XIV THE CITY OF CONVICTS

My first impressions of Chita were good. It had an excellent though dirty station, and the buildings were substantial, most of those in the business district being of stone or brick. There were two big Russian churches, a synagogue, and a Mohammedan mosque, two local newspapers being published intermittently, banks which did not at that time boast of their assets, trade-schools, high schools, and a school conducted by the clergy but which was temporarily closed, its building having been commandeered by Ataman Semenoff, the chief of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks, for an officers’ school. The population was between fifty and sixty thousand. There were two fairly good hotels, the better one held by Semenoff as quarters for his officers and their families.

The streets were wide and laid in straight lines. And oddly enough, in a country which we assume to be buried in snow during the winter, to walk the streets meant to sink ankle-deep in dust. All the snow I saw in Chita was a mantle of fine particles on ground which was not disturbed by traffic. It was too cold to snow.

We found the officer I was to relieve in the Hotel Dayooria. The room was dark, because the single window was an inch thick with frost. But there was an electric drop-light. On the window-sill were tea, sugar, bread and a mess-kit. The scant furniture was dangerous to use, for the Bolshevists had gone through the hotel and wrecked it.

I was offered a room for myself and interpreter which was bare of furniture, the walls stripped clean of paper, the window repaired poorly, at the rate of twenty-five rubles per occupant, or at the then rate of exchange, about five dollars a day for both.

The halls were filthy dirty, and the odors nauseating. The toilet on the main floor had plumbing, but not water, and it had been in use for several months. There was no light in it, and its ventilation was attended to by the door which opened into the dirty hall. The place made its presence known throughout the building, and neither proprietor nor Russian guests felt that there was anything out of the ordinary in their surroundings.

To travel over the country and find such conditions everywhere, regarded by the native population as normal, and then to hear of epidemics which were being fought by the Red Cross doctors, and thousands of dollars in medical supplies and medicines being shipped into the country as gifts from the American people, made me wonder if it would not be better to first use a knout on those responsible for insanitary conditions beyond description or belief.

There was a great clamor about the danger of typhus, and our medical men, military and civilian, were much concerned about its spread. There were slips of paper distributed, printed in Russian, telling what to do when afflicted with typhus. It was described as a disease caused by body vermin, and urging personal cleanliness. I have seen many Siberians read that warning, while they casually scratched themselves. Generally speaking, the people regard lice as things which create a slight discomfort, but are not worthy of much attention—about on a par with flies.

One thing the Siberian does thoroughly—he takes a funeral seriously. He turns it into a dramatic pageant, and no detail is overlooked. But he will not turn his hand over to take any precaution against disease, or the conditions that create it. I asked several Siberians, merely to get their attitudes, if it would not be well to improve sanitary conditions. “You will all be sick and die,” I said to one man.

“We may be sick, but we will not die,” he said. “What if we are sick? The Americanskys are sending medicines to cure us.”

Probably if we demanded good sanitary conditions before we would supply medical goods, we would be interfering with the people. But if we were going to contribute medicines to a locality at home which allowed breeding spots for disease all over the locality, I am willing to wager that we would demand an improvement of the sanitation, and see that it was accomplished, even if we had to use some kind of force.

One of my first duties was to call upon Lieutenant General Oba, commanding the Japanese division, with headquarters at Chita. The Japanese staff occupied a four-story department store which covered an entire block. This building had been swept clean of its contents by looting Bolshevists.

It happened that the Chief of Intelligence in our forces, had been in Chita several days, and was preparing to return to Vladivostok. He went with me to Oba’s headquarters, and we took with us a Y. M. C. A. man who had been a missionary in Japan and who spoke Japanese well.

In the hall there was a wooden dial on a table, with a wooden arrow. In sectors of the circle, were written Japanese and Russian sentences, arranged so that when you read the Russian sentence which applied to the officer you wished to call upon, and turned the arrow to that sector, it also pointed to a translation in Japanese. Then the guard on duty learned from this automatic interpreter, your business, and sent your card in to the proper officer.

We were conducted to a room where we removed our heavy coats and furs, and presently we were ushered into the presence of Oba. He is a small man, of dignified but unassuming manners, and most amiable. I liked him extremely. If I remember correctly, his foreign training was French, and I missed the Germanic bluntness and the striving for dignity which so many Japanese officers have as the result of acquiring or copying German military manners.

Most Japanese officers who attain high rank are in addition to being accomplished soldiers, astute diplomats. At least that is the impression they give me. It may be that what I ascribe to astuteness, is in reality an avoidance of discussing many of the things which other foreign officers will discuss together with more or less frankness. Silence is often mistaken for great wisdom. It may be wise to be silent—if one wishes to appear wise. In a newspaper experience covering nearly a quarter of a century, I have sometimes found many men supposed to be oracles, merely to be clams. Once they could be induced to talk, their limitations were apparent.

I would say that Oba has all the French love of conversation, and in addition is most frank. There was no reason why he should plunge into a discussion of Japan in Siberia, and there was no reason why he should be more than formally polite. Yet every time I had occasion to call on Oba, he made me feel thoroughly at home, and such occasions proved to be in the nature of a pleasure rather than an official ordeal. His abilities as a soldier I do not doubt, but I believe he would serve Japan well as a diplomat.

Technically, it was proper to call first upon Ataman Semenoff, but at that time he was confined to his bed suffering from the wounds inflicted by a bomb thrown at him in a theatre of Chita. So we called upon his chief of staff, General Verego. There was much intrigue in Semenoff’s little army of some five thousand, and Verego lost his power in time, and went away to Harbin.

We also called upon the head of the civil government, or who would have been the head of the civil government of the province had there been any civil government—a Mr. Tashkin, who at one time was a member of the Duma. He proved to be a typical Russian statesman, including whiskers and glasses. His keen eyes impressed me as being able to see and understand many things, and I felt that he was only biding his time till certain military autocracies could be pushed into the background. He is the type of man upon which Russia will have to depend for statesmanship, when it gives up government by the sword.

Oba, Semenoff, Tashkin—to me, those three symbolized the situation in Siberia. Oba, to a certain extent, with the power of the Japanese Empire behind him, stood behind Semenoff; Semenoff was at outs with Kolchak, who in Omsk proclaimed himself the Supreme Ruler of Russia; Semenoff had fought the Bolshevists with his little army while Kolchak remained inactive in Harbin; Kolchak, the way cleared by Semenoff’s army, jumped ahead of Semenoff to Omsk and became the chief of all Russia in theory; Semenoff, ambitious to set himself up as a local prince if not ambitious to be the dictator of all Russia, resented being called upon to subordinate himself to Kolchak and have his wings clipped.

Kalmikoff, being a Cossack, stood with Semenoff so far as he dared, he in turn backed by Oi, the Japanese commander at Khabarovsk. The United States stood aloof, merely pleading that all parties come to agreement. Tashkin remained quiet in the background, holding the thin thread of his civil power.

Semenoff was charged by Kolchak with treason, and blocking the railroad and cutting the wires near Chita. Semenoff denied the charges, and some of his own supply trains were held up near Harbin by General Horvat, head of the Chinese Eastern section of the Trans-Siberian. Horvat is said to have taken that action to aid Kolchak in forcing Semenoff to put his army and himself under the orders of Kolchak. In the meantime, while these forces should have combined and been whipping the Bolshevists, the latter were gaining strength and cutting Russia’s throat.

My chief dined with a Russian family the night he left and expected his train to arrive about ten o’clock. His interpreter went to the station and learned that the train would be in about seven. So we sent hasty word to the colonel, and he left the dinner and hastened to the station. We pried our way into the usual crowd of refugees and sat on the colonel’s baggage in the evil-smelling restaurant.

Seven o’clock came, but no train. Inquiry resulted in the information that it would be there “Sichass,” or presently. The train came at two the next morning. It was stuffed to suffocation, as usual. The station commandant fought his way into a second-class car, found a compartment with accommodations for four persons which held eight, and routed them all out. The passage in the car was so jammed with people that we had difficulty in getting in, and had to pass the baggage over the heads of the crowd. And the eight who had been evicted, together with their food and cooking utensils, stood around and cursed the commandant.

In order to reach the train, we had to first climb over ice-covered freight cars, which stood between the passenger train and platform. The night was dark, the tracks were coated with ice, and everything was slippery. But we managed to transfer all the colonel’s belongings, and left him with a guttering candle in his compartment. A Chinese colonel and his interpreter were put in with him, and the train pulled out for Vladivostok. Werkstein and I went back to our hotel, and to bed. We represented the United States in Chita. The next morning two of Semenoff’s officers were found assassinated in the streets—their backs had been blown out in the frozen fog of the night before.