A BOMBSHELL FROM PARIS AND THE EFFECT
The foregoing incidents gave place to more personal matters. About
December 28 the Staff of the Canadian contingent under Lieutenant-
Colonel Morrisy arrived, and, as one might expect, revolutionary plans
in connection with the distribution of my battalion, and other matters,
were instantly proposed. Some of them were actually carried out, with
the result that a strained feeling became manifest in the British camp
at Omsk, which caused me to propose to Brigadier-General Elmsley that
my headquarters should be transferred to Vladivostok. Luckily the
arrival of the 1/9th Hampshire Territorial Battalion on January 5,
1919, under the Command of Lieutenant-Colonel Johnson, led to an
improved condition of things all round us. This officer gripped
the situation at once, and took such steps, in conjunction with
the High Commissioner, Sir Charles Eliot, that I was prevailed upon
to withdraw my request for the removal of my headquarters. Colonel
Johnson was a great accession of strength to those who held the
purely English point of view, and his battalion, recruited as it
was from my home county, helped to make all our relations wonderfully
cordial. General Elmsley replied later refusing my request, so that
everything fitted in just right.
On January 8 a parade was called to present General Stephanik with the
Legion of Honour and Major-General Knox, the Chief of the British
Military Mission, and myself with the Croix de Guerre. It was a real
Siberian day, "62 below," and in five minutes ten men had frost-bitten
ears. General Ganin, the French Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces,
made the presentations on behalf of the French Republic, uttering a few
words to each recipient. I received the hearty congratulations of all
our friends, which kept me warm the whole day. I thanked Colonel Pichon,
who took over from me the command of the Ussurie front, and with whom I
acted for some time, for this great honour. I felt sure that my
decoration was the result of his reports upon myself while acting
together under very awkward circumstances.
Towards the middle of January the British High Commissioner conveyed to
Admiral Koltchak an extremely sympathetic message from the British
Government. The French High Commissioner followed next day with a
similar message from the French Government, except that it distinctly
referred to the possibility of help and recognition. The Allied
representatives felt more happy and secure as a result of these
felicitations than they had done for some time, and the Russian
authorities began to feel it possible to press on with the work of
"resurrection." A new page in the history of a great recovery had been
added to Russian records. Exactly four days later a wireless message
came through from Paris to say that the Allied Council had declared that
it could give no help or recognise either side; that the different
parties and Governments existing in Russia must bring about an
armistice, and send representatives to the Turkish "Isle of Dogs," near
Constantinople, and arrange a compromise with each other. In other
words, that the Bolsheviks were to be recognised as legitimate
belligerents, with whom it was quite possible to shake hands and sit
down to draw up an agreement as to the proper method of conducting a
policy of rapine, robbery, and murder. Needless to say, every Britisher
was disgusted, and every genuine Russian patriot simply amazed. At one
swoop down went all our hopes! We were crushed as much or more than the
Russians, because we had the honour of our countries to defend, and
defence seemed impossible.
A sudden reaction against the European Allies set in at once, and became
so violent that a Russian gentleman made an abusive speech to the Allied
officers as they sipped tea in a well-known restaurant, and the public
refused to allow the guard which was called to arrest him to carry out
the order. This feeling was undoubtedly exploited by the Japanese for
their own purposes.
A very tense condition of affairs existed, when on January 31 I asked
for a special interview with Admiral Koltchak that I might introduce my
colleague and comrade, Colonel Johnson, and talk over the situation. The
admiral was out walking by the river, quite unattended, but in full view
of the guard at his residence near the river bank. It was his first walk
since his illness, and he looked quite recovered. The talk naturally
veered round to the Allied declaration in favour of the Bolsheviks and
the situation it had created in Omsk. The admiral's attitude was quite
simple. "We can talk and make compact with every party and Government in
the different districts of Russia, but to compromise with Bolshevism, or
shake the hand, or sit down and treat as equals the men who are
outraging and murdering the Russian people--never! No decent Allied
Government acquainted with the facts would ever expect it."
I asked him to consider the question as in no way decided by the Paris
message, that I felt sure there must be some points connected with the
decision that required further elucidation. "Yes!" said the admiral.
"There must be some facts with which we are not acquainted, for while
the British Government advise an arrangement with the Bolsheviks they
continue to furnish me with generous supplies for the Russian Army." I
left quite satisfied that he still retained his faith in the friendship
of England.
There was one queer point which needs to be placed on record. Admiral
Koltchak observed that the Japanese were still causing him much trouble.
They had been unable to approach him personally but had been "getting
at" his officers, whose business caused them to make frequent visits to
the Ural front. They made statements to the effect that the only state
which was in a position to help Russia was Japan. The other armies were
war-weary and clamouring for demobilisation and therefore unwilling to
fight the Bolsheviks. If Admiral Koltchak was compelled to make a
reasonable arrangement with Japan, their army would guarantee to
liquidate the Bolshevik forces in two months and establish a monarchy
satisfactory to the Russian officers. This propaganda had reached the
front, and had been referred to as assuming very serious importance by
his front-line generals in their dispatches. To counteract this
pernicious influence, he was proposing to visit the front himself to
point out the impossibility of Japan, as one of the Entente Allies,
being able herself to execute such a programme. I asked him how this
propaganda began and who engineered it. He answered: "General Muto and a
staff of twenty-six officers and intelligence assistants are working
hard here in Omsk to influence Russian opinion in their direction."
Finally the Supreme Governor said, "I make no complaint against these
very excellent Japanese officers, they are only carrying out the orders
of their political and military chiefs, but it makes my work of
restoring order much more difficult."
There were other little rifts within the lute. The Russian officers are
Royalist almost to a man, and will remain so, for they are all most
childlike in their adherence to this principle. Some gossip informs one
of them that Prince Kuropotkin is still alive and has been seen on the
Russian frontier. "Oh!" he exclaims. "Then the admiral will be handing
over his power to Kuropotkin directly he hears the prince is alive!"
Next day he may be told that the prince is not a soldier and his
enthusiasm at once oozes out of his finger tips. The next day some
British supplies arrive, and then he is all for reliance upon the
Allies. A few days later, the Government not having been recognised by
the Powers according to his wish, he curses the Powers and becomes
morose. The day following he hears in a restaurant that
Demitri-Pavlovitch is hiding as a peasant in Siberia, and he is
immediately in about the same ecstatic condition as the shepherds who
beheld the Star over Bethlehem. Every possible--or impossible--person
under the sun becomes to him a potential saviour of his country; never
does he think how he and his comrades themselves might save her. The
Russian officer, indeed, is "just a great, big, brave, lovable baby, and
nothing else." "Gulliver's Travels" ought to have an immense circulation
should it ever be translated into the Russian language. The "Arabian
Nights" appears as an unimaginative narrative of humdrum events compared
with the stories in current circulation in Omsk and Siberia generally.
The two following extracts from my diary record incidents which occurred
at this time.
"February 1, 1919. Last night three Bolshevik conspirators entered the
officers' quarters of the 1st and 2nd Siberian Regiment disguised as
Russian soldiers. The first intimation outside that anything was wrong
was rapid revolver shots inside. The sentry captured one of the
imitation soldiers as he tried to escape from the building. In less than
two minutes the conspirators had shot five officers, two of whom were
mortally wounded in the stomach. One conspirator was shot dead, one was
captured, one got away. The knout was applied to the prisoner, and at
the hundredth stroke he gave the whole conspiracy away. Over fifty
arrests followed his confession, with the result that all is again quiet
in Omsk."
"February 3, 1919. Lieutenant Munro has just arrived at Omsk from
Vladivostok with comforts from the ladies at Shanghai, Hong-Kong and
Singapore. Words fail to describe the feelings of both officers and men
as they received these tokens of love and remembrance from their own
countrywomen in this cold inhospitable climate. It is a beautiful
feeling, and though the actual work performed is the effort of a few,
the whole sex receives a crude sort of deification from these womanly
acts. The way one of the commonest Tommies looked at a small
wash-flannel that had evidently been hemmed by hands unused to work of
any description, and asked me if I would give the lady his thanks, would
have gone to the heart of the fair but unknown worker could she have
witnessed it.
"I heard news of general insubordination among the Canadian troops that
had just arrived at Vladivostok. If all the information received could
be relied upon, the sooner they were shipped back to Canada the better.
There is enough anarchy here now without the British Government dumping
more upon us. I can see that it is a great mistake to mix Canadians and
British troops in one Brigade. Naturally, British soldiers carry out
orders; if other troops do not, then the British troops have to do all
the work. The situation produced is that the highest paid soldier does
no work and the lowest paid all the work. It soon percolates to the
slowest Sussex brain that discipline does not pay. Nothing but the
wonderful sense of order in the make-up of the average Englishman has
prevented us from becoming an Anglo-Canadian rabble, dangerous to
Bolshevik and Russian alike. I am told that Brigadier Pickford had done
his best to maintain order and discipline in his ranks; that he had been
compelled to make very awkward promises to his troops which having been
made had to be fulfilled. In all the circumstances it was generally
agreed that the proper thing to have done was to send the Canadians home
to their farms, and leave the few Britishers who were there to carry on.
We had established excellent relations with the Russians which it would
have been a thousand pities to spoil."