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The Fighting Czecho-Slovaks: Semenoff
The reason for their being in the district of the Urals is one part of the romance of their adventurous life. Out across Siberia, near the Manchurian frontier, during April and May, the Cossack General Semenoff was operating. He had closed to traffic the Trans-Siberian line by way of Harbin, so that the first twelve thousand Czechs had had to use the single track Amur Railway line to the north by way of Khabarovsk. By May 4 an international proletariat army thoroughly mercenary in character and numbering possibly three thousand men, largely Austrian prisoners of war, was enlisted to repulse Semenoff from the region of the railway junction at Karuimskaya. Obviously since it was known that the Czechs were financed by France and that France favored intervention in Siberia it was indiscreet to allow thousands of Czech soldiers whose bravery was unquestioned to pass within fourteen miles of the army under the command of Semenoff. Fictitious floods on the Amur and some well-founded stories of the poor condition of the single track Amur line were conjured up by the Siberian Soviets as a reason for temporarily preventing the Czechs from proceeding to France. The only real service performed by Semenoff's provocative army of mercenaries and Chinese and Japanese irregulars, was the indirect one of detaining the Czechs in Siberia a service on which the Cossack leader never figured. There is no question but that to get to France was the sincere desire of the Czechs and there was no suggestion that their forces could be or desired to be used in Siberia. Having left the Austrian army rather than fire on their brother Slavs the Czechs could scarcely be expected to have much enthusiasm for fighting Russians over an ill-defined intervention program through thousands of miles of Siberia. Chafing under the enforced delay, these soldiers insisted that they be allowed to proceed to France. This seemed out of the question to the Bolsheviki whose only alternative was to disarm them. The Czechs who had carefully avoided any aggression upon Russians until then, immediately set up a stout resistance, quickly overcoming their would-be captors and thus almost miraculously putting the small force which had then probably reached one hundred thousand men in control of thousands of miles of railway reaching from Novo Nikolayevsk to Tcheliabinsk and thence along the two branches leading to Ekaterinburg and Zlatoust. This virtually established an economic boundary between Siberia and Russia along the line of the Urals, since the unsettled condition of the country makes the railway the only practicable line of communication.
How control of the railway is secured.
The control of the railways was easily secured. At each of the important stations Czech trains held the sidings. Due to the delay the trains which should have been en route to France piled up at the stations, and even in European Russia at Samara, Simbirsk and Suizran, a sufficient number of Czechs held the station points to make their capture by Bolsheviki forces a difficult matter. The Czechs made no attempt to seize the towns located some distance from the stations or any other territory. They wanted only to make secure their The Russian peasants friendly. railroad travel. The high prices which they paid for their necessarily large supplies of provisions and the fact that they paid cash while the Bolshevik forces and Soviets often requisitioned food supplies, likewise their good cheer and personal magnetism, won for them the friendship of the peasant and artisan classes in many of the villages so that when the clash came only such Bolshevik forces as were definitely put to the task of disarming them were actually hostile. The easy-going and friendly Russian peasant, supine under the violent political changes, is a traditional friend and an unwilling enemy. This characteristic, which the Allied Governments have harshly criticized, may be counted upon to work to the advantage of the Allies under any fair scheme for economic aid and peaceful penetration which does not give grounds upon which active German propaganda could construct open hostility. One may well wonder why the hundreds of thousands of Austrian war prisoners in Siberia have not blown up tunnels, destroyed tracks and otherwise tried to stop the Czech expedition. It may be that the Austrians secretly admired these men and were too tired of war to take the initiative in Siberia. Seizure of Vladivostok.
The people welcome the Czechs.
The seizure of Vladivostok by the Czechs was characteristic. From their arrival, they attracted the attention and admiration of the people, many of whom were planning an anti-Bolshevik demonstration. Every ship commander in the harbor had his men ready for landing parties in case of trouble. But there was no disorder on the day of the demonstration and not till a month later did a Bolshevik disturbance give the Czechs a chance to free an anti-Bolshevik city from its oppressors. Japanese, Chinese, English or Americans from the war-ships could have done it. But when the Czechs did it, a Slavic, Russian-speaking people gained control of a city that gladly welcomed their intervention. The same idea explains their marvelous success in Russia. Having braved death rather than fight Russians, the Czechs can now fight oppressive Russian elements without having their motives misunderstood or their plans opposed.
Marriages of war prisoners and peasant women.
Siberia has afforded an interesting race study ever since the Teuton prisoners began to arrive. From the very first, German and Austrian prisoners mated with the sturdy peasant women of Siberia and settled to a happy and unhampered life in the undeveloped lands of the great plains. Some of the women had husbands at the front, but nichevo never means "never mind" to a greater extent than it does in Russian marital affairs. A man's a man for a' that, and there was little trouble until the two parents of different nationality and language discussed which language the children should be taught. German and Russian produce the same towheaded stock. With the downfall of the Russian army the Russian husband sometimes returned and though quite willing to assume responsibility for the new offspring, insisted on asking the Austrian substitute at his bed and board to leave. As often as not the Austrian left. There were always a better farm and frau to be had elsewhere, and some Russian women are tiresome anyway.
Many Austrians do not go home.
When conditions are like this in Siberia, why should an Austrian return to a hungry country to fight a heroic enemy? A happy home in Siberia, which some other man has founded, or starvation in Austria? No wonder the Austrians in Siberia are a mercenary and unpatriotic lot. I saw many in the Bolshevik army. Most of those I talked with were under arms for the sake of the 200 rubles per month, equipment and food they were paid by the Bolsheviks, without, as they told me, planning to run any unnecessary chances of losing their lives in actual fighting against the Czechs or any other enemy of the Bolsheviks for that amount of money, if they could avoid it; not a very difficult matter. Allied military support of the Czechs in Siberia is not Japanese intervention, and sentiment in Russia and Siberia against intervention to-day is now what it was six months ago. If the Bolsheviki do not represent the people of Russia, the only way the Russian people can develop confidence in themselves, and strength, is to throw off the Bolsheviki. The Archangel and Siberian regions have started such moves.