, asserting that the Czechs dealt out injustice, or that
we should have executed anybody or everybody arrested. I object to
heads in our government who lack decision as to what should be done,
and resort to chicane in attending to disagreeable tasks. I object to
an expedition being sent into a country, the hands of the commander
apparently tied, and yet demanding that certain results be attained in
a left-handed manner so that the responsibility may be shifted to other
shoulders. This country is altruistic and generous toward all other
nations in trouble, and we should demand from our representatives who
attend to our business, the kind of leadership we are entitled to, and
the clear demonstration before such foreign peoples as we come into
contact with officially, of our honest motives.
From toying with various parts of the Intelligence machine, I turned
my attention to distributing fifty cases of books which had been sent
to the troops by the American Library Association. Our men, living in
the stone-floored Russian barracks, which were cold and damp and dirty,
found these books most welcome. It was a most dreary environment for
young and active men, most of them too far from the city to get any
entertainment from it, and when its novelty was worn off, they found
even Vladivostok dull and disheartening.
The Chief of Staff suggested that a vaudeville show be organized out
of the forces, and I was put in charge of it. Some fifteen men who had
vaudeville experience were detailed from various companies. And to
provide something with “local color,” the Chief of Staff suggested that
we might hire a trio of Cossack dancers appearing at a local cabaret
known as the “Aquarium.” This show began at midnight. The Chief of
Staff, Donald Thompson, the war-photographer, Mrs. Thompson and myself,
attended a performance. We sat in a gallery box, and drank coffee from
nickel coffee-machines to keep us awake. It was a cheap and tawdry
show, and the floor below was filled with a throng of people sitting at
little tables and drinking and eating. The Cossack trio--two brothers
and a young woman--gave an interesting exhibition of Cossack dancing,
interspersed with dialogue in Russian, which delighted the doughboys
present.
In a couple of days we put on a show of our own at the Aquarium,
which General Graves, and many officers from all the Allied commands,
attended as his guests. We had gymnasts, black-face comedians, vocal
and stringed quartettes, and a regular vaudeville program of some
dozen acts, including the Cossacks, with the regimental band of the
Thirty-first Infantry.
It was a “hit,” probably due to the fact that I interfered not at all,
but told the performers to “go ahead and get your acts ready, tell
me what you will have, and we’ll write a program.” When you want the
American doughboy to do something outside his regular line of duty, let
him alone and he’ll come home--he needs no Bo Peep.
The Cossacks were to provide two acts, one that they supposed to be a
refined American cake-walk, done in conventional evening-dress, and the
other their dance, in native costume. Of course, they took more pride
in their American act than in the dance, which we wished to place in
the program so that it would be the “star” attraction.
It was suggested to them that they be third on the bill with the
cake-walk, to give them time to rest and get into costume for the more
strenuous effort next to the finale. They agreed, perfectly satisfied,
and so they were billed.
I remained back stage. To my horror, when the act preceding the
cake-walk was in progress, and the Cossacks were called from the
dressing-room somewhere in the cellar, they appeared in their
outlandish Cossack costume and makeup. For this act they required
stage-sets and improvised lighting, which of course were not ready at
that time.
I told my interpreter to ask them to change as quickly as possible, as
they must have misunderstood the agreement about how their acts were
placed on the program. But they averred that they had simply changed
their minds, and intended to do the Cossack dance first, because the
regular Aquarium show followed ours, and they would have to do their
exhausting dance twice almost in succession if they appeared on our
bill last.
I was willing enough to announce the change, and let it go at that, but
although I surrendered to their wishes, they persisted in continuing a
loud and long Russian conversation behind the curtain in competition
with the monologuist who was amusing the audience. Then, when it was
all settled that they would appear immediately in the dance, they
changed their minds again, and went below to change costumes at the
moment they should have gone on.
Luckily the monologuist got several encores, and being known to many of
the soldiers out front, they demanded certain of his stories, and he
pieced his act out long enough to conceal the wait for the Cossacks.
This example of mental instability I found to be typical of most
Siberians--they will spend hours settling a problem, and having
threshed out all the details, and arrived at a logical conclusion,
somebody remarks: “Maybe we are wrong after all,” and away they go
again on the argument, from the beginning, getting themselves more
enmeshed in doubts than ever, and finally have to quit in exhaustion
without reaching any decision.
Before we could start touring with our show, the Cossacks had to go to
Nikolsk-Ussuri to fill an engagement at that place. And our troupe had
to get costumes and rehearse, cars must be provided for winter travel,
and we had to work out songs with the members of the band.
When the Chief of Staff engaged the Cossack trio, it was at the rate
of four thousand rubles a month and all expenses, food and quarters.
At that time, with the current rate of rubles, which was ten rubles
for the dollar, the salary stood us four hundred dollars. But having
in mind the dollar basis, the deal was made in rubles. When I went to
Nikolsk to advise the Cossacks that we were ready for them, rubles had
gone to six for a dollar, so were more valuable--and of course, the
Cossacks wanted their pay in rubles.
They reached Vladivostok late at night, and with the city over-crowded,
they had difficulty in getting quarters. They were temporarily sent
to a Russian house across the bay, and then a fourth-class car was
arranged for them on the siding at the Base. The weather was getting
very cold, the car was unsatisfactory to them, they objected to being
halted by our sentries when they came to the car late at night, and
despite two stoves kept going by a German war prisoner, they said they
nearly froze to death.
I began to understand some of the troubles of impresarios with foreign
“artists.” They objected to rehearsing with our band at nine o’clock in
the morning, the only time the band had available time, because they
were accustomed to getting their breakfasts at eleven--they talked the
most violent Russian at me at all times possible, regardless of whether
my interpreter was present or not. I was sorry for them.
At this stage of affairs, I got sudden orders to proceed to Chita,
two thousand versts away, and take station as the American officer on
Intelligence duty. There were no American troops there, and it was
reported that the American officer of Philippine Scouts whom I was
to relieve, had been threatened with assassination. My “circus” was
turned over to another officer, and with my interpreter, First Class
Private Werkstein, I went aboard a Red Cross train bound for the front,
to take station at Chita, Trans-Baikal, where Ataman Semenoff had his
headquarters with his Cossack and Mongol army.
XIII
AWAY TO TRANS-BAIKAL
Our Red Cross Train left Vladivostok just before midnight, December
11, 1918. It consisted chiefly of box-cars full of medical supplies
and clothing bound for Omsk; there was an International sleeping car
for some twenty Red Cross nurses, Russian women doctors, American
missionaries from Japan serving as refugee workers, dentists and
physicians. Some of the men had just arrived in Siberia from Manila,
and some of the women from Japan, and knew little of travel on a
Siberian train. There were two men sent out by our War Trade Board to
investigate the supply of raw materials and the wants of the people for
manufactured goods. The sleeping car compartments for four persons, had
to accommodate six.
The train had been combined with a Czech train, carrying supplies
for the Czech army at the front, and two fourth-class cars were
provided for Czech soldiers. There was also a fourth-class car full
of wounded and sick Czech soldiers, most of the latter suffering from
tuberculosis, to be left at Buchedo, a station far up the line where
there was a hospital.
An American Infantry captain bound for Harbin to take command of a
company there, serving as guard for the consulate, shared quarters with
me in one of the fourth-class cars, with the Czech soldiers, and my
interpreter, Werkstein, was with me.
There was a dining-car improvised out of a small and springless
ordinary box-car, by building a range into one end, cutting a door in
the other, and building a table down the center. Along the sides were
piled our food supplies, our bread hanging in sacks from the roof, and
under the table our feet rested on frozen cabbages, potatoes, and beef.
The cook got off now and then, and having, with mere money, wheedled
the “starving populace” into parting with fat pheasants, threw the
dead and frozen birds into the cook-car with brutal disregard of the
needs of the natives. And as a further example of dire necessity, of
food shortage, I observed at one place some peasants (not pheasants)
so close to starvation, that they had nothing with which to grease the
wheels of their wagons but best Siberian butter! We heard about this
time by cable that the Congress of the United States would be asked
to appropriate a hundred million dollars for the purchase of food,
which food was to be sent to wheatless and meatless Europe in order to
prevent the spread of Bolshevism--that same Bolshevism which had swept
Siberia “as the result of a lack of food.”
Chang, a wily Chinese, bossed the “China boys” who did the cooking and
waited on the table. And a place at the table generally meant being
frozen, or roasted, according to whether one sat at the end away from
a red-hot stove near the door, or near the stove. And it seemed that
the engineer picked out the roughest part of the road-bed to show his
best speed, when we were at meals.
A doctor once asked me to pass the cheese. At the same instant, we hit
a curve, and a whole round of cheese from the top of the pile of stores
behind him over his head, toppled over, sailed over him and alighted on
his coffee.
As we got into Manchuria, the temperature dropped to about forty
degrees below zero. The door of the diner, from which emerged the warm
air, was draped in great icicles, and when the door was opened, we were
met by a rush of steam--the warm air meeting the cold.
The women nurses, having modern ideas of ventilation, left the windows
of their compartments slightly open one night. In the morning the
heating-pipes in that car were useless, for it was a hot-water system,
and the provodnik had allowed the fires in the heater to go down during
the night. The sleeping car, for the rest of the trip, might have
served well as a cold-storage car.
With two stoves going continually in our fourth-class car, even though
they burned Manchurian coal and gave off a yellow smoke, most of
which escaped into the car, kept us comfortable. We were warm, if not
sanitary. And when the weather got to sixty below, I gave up all ideas
of hoping for fresh air while sleeping.
And during the day, at every stop, we three Americans got out for air,
risking having our feet frozen in the process. The Czechs did not seem
to mind--they went on with their cooking, and stoked the fires all the
harder to warm the air we had cooled by opening the doors to go out.
Everything that was metal inside, became covered with heavy
frost--pistols, iron braces, nail-heads, bolts. And to touch any of the
iron work with bare hands, getting on or off the car, meant leaving a
palm sticking to the iron.
At the same time that the water-bucket on the floor under my bunk was
freezing solid, when I stood up to dress my head was in smothering heat
gathered at the top of the car. And the passing landscape was obscured
by tropical foliage, etched in frost, on the double windows.
In such a climate, I can well understand that the Russian peasant cares
little who rules in Petrograd, for his mind is concerned only with
having food, shelter and warmth. Such cold probably accounts for much
of the mental stupefaction of the Siberians, and explains why the Czars
held their power so long.
When Siberia was chosen as a place of exile, to cure people of
thinking, the person who selected that frozen land for prisons
doubtless knew what terrible cold will do to the human brain. It
killed many exiles, but it acted as a preservative of their ideas, and
they bided their time, waiting for a chance to get freedom, so that
they might go on a spree of destruction. It will take more than a few
months of education to turn such people from their age-old lessons in
oppression, cruelty and annihilation.
There was a merry wag among the Czechs. He had lost two front teeth,
he was poorly clad, but he relished his soup, enjoyed his sleep, and
was always smiling and chattering gaily. One cold night, when we were
out of coal, he dug from his boxes a gorgeous robe, blue outside and
embellished with red decorations of barbaric design. It was lined with
long, white Angora-goat wool. As he wrapped himself in it, he looked
like some Mongolian prince, preparing for a royal audience.
This garment roused my curiosity. He said it was from the Khirgiz
tribes. I asked its price, and Werkstein interpreted this:
“A man’s life.”
“Whose life?” I asked.
“The man who had it.”
“Who had it?”
“A Bolshevist.”
“Why did it cost him his life?”
“Because I killed him and took it.” The wag smiled a gentle smile.
“He got that rifle, and that pistol he has, from the same man,” said
Werkstein. And the wag rolled up and went to sleep, evidently not at
all concerned about the ghost of the Bolshevist who had owned the robe.
“He was in an Austrian regiment,” continued Werkstein, giving me
some of the merry one’s history. “He deserted with his regiment to
the Russians, for the Czechs did not want to serve the Germans. In
reprisal, the little business he had at home was confiscated, his wife
became crazy when his two children were taken away, and he does not
know what became of any of them. He is waiting now to get back to that
Austrian village, and he swears he will kill till he is killed when
he gets there. He does not care what happens to him--he will get his
revenge.”
And without doubt the wag will.
In about a week we arrived in Harbin, and stopped there some three
days. The city appeared very dull by day, but at night the restaurants
and theatres were crowded with gay throngs.
I found a young officer on duty there, who had shared my stateroom
on the transport, and we dined at the Hotel Moderne. The prices were
extremely high, but the food excellent. The restaurant was full of
Russian officers, and wealthy civilians, for Harbin is really the
center of high life for the Siberians, it being in Manchuria and
somewhat safer than other cities.
Here gather all the intriguers of all factions, here are hatched the
plots and counter plots of the monarchists and anti-monarchists, the
Bolshevists and anti-Bolshevists of Siberia.
The man who seeks power and wishes to draw to him his adherents, goes
first to Harbin to perfect his plans, and the man who has lost power,
goes there to escape the fury of the populace and lay his plans for
regaining his old position. It is quite likely that among the crowd at
the opera that night, there were former Grand Dukes waiting till the
time is ripe for a _coup d’etat_; if the former Czar is still alive, he
is probably hidden away in Harbin, and if a Romanoff ever returns to
the throne, Harbin will probably harbor the heads of the plot for the
restoration.
Among the Russians I met there, was a nephew of Tolstoy, wearing the
uniform of a lieutenant. But officers of higher rank appear to prefer
civilian attire. And when introduced to them, I found that the ranks
mentioned with their names, were pronounced in low tones. And it is not
at all uncommon to be introduced to somebody with the name given in a
conversational tone, and later to have whispered to you, the real name
and title of the new acquaintance.
Judging from some of the acts of the cabaret near the Moderne, Harbin
is not wholly a royalist center. A singer, in the rags and chains of a
Siberian convict, sang in dismal notes the story of his sufferings, and
“died” on the stage. He had to respond to a dozen encores.
But I suspected some of the excessive applause to come from persons who
were of the old nobility, if not of imperial blood. Living incognito in
Harbin, it might not be safe for a Grand Duke to hiss such an act, and
in such a case, a man may save himself from assassination by bursting
his white gloves in sympathy for a stage exile.
We took on food supplies at Harbin, and the Czechs loaded their cars
with cigarettes and wine for a Christmas celebration at the front.
They had one car nearly full of cases of wine, and worried lest it
might freeze. They consulted me about it, but not knowing the amount
of alcohol it contained, I refused to give an opinion as to what might
happen to it in such frigid weather. So they set up a stove in the car,
and took turns keeping the fire going, day and night.
The hardships of a Siberian winter, with famine stalking about, can
only be realized when you face the problem of keeping a whole car-load
of wine from freezing in sixty-below temperature. The soldiers who were
not on duty sitting up with the wine, spent the nights in my car, where
I was trying to sleep. They talked about the danger to the wine--talked
in ear-torturing Czecho-Slovak. They also rambled around with candles
that leaked wax upon the countenances of their sleeping Allies. Rest
was not for those Czechs (nor for anyone else), and their faithfulness
and fortitude in preserving that wine is a thing to stick in the
memory. They ought to be decorated. A certain irritable Red Cross agent
came near doing it.
We passed many hospital trains coming from the front, filled with sick
and wounded Russians and Czechs. And it was on this trip that I saw the
awful refugee trains, with box-cars full of men, women and children
suffering from typhus and other diseases.
And it was said that one of these trains, having come thousands
of miles carrying dying and dead huddled together in straw, were
turned back at a certain station by the Russians, because they feared
contagion. And from these cars were taken many dead, frozen and lying
among the sick. And from the crevices of the floors of the cars, and
from the interstices under the doors, hung great red icicles!
I observed many educated Russians look at such scenes with little
sympathy. At least, their attitude was that the people had brought such
sufferings upon themselves by overthrowing the throne of the Emperor.
While waiting for the “second table” in the diner, I had occasion to
discuss the country with a young Russian woman, bound for Perm to seek
her father and mother, from whom she had not heard in a year and a
half. There had been much fighting there with the Bolshevists, and she
was unaware of the fate of her parents.
“My father superintended the building of this section of the railroad,”
she said. “I lived with him on his private car as the line was built
through this part of the country, so I know every mile well. Little I
dreamed then that my great country would be ruined as it is now. Court
life was so fine--the fine clothes, the nobility, the great dinners,
and the imperial dances--it is too bad that all such things are gone.
Maybe they will come back.”
“But the people suffered under that régime,” I said.
She looked at me with surprised eyes.
“Suffered! They were never so happy, and they will never be so
happy again. They do not know what they want. I went into a refugee
barrack last month outside Vladivostok, and found there an old woman
who had been one of our servants for years. She was afraid to speak
to me--afraid that I would be marked as one of the aristocracy, and
probably suffer for it. But I talked with her--and how she wished that
she were back in our happy home. She knows she was better off with us
in the old days, than she can ever hope to be again. She would have
lived a few more years in peace and comfort as our servant, and wanted
nothing. Now she will probably have to live and die as a beggar. The
poor people suffer more by this than the wealthy do--even if a few rich
people are killed, and their property taken. My Russia was all right,
as it was. And if I don’t find my father and mother, I am going to
South America.”
As an individual attitude, the expressions of this young woman might
not be regarded of much value, or at all typical of the well educated
Russian. Yet I found her ideas to be general with all the better
class Russians I met--that Russia under the old régime was an ideal
country, and that the peasant and servant classes were as happy as
they wished to be, and better off than they would be if they lived
under a democratic form of government which gave them all a hand in the
government.