John Ward

“ If I were the ruler of a state I should pray the gods to preserve me from half-hearted Allies and over-cautious friends. If I wished to help a fallen state or lend an honest hand in a great cause, whether it were to eradicate a hideous and fatal national malady or assert a principle of right and justice, first shield me from the palsy of Allied diplomacy! One clear-sighted, honest helper is worth a dozen powerful aiders whose main business is to put obstacles in each other's way. ”

“ How fortunate it was that at this critical hour in Russian history England was represented by Major-General Knox! I had never heard of him till I went to Siberia, yet in him we have a man combining the courage of the soldier with the higher qualities of a statesman, ready made for the special business in hand. The British Empire doubtless, like Topsy, "growed"! It is more an exhibition of race luck than genius. The way in which we occasionally drop the right man in the right place is not an act of Government so much as a stroke of chance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The disappearance of the sun only adds to their beauty; they alone seem to know no night. As we travelled round under the shadow of these giants the temperature fell many degrees below zero, and the cold from the water penetrated the carriages, necessitating fires and warm furs, in spite of the June sunshine.
I had received intimation that it would be of service to the Omsk Government if I would call upon Colonel Semianoff and use my good offices and my newly-conferred honour as a Siberian Cossack Ataman to recall this erring son of Muscovy to the service of the State. ”

“ A sudden descent on their quarters by another Polish unit, with some new Russian units standing by to render help if necessary, ended in these French protégés being disarmed and got back safely to their prison camp.
Allied help to Russia is like a jig-saw puzzle, a mystery even to the man who devised it. A straight-forward recognition of the Omsk Government would have been an honest hand for honest work, but where would Allied diplomacy have come in? Diplomacy is only necessary when there are ulterior objects than mere plain, unambiguous assistance to a helpless friend. ”

“ Sent from Denikin with dispatches to Omsk, he became the centre of a group of desperadoes who were in want of a cool brain to make them formidable. The state of Omsk at this time was simply indescribable. Every night as soon as darkness set in rifle and revolver shots and shouts could be heard in all directions. The morning sanitary carts picked up from five to twenty dead officers. There were no police, no courts, no law, no anything. In desperation the officers grouped themselves together and hit back indiscriminately at the people they thought responsible for the murder of their comrades. ”

“ I answered, "When a movement starts wrong it is very difficult to put it right; that outsiders all over the world struggle for a place in the trade unions, and if once they get in they either break themselves or the union rather than get out, and those who can't get in hang on outside like limpets and refuse to be kicked off; that the Russian workmen in organising their trade unions must start right and keep them free of every element except the working class." ”

“ General Surovey, under pressure of the Czech Council and Chernoff's Committee, released the prisoners, and began to hunt the famous young General Gaida out of their hitherto equally famous army. To save himself from disgrace at the hands of his political enemies, the general resigned his commission in the Czech Army, and by joining the Russian Army was instantly re-established in his position as Commander of the Russian armies on the right. Thus fell the glorious Czech legions from their high pinnacle of fame, killed as all armies must be the moment they join in party strife. ”

“ The Japanese swarmed up through the wooded slope on the right. I chose the railway because I knew the shallow cutting had a slight curve which would give a safe line of approach to the station, situated about three hundred yards behind this low-lying hill. The Japs advanced through the wood in masses, huge bunches of men without regular formation. On rounding the curve, I saw an enemy armoured train about four hundred yards distant. A Bolshevik officer walked leisurely out of our old headquarters and put one foot on the step of the engine, looking straight at myself standing on the line. ”

“ A Russian market is a thing of joy and colour. There are no buildings: just a huge space in the centre of the town where thousands of shaggy, ice-covered horses stand each with an ice-covered sledge. The peasants, men and women, in huge fur coats which reach to the snow-covered ground, harmonise perfectly with the cattle they control. ”

“ It was here that a polite request was made that the British detachment should not keep so far ahead of the other troops, but I was anxious to keep well ahead for an important reason. The Bolsheviks had ravaged and tortured both young and old, rich and poor, male and female throughout the country till their very name stank in the nostrils of the common people. Their blood lust had been so great that when they had no Russian peasant to torture they fell back on the poor unfortunate Czech soldiers who had fallen into their hands as prisoners of war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Krasnoyarsk and the Ussurie movements of the Bolsheviks were under the direction of able officers appointed by the Red Guard Headquarters at Moscow, with whom they were in constant communication.
Passing Irkutsk, we again struck the Baikal—looking more glorious than before. The warm south-west winds had cleared the snow from the western hills and thawed the ice from that half of the sea. The other half was still ice-bound. In the morning sunshine the snow-covered mountains in the east pierced the heavens with the radiance of eternal day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was truly a stroke of genius for our War Office to flood us with officers and men as instructors for the new Russian army, scarcely one of whom could speak a word of Russian! I feel sure the Russians and ourselves will get on well together, we are so much alike. Omsk and Whitehall are true to type; they each first exhaust the possibility of error, and when no wrong course is left, the right road becomes quite easy. ”

“ That Paris should fall under German blows was of no importance compared with American control of the Chinese Eastern Railway or the presence of the Brooklyn at Vladivostok.
America had not exactly made up her mind what particular part of the Far East was most precious in her eyes, but wished to be friendly with everybody and get as much as possible out of all. Her armies were on the Western front, but her eyes were on the Eastern Pacific, and was it not better after all to remain where you could keep an eye on the other fellow? ”

“ We make awful bloomers in these matters sometimes, but in this case our luck stood by us to some purpose. More than once, when the timidity of the "Politicals" had almost destroyed Russian faith in our honesty of purpose, the robust honesty of his personality turned the scale in our favour. Every Russian trusts him, except those who have forgotten they are Russians. They hate him. That is the real certificate of his worth. I can quite understand the fear of some Labour elements at home that our presence in Siberia may be used by reactionaries to re-establish the old régime. ”

“ On looking round, we were astonished to see spiteful jets of rifle-fire issuing from both sides of the uninjured train directed against thick bunches of Japanese troops who were passing along the track over which we had just advanced. Even the Eastern temperament has limits to its serenity. For a moment the Japs were completely off their guard, but they soon recovered, and dropping flat in the grass, they opened a brisk fusillade. The Magyars were protected by the plated sides of their wagons, and were making sad havoc amongst the soldiers of the Rising Sun. ”

“ It proved to me in a forcible way what I had never realised before, how impossible it is for a man at a distance, however clever he may be, to decide a military problem, limited in locality and isolated, as was this case, from questions of public policy. When the one purpose of a force is the protection or maintenance of a limited front, only the man on the spot can be the judge of what is necessary to accomplish that purpose. ”

“ They have been the subject of the most bitter hatred by the Bolshevik leaders. The Bolshevik contention is that for men or women to call themselves Socialists, and then to hesitate to take a hand in the complete extermination of the bourgeois ruling classes, now there is a chance of doing so in Russia, is to act the part of poltroon and traitor to the cause. The "treachery" is all the greater if the objector is a workman or a workwoman.
The Bolsheviks are quite honest about their purpose—the transfer of power and property by murder and robbery from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. ”

“ Breach of promise is only a negative crime. The Allies went to the other extreme; their help took the form of positive wilful obstruction. The Japanese, by bolstering up Semianoff and Kalmakoff, and the Americans, by protecting and organising enemies, made it practically impossible for the Omsk Government to maintain its authority or existence. The most that could be expected was that both would see the danger of their policy in time to avert disaster. One did; the other left when the evils created had got beyond control. ”

“ He was entirely neglected by the State; there was not a single effective State law dealing with the labour conditions or the life of the worker in the whole Russian code. His condition was, and will remain, in spite of the Revolution, utterly neglected and hopeless. He has not the power to think or act for himself, and is consequently the prey of every faddist scamp who can string a dozen words together intelligently. There are no trade unions, because there is no one amongst them sufficiently intelligent either to organise or manage them. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But these professionals always point out that the rectification of small points like rates of wages and working hours are a waste of time and energy; that the real work is to leave the conditions so bad that, in sheer despair, the worker will rise and destroy capitalism in a night, and have a perfect millennium made ready for the next morning.
The poor, ignorant, uneducated, neglected Russian workman is perfect and well-prepared soil for such propaganda. ”

“ 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 class, that forms so large a proportion of Russian life, never gave the subject five minutes' consideration. ”

“ This storm struck Omsk on February 20, and no words can describe the complete obliteration of man and all his works accomplished by such a gale. Nothing can live in the intense cold created by such a wind. Hence movement and life cease, and King Frost has the whole field to himself. In a few hours the earth is levelled; all the indications remaining of the ordinary log dwellings are a few snow-banks with a row of dark posts from which smoke is emitted, showing that there are human habitations underneath. ”

“ Koltchak and his gallant comrade Denikin had served the Entente purpose. Lenin and Trotsky, by wholesale intimidation and murder, had aroused the enthusiasm of similarly disposed compatriots in Allied countries. These compatriots were becoming noisy in the constituencies. The establishment of order to enable the Russian people to establish a clean democratic Government, and arise from their nightmare of unbridled anarchy, while very desirable in itself, was not a good party cry in any of the Western democracies. ”

“ The Bolshevik power had made a corrupt and dishonourable compact with their German masters, by which the territories of their Motherland, Russia, had been torn from her side, and a huge indemnity wrung from her people. Under German pressure the Bolshevik Soviet power had armed the released German and Austrian prisoners of war, and by means of this alien force was terrorising the Russian people and destroying the country. The Allies looked upon the Bolshevik power as a mere hireling branch of the autocratic German menace, and as such the enemies of British and Russian democracy alike. ”