With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia Part 8

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 j.a.panese 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 att.i.tude 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 friends.h.i.+p of England.

There was one queer point which needs to be placed on record. Admiral Koltchak observed that the j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan. 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 j.a.pan, 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 a.s.suming 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 j.a.pan, 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 a.s.sistants 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 j.a.panese 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 s.e.x 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 Suss.e.x 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 circ.u.mstances 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."

CHAPTER XV

MORE INTRIGUES

While the loyal Russian officers were being murdered in their beds, other events not less important were happening. When Admiral Koltchak a.s.sumed supreme authority the Directorate was surrounded by a party of Royalist officers as turbulent and lawless as Trotsky himself. Private code messages pa.s.sed between these officers as freely as if they already had the power in their own hands. The first intimation that Koltchak had of these conspiracies was a code message from General Evanoff Renoff to General Beloff, General Bolderoff's Chief of Staff, which unfolded many of the aspirations of these men, and showed their objects to be exclusively personal. I read these messages with great interest, as they gave me an excellent insight into the mainsprings of the revolution and incidentally into the character of the average Russian officer. General Antonovsky, of the old Russian Military Academy, who also a.s.sisted in the drafting of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans, was a partic.i.p.ant in the scheme, and was within an ace of becoming the admiral's Chief of Staff. Everything was working splendidly, when the cipher message from Renoff opened the ball. Beloff was sent to the east, and Antonovsky to the south, and the Absolutists became broken up.

On February 1 my liaison officer informed me that as he waited in the corridor of headquarters, General Beloff came out of General Lebediff's room. A little later General Antonovsky came out of another room, and then these two were suddenly joined by a certain Cossack general of a very truculent type. I knew that this boded badly for order, and I warned Koltchak's young aide-de-camp. Shortly after it was reported to me that an attempt had been made to exchange a sham guard for the real one at the Supreme Governor's residence. That night I held our direct wire from Colonel Johnson to my ear till 12.30 A.M., and found that it was tapped by Russian Headquarters. General Knox had got to know things, and took certain action, with the result that I sent my officer to Russian Headquarters with instructions to inform General Lebediff we were anxious for the Supreme Governor's safety; that if any harm was contemplated against him we should hold him responsible unless he made us acquainted with the danger in time to avert it; further, that if the Absolutist officers thought they could murder Admiral Koltchak and proclaim an absolute Monarchy without the sanction of the people of Russia they were mistaken; that whoever, whether high or low, attempted to destroy the present Government and throw Russia back into violence and anarchy would be treated as enemies by the British soldiers. General Lebediff answered that he knew of no special danger threatening Admiral Koltchak at the moment, but he thanked Colonel Ward for his offer to help protect the Government in case of necessity.

The conspirators broke up at once, but the cunningest of the lot remained to weave again by social strategy the continuous web of Russian disorder. We knew that there were elements at work for a counter-revolution quite uncontrolled by, but acting with, the cognisance of officials of the Koltchak Administration. In revolutions sudden outbursts on the part of even a small party may soon jeopardise the whole organisation of State. Colonel Johnson and myself agreed that it was necessary to concentrate our forces, and in approaching the Russian authorities on this subject, we added further to the demoralisation of those who were in the conspiracy. We protested that it was our own safety that we had in view, but the conspirators did not believe us. I knew that the admiral's train had been for some days standing ready to take him to the front. On February 3 Omsk was informed that the important j.a.panese Mission (previously referred to) had started from Irkutsk on the last stage of its journey to the Supreme Governor.

The governor's aide-de-camp informed me at the same time that the admiral was starting for the front at 5 P.M. on February 7.

General Knox was anxious that there should be no evidence of weakening in our support of the Omsk Government, as in case of disorder our position was by no means secure. After consultation it was decided to offer the admiral a personal guard for his journey, to consist of fifty men and one officer from the Hamps.h.i.+re Regiment. This was accepted and referred to the Chief of Staff for confirmation. It was then reported to General Ganin and the French Staff. They at once protested that to have a purely English guard would lower French prestige in the eyes of the Russians. They quite agreed that there ought to be a guard, but it must be half English and half French, and to this we at once agreed. We therefore reduced our number to twenty-five. Then, however, the French Staff pointed out that they had no troops in Omsk, and they could not leave the Staff without a cook. The greatest number of orderlies they could spare was nine, so it was suggested that the guard should consist of forty-one English and nine French soldiers. This took the negotiators' breath away entirely; the first proposal was destructive of French prestige, the second was enough to destroy France altogether!

Really France is much too beautiful and gallant a country to have this sort of stuff put forward on her behalf, but there it was. So the admiral's guard consisted of nine soldiers with one officer of each nationality--twenty all told.

One point we did get home on. At the time appointed for the admiral's departure, an English guard of honour miraculously appeared on the scene, together with Russian and Czech guards. There _could_ be no French--yet French prestige continued to stand just as high as ever it did. I give these facts in the most friendly spirit, but with a hope that English officers will always understand that, however much we smile at the peculiar gyrations of the word "prestige" as understood by our Continental neighbours, it is very real to them, and strange exhibitions of it are seen on occasions.

The Supreme Governor had arrived and shaken hands with the Russian, English and Czech representatives, including Sir Charles Eliot, the British High Commissioner, and General Bowes, the Chief of the British Military Mission to the Czecho-Slovaks. The French representative was late. When the ceremonial was nearly complete, a French officer (not above the rank of captain) elbowed his way to the front and vigorously brushed aside the British High Commissioner and general, and stood with his back towards them as though they were mere outside spectators who had no business there. The same evening the incident was being discussed amongst a group of Russian and English officers, when a Russian officer of the highest position observed, "You English have the queerest notion of national prestige of all the countries I have been so far acquainted with. Any ordinary Russian, Kirghis, Tartar, or Mongolian officer seeing a French captain brush aside the representatives and generals of another state would instantly decide that he only did so not because of want of politeness, which one-half the world does not understand, but because the nation to which he belongs was so great and powerful there was no need to be deferential to any of the others, and especially so to the state whose representatives allowed themselves to be so easily brushed aside."

We had many conferences upon the condition of the Russian workman, and whether it was possible for the Allies to do anything to help them.

British officers were making desperate efforts to organise and equip forces capable of dealing a death-blow to the Bolsheviks in the early spring. General Knox worked like a Trojan, and gave more inspiration to the Russian Government than all the other Allied representatives put together. In fact, without his sagacity and determination we should have been better employed at home. He travelled from "Vlady" to Omsk, from Omsk to "Vlady," as though the 5,000-mile journey was just a run from London to Birmingham. His great strength was that he made up his mind on a certain course, and stuck to it, while everyone around him could never decide upon anything for long. If you want anything done, don't have Allies. Allies are all right when a powerful enemy is striking you or them; it is then quite simple; mere self-preservation is sufficient to hold you together for common protection. Let the danger pa.s.s, let the roar of conflict recede in the distance, and Allies become impotent for any purpose except spying on each other and obstructing the work in hand. There was no evidence that anyone, except the English, was doing anything to smooth the way for the new Russian Government, but by sheer energy General Knox had brought together personnel and stores sufficient to justify belief in the early success of his plans. Then there suddenly arose another sinister figure which threatened to upset all our calculations--namely, a well-timed revolt of the railway workmen, calculated to cripple our communications and make the movement of troops and supplies impossible.

CHAPTER XVI

RUSSIAN LABOUR

General Dutoff, as I have previously recorded, had informed us that Bolshevist agitators had pa.s.sed through our lines on this treacherous mission, and for months nothing had been heard of these emissaries of mischief. Now that we were approaching the critical point of the 1919 operations rumblings of an unmistakable character were heard in all directions. The necessary military measures had been taken, but in our English eyes suppression was not enough. We have learnt in our country that the workmen are the backbone of the State, and that when labour is badly paid the heart of the State is diseased. Russia has no ideas about labour at all. The autocracy never gave it a moment's consideration. The last Tsar's idea of labour reform was to abolish good vodka, and he lost his life. The officer cla.s.s, that forms so large a proportion of Russian life, never gave the subject five minutes' consideration. There is not a single general labour law upon the statute book of Russia, and the horror of it is that those who have hitherto pretended to lead the Russian workman refuse to demand laws to protect their labour. They believe that "law" is the last thing that a workman robbed of the most elemental rights should think about; that the only way for a workman to obtain rights is to abolish all "law." And this they have done with a vengeance! The professional Russian labour leader is an anarchist and nothing else, and in Bolshevism he has given a glimpse of his policy in practice.

This, then, was the problem with which we had to deal, and with only a few weeks at our disposal. To the Russian workman it was a social question; to us it was both social and military. Finally, General Knox asked me to undertake a pacific propaganda along the railway to see if it were possible to persuade the workmen to keep at work and give the best service possible to their country to secure the restoration of order. I came to the conclusion that if anything could be done to give a more staple and practical outlook to the Russian labour mind it was well worth trying to accomplish it.

At the outset I was faced with the difficulty of not being in a position to offer anything definite to the workmen in return for their willingness to a.s.sist the combatant branch of the Russian service in its new crusade against anarchy. With nothing to offer it seemed hopeless to ask for so much. The only man who could pledge the Government was the Supreme Governor himself, so I wrote to him as follows:

[Copy.]

OMSK, SIBERIA.

_4th February_, 1919.

To His High Excellency, Admiral Koltchak, Supreme Governor.

Sir,--I have been requested by Major-General Knox, Chief of the British Military Mission, Siberia, to undertake a tour of the railway works along the Siberian Railway to address the workmen, and appeal to them as a British Labour representative to give their best service to the Russian State during the present and coming military operations, and to join no strike movement, or do anything to hamper the transport of men and supplies until the military operations against the enemy are completed.

I have pointed out to General Knox that, while I am quite willing to undertake this mission to the railway workmen, I fear it will be quite useless unless I can promise, on behalf of the Russian Government, some improvement in their condition.

1. For instance, I am informed that some of the railway and other Government workmen have not received any wages upon which to keep themselves and their families, for in some cases many weeks, and in other cases months. If this is true, it is impossible to expect workmen to be satisfied, and the wonder would be that they agree to work as well as they do.

It would be necessary for me to be able to promise that such things would be rectified, and wages paid regularly in future.

2. There are many things absent in Russia which industrial communities like England find necessary elements for industrial peace. I admit that very little constructional reform work can be executed during the present disturbed condition of the country, but it would help immensely if I could tell the workmen that I had the authority of the Russian Government that directly order had been restored, laws for the protection and help of the Russian workmen and their organisations, on the lines of those already working so effectively in England, would be adopted by the Russian Government.

If I could get something definite from Your High Excellency upon these points, I believe it would do much to help in the work for the pacification of the labouring cla.s.ses of Russia, and greatly strengthen Your Excellency's hold upon the hearts of the Russian people.

(Signed) JOHN WARD.

(_Lt.-Colonel, M.P., C.M.G., Commanding 25th Bn. Middles.e.x Regiment_.)

[COPY.]

OMSK.

_February 5th_, 1919.

SIR,--In reply to your letter of February 4th, I wish to inform you that I have learned with the greatest satisfaction that you are willing to undertake the important mission of addressing the workmen of our railways and calling them to give their best service to the cause of Russia in this crucial moment of our national existence.

The two questions which you have raised in your letter should not be left without a prompt answer, and I therefore would like to bring to your knowledge the following:--