IV TOWARD KHABAROVSK

When morning dawned, we found ourselves rolling along at about ten miles an hour over a plain, with wooded hills in the distance. The fields were brown and sere, for it was then the first week in October, and the air was feeling the first chill of winter.

About nine o’clock we reached Nikolsk-Ussuri, where the railroad splits, one track, the Chinese Eastern, going across Manchuria to the Siberian border, and the other, the one we were to follow, proceeding to the north through the Maritime Provinces as far as Khabarovsk, where it crosses the Amur River north of that city, and then runs to the northwest well inside the Siberian border, with a branch line running down to Blagoveschench. The main line then goes to Kerak, and crossing the Shilka River, joins up with the Chinese Eastern over Manchuria, at Karimska, a few versts to the southeast of Chita, capital of the province of Trans-Baikal.

At Nikolsk, as it is commonly called, I had my first experience with a station restaurant. There was a Japanese troop-train in the yards, also a train with Chinese troops. Our six hundred odd soldiers had their own kitchen-cars and messed while the train stopped. After their night on shelves built into the box-cars, they were glad for a chance to stretch their legs and exchange pleasantries with their friends in other cars.

The station restaurant was thronged. My orderly went with me, and we pushed our way through crowds of refugees, Cossacks, Japanese officers and all the motley crew assembled there and clamoring for food. We managed to get some cabbage soup, which we had to defend against the flies, for no one ever kills or traps a fly in Siberia.

The city itself is a couple of versts from the station, for when the railroad was built it appears that the engineers took every precaution against getting too close to cities; they simply laid out their lines for the right of way, and if the city happened to be near, well and good; if not, the city would have to come to the railroad.

It was here that I realized for the first time how vague and unlimited is the Russian word Sichass, which means anything from presently to some time in the dim future. I desired to visit the city, to look over the German war-prisoner camp, to investigate the train full of Bolshevist prisoners, including men, women and children. But our Russian conductor, drinking tea in the station, warned us that our train would move “Sichass”, so I went back to my car and waited, not daring to get far away.

We were there for several hours. Russians came and looked at us, and we looked at them. They regarded us with friendly eye, but scowled and muttered when they encountered a Japanese soldier. It was apparent that the wounds of the Russo-Japanese war are not fully healed, and in the face of the hatred which meets the Japanese at every turn in Siberia, the little soldiers from Nippon display a splendid discipline. We heard that this discipline is limited to places where their conduct is under observation.

Every minute, during the time our train lay in the yards, it appeared that departure was imminent. A bell at the station tolled once, and the conductor and engineer blew horns at each other. Presently the engine whistled.

In half an hour or so, two bells tolled from the station, which caused the conductor and engineer to break out their tooting again. This done, they finally decided to load the engine tender with wood, and leaving the job to a pair of Chinese coolies, went away to the station to have another round of tea. In another half hour, they were back, three bells toll, the conductor unfolds carefully a green flag and waves it, rolls it up, and pulls a big bottle of snuff from his boot-leg. Having regaled himself, and sneezed solemnly, he blows his horn again, the engine toots, and after a while, the train moves reluctantly.

Our train stopped on the plains to have ashes drawn from the fire-box. The train crew made tea and lunched. When there was no more tea to drink, and no more gossip to talk, we moved along again.

We stopped eight hours at one station. After two hours waiting, we attempted to ascertain the cause of the delay. It appeared that the engineer had some friends in that town, and had gone away to drink tea. How soon might we be expected to proceed? “Sichass.”

At first this sort of thing is a joke to the stranger in Siberia, in time it becomes an exasperation, but finally you learn to submit and become a Russian, and take no count of the passage of time. Their utter abhorrence for anything approaching a definite statement is most puzzling.

For instance, if they know the exact time a train is supposed to arrive or depart, they refrain from telling the traveler. Some say this is a natural characteristic of the people. I ascribe it to fear of being blamed if there is a delay caused by circumstances over which they have no control.

Under the old régime, if a station-master or a conductor, stated that something was going to happen at a certain time, and it did not happen, they might be whipped or otherwise mistreated by superiors for telling a lie. So they transfer the worry of delay to the traveler, and keep their own skirts clear of trouble.

There is another fact which must be considered, and that is, that to men in prison, time means little. Next week, or next month or next year, will do as well to perform some duty. Siberia was a great prison, and this disregard of time must be in the blood. Ordinarily the Russian is most affable and hospitable, once he knows you for a friend, but to a stranger, his attitude is most impersonal and careless.

As the train stopped from one to fifteen hours at every station, I was able to spend considerable time in the various depots. Their restaurants were thronged with “famine-stricken” peasants, weighing some three hundred pounds gross each, enthusiastically discussing freedom—the while they sprayed themselves with cabbage soup. Hunger! I never want to look upon such hunger again! More: Never again do I want to hear it. (Who would guess that goulash is a high explosive?)

Eat! I will back the Russians as eaters against any other race of eaters in the world. The way an average Siberian can mistreat roasted partridges, hunks of defenseless beef, and loaves of pneumatic rye bread is painful to recall. Their cruelty lies chiefly in the fact that they insist upon talking while they eat. The Siberian is the champion three-ring talker of the universe. He talks politics so well that he can prove himself a liar—then start all over again, which explains why he has to call for outside help in order to settle anything. And if the outsider asks him to stop talking and do something, it makes him mad.

Why work when one can talk? Work is for slaves. Only the Chinese and the women work, (Apparently these are not free). Talk is the chief product of Russian activity along the trans-Siberian. When combined with gastronomics it is thrilling.

The Allied officers in Siberia were misled as to the character of Siberians who appeared to be mere louts, dressed out of the rag-bag. In particular, the Americans in Siberia were inclined to judge the people with whom they came in contact by the standards of dress in the United States. But the Siberian who looks like an animated scare-crow may be playing international poker. And he is willing to let us laugh at him if he can fool us.

These days in Siberia, it is a mistake to think that because a man has on old clothes he is poor or not educated, or unskilful in intrigue. For—he may be dressed badly in order to protect himself from the Bolshevists; or he may himself be a Bolshevist, and his apparent beggary makes him appear harmless.

I found that a surprisingly large number of Siberians (drosky-drivers, station-restaurant attendants, brakemen and many others who might be easily mistaken for moujiks) can speak good English—but will carry on long conversations through an interpreter! One man who had used these tactics, later on leaned down in a station to stroke a cat, saying, “Hello, kitty, where did you come from?” Such men invariably wanted information as to how many American troops had landed at Vladivostok, and what we were planning to do.

We were terribly handicapped by having to depend upon interpreters; I had one Russian-American soldier-interpreter who carried on a conversation of some twenty minutes with a Russian from whom I sought information and when I asked what was being said was told that the Russian “wasn’t saying anything which was worth while.”

But he didn’t know that standing with me listening to the conversation was a British officer who spoke Russian perfectly who then informed me that my soldier and the Russian had discussed the United States and the American expedition in Russia in the most uncomplimentary terms.

Later on my soldier admitted that he agreed with the Russian in a diatribe against the United States, but that he had done so for the purpose of drawing the other fellow out and getting his ideas. He excused his telling me that the conversation had been of a nature that could not interest me because he did not think I was interested in knowing that this particular Russian regarded the United States as a nation of capitalists, and as such the enemy of all Russians. And all the time these Russians continued to smile and bow and assure us of their friendship and their appreciation of what the United States was trying to do to reunite Russia and build it up as a democratic nation.

In fact, the Allies in Siberia have been surrounded by an army without uniforms or other visible military equipment, without any apparent machinery of organization. This army has the ability to vanish without being missed, to reassemble when and where it chooses, to set up a front if it so desires, or, if it sees fit, to dissolve again, concealing itself once more under the wings of the very host which is seeking to overcome it. To a very large extent it is an army of passive resistance.

This vanishing army entered the cities occupied by the Allies, and, in the guise of refugees, or “loyal” Russians, received food, clothing and shelter. Under the protection of the Allied guns, it spent the period of bitter cold weather in comfort, perfecting its plans for the on-coming Spring, carrying on its propaganda of hostility against the Interventionists, and mingling with the troops which had come half way round the world to render it harmless.

The Bolshevists are operating with a strategy of organized disorder.

Their vanishing army acquires weapons by various methods. A truck-load of Kolchak’s machine-guns at Omsk disappeared while in transit from one barracks to another, and the men who were making the transfer dropped from sight.

Some of our own officers and soldiers know how the Bolsheviki added to their own supply of pistols. It has been estimated that ten per cent. of the American officers traveling with orderlies had their automatics either taken by stealth or snatched from the holsters in crowded railroad stations.

One of these officers expostulated with a thief. “Here!” he shouted. “That’s my gun!” “Well, you’re wrong,” was the reply in good English; “it’s mine, and you’d better not start any trouble here.” It seemed good advice.

One story going the rounds is to the effect that an American officer of high rank, while pushing his way through a jam of people in a station, followed by his orderly, was startled by a cry from the latter. His pistol was gone!

“Gone!” said the officer, crossly. “You ought to know better than to lose your gun! Where did you wear it?”

Meekly the orderly indicated the position of his holster on his right hip.

“But you shouldn’t wear it so far back,” growled the exasperated officer. “Keep it well to the front like mine. Look! Here!” And he slapped his own holster, worn well to the front on his belt. Then the red of chagrin spread over his face. “Lord!” he cried. “Mine’s gone, too!”

Another American officer, traveling in the compartment of a car, had as a traveling companion a youthful officer ostensibly from a Cossack regiment. He was a most ingratiating young man, and admired the Americans for their willing aid to Russia. Our officer’s belt and pistol were hanging on a hook. As the train approached a station, the Cossack rose, called attention to some aspect of the landscape outside, and shaking hands with his fellow traveler, went his way. The pistol also went his way.

It was about this time that I began to ask myself, Where is the real front? Now I was suspicious of the delays in restaurants, the blocking of trains, the roundabout droskys, the street-cars that broke down, the misinformation which sent us astray, the balking telephones. It appeared like a perfect system of sabotage—covert warfare.