XXII FAREWELL TO CHITA

The routine of every day ran along about the same as ever for about a week after the Prinkipo invitation to the Bolshevists had unsettled our little world in Chita. But I noted a decided coolness from all parties, or so it seemed to me. My old stock phrases about the “friendship of the United States for a great and reunited Russia” did not ring so true when I got up at banquets to say something pleasant.

And as the toasts to President Wilson and the United States at these affairs became less frequent and less fervid, I began to feel like a wet blanket at joyous occasions to which I had been invited. But I will say that the Russians and the Japanese covered whatever chagrin they felt in fine style and never relaxed their kindness.

At about this time there was a complete upheaval in Semenoff’s staff. New officers got into control, and the old ones, with whom I had been on most friendly terms, went into retirement, which generally took the form of a trip to Harbin, or an absence explained by a necessity for a jaunt to some other city. This new staff, with one or two exceptions, struck me as being composed of the less capable officers in military administration, but well schooled in intrigue. In effect, it seemed to me that Semenoff was gradually drawing to him such officers as gave him the worst advice. Some of them were of a very low type of mind, and distinguished themselves at banquets by their ability to get so drunk that they had to lean on the table when they stood up to make maundering speeches.

I remember one officer who sat at the head of a great table and represented the Ataman while Semenoff was out of the city. He was in a drunken stupor, with his head resting on his chest, when the Cossack band in the next room broke out into a loud and rattly patriotic air. The host roused himself and got to his feet. He showed every sign of being inspired to utter profound thoughts. He put up a swaying arm, as a signal for somebody to stop the band, and when a young officer ran out into the next room, the tune did stop abruptly. Meanwhile, the presiding officer hung in stays for a full five minutes like a ship waiting to come up into the wind. Suddenly the bandsmen, evidently feeling that the silence in the next room should be covered, broke out again in music. It was checked none too politely.

Once more the officer gathered himself, and managed to blurt out the single word: “Russians!” Then he lapsed into silence. The band exploded, so to speak, beginning on the very bar on which they had left off. Somebody hurled an empty vodka bottle into the next room, and demanded silence. The band stopped. This intermittent playing sounded for all the world like a gigantic phonograph being stopped and started while somebody tinkered with its machinery.

Our officer uttered a sentence in Russian, swayed and sat down heavily in his chair. He was asleep by the time he touched the seat. Another officer felt that he must fill the breach and cover the failure of his superior. He was not quite so drunk as his chief. He strode to the balustrade of a balcony, dragging behind him his heavy saber, which had become unhooked. He raised his arm to command attention, and the sudden readjustment of his center of gravity threw him heavily against the balustrade. He lost his balance and fell off the balcony, a distance of some ten feet to the floor.

But the floor was merely a landing at the head of a long stairway. In getting up he missed his footing, and tumbled the length of the stairs, his descent being accompanied by the musical rattle of his saber. The cooks in the kitchen picked him up, and somebody ordered the band to resume playing, which it did, at the very note where it had last left off. No one dared to laugh.

In itself, this incident may appear trifling. Yet it must be borne in mind that at the table was the governing body of Chita, less the Ataman himself. But the Ataman’s brother was there, a distinguished-looking man wearing a Japanese order. And he was not drunk. Mr. Tashkin, the head of the “civil government” of the province, was also present—sober, quiet, dignified. I wondered what he was thinking while this orgy was going on.

And Japanese officers were present, jolly but self-contained, spending most of their time explaining to some insistent Russian officer that they could not drink any more champagne. And all the Russian speeches were of a most patriotic character, and told of the wonderful things in store for Russia under the flags of Ataman Semenoff.

Marvels were to be accomplished by all those present to restore Holy Russia to her greatness before the world. The soldiers serving the tables were quiet and sober. It did not take gigantic brain power to understand that Russia would never regain any great powers with Semenoffs set in the saddle.

And I managed, quite by mistake, to get into the kitchen in the basement when I went down for my coat and cap. There I found at an early hour in the morning, a group of poor old men and women in dirty rags mechanically going about their work of cleaning dishes and mopping the floors. And they looked at the Americansky officer with inquiring eyes. Somewhere in their brains I suspect they wondered if the Americans were upholding Semenoff’s régime. It looked that way. Was I not a guest at the banquet?

This exposition of what was going on in Chita may appear to be bad form on the part of one who was a guest. But in effect I was the United States at that banquet, and the people of the United States were paying me as an officer to learn as much about Siberia as I could, and the people of the United States have a right to know what I learned.

My hosts knew I was an official guest, and their hospitality was not really hospitality to me in the proper sense, but an attempt to gain my esteem by proving to me that they were good fellows. They thought that champagne would gain for them a favorable report from me. But the future of Russia, and more particularly future relations and understandings between the United States and Russia, should not rest on the good-fellowship of wine. I can report on the splendid hospitality of the Siberians, as dispensed on their own understanding of hospitality. I cannot say I would commend Semenoff’s officers as suitable administrators. It is quite likely that while the band was playing, they were having several persons executed in a grove. Festivity has been known to be used as a cover for firing squads.

Semenoff and others had lost hope that the United States would coöperate with them against the Bolshevists, and had turned to other agencies from which they might expect financial aid and moral support.

We demanded that an ideal government be formed before we would recognize any. If an actual honest and competent government had been formed I doubt if we would have recognized it, because no government could, or will be formed, which will not be criticized by some Russian faction. And all some Russian had to do in order to discredit with us any government or leader that rose, was to whisper that such was “monarchists,” or “not representative,” or “reactionary.” And all of those charges would be true, for the simple reason that in any group of Russians which can be gathered together there are bound to be among them some who are monarchists, or not representative of all Russia, or reactionary.

Kolchak formed a government at Omsk in November, 1918. He has not been recognized yet by the United States. Some say he is a monarchist in his sympathies. A former officer of the Czar’s fleet, his training and sympathies are bound to be monarchistic in tendency. He feels that a firm hand is necessary in dealing with the Russian situation. If we had recognized him promptly, and backed him up, Semenoff and Kalmikoff and other lesser lights would have had to adhere to him at once. All power for the regeneration of Russia would have been coördinated, and all ambitions of Cossack chiefs to become local princes, would have been swept away. They would have had to join the parade, and the other Allies would have been willing enough to follow our lead. And a lot of bickering and killing would have been stopped.

For that matter, to give Semenoff and Kalmikoff their due, if they had been recognized, with limitations of their authority, those leaders would have given up much of their petty intriguing from the first, and swung into line behind the United States. They would have listened to our advice.

The whole question when our expedition first landed, was “What will the United States do?” The answer in a couple of months was: “The United States will do nothing—let us start something ourselves, which will repay us for the trouble we have had fighting the Bolshevists.”

So the secret trading began, the forcing of loans from banks got bolder, there was aid which we deprecated from certain quarters to these Cossack chiefs. We played a dog-in-the-manger game, with Christmas-Tree decorations in the form of Red Cross aid, and Y. M. C. A., and Committee on Public Information, and Trade Boards. We conferred and commissioned and sent official representatives in military uniform to various places to make friends, while Bolshevists killed off a vast population, and Cossack chiefs, under the plea of exterminating Bolshevists, executed personal enemies.

We sent two or three hundred railroad engineers into the country, they all thinking that they would be in the army. When they applied for government insurance, they were told they were not in the army. But they wore the uniforms and insignia of our army officers, and when some of them wanted to get out of the country and go home, they were not allowed to quit their jobs. Members of this organization told me that they had been given to understand that if they insisted upon resigning, they could do so, but that they need never again expect to hold a job with an American railroad. And the Russians said that Russian money was paying the salaries of these men—and that these Americans were there to steal the railroad from the Russians. That may sound absurd. But such absurdities thrust at men in Siberia are not pleasant. They reveal to some slight extent the difficult environments in which Americans found themselves in Siberia.

So while in January the temperature hung around seventy degrees below zero, the social atmosphere was about as cold. Some weeks before, having replied to a request that I class myself for discharge or for permanent commission in the army, I had requested discharge.

On January twenty-sixth, in reply to my classification request, I got orders to return to Vladivostok as soon as an officer who was to relieve me, arrived in Chita. I had offered my services for the war, and the war was over.

I immediately informed my friends that I was leaving soon for the United States. General Oba’s chief of staff gave a Japanese dinner at headquarters, and invited the British officers and me. We had a most enjoyable time, free from the drunkenness which marked Siberian affairs. In fact, it was my most enjoyable official function in Chita.

I made my official call on Oba the day of my departure, and he came to my room to say farewell. I was sincerely sorry to say good-bye to him.

Captain B—— and Mrs. B—— had planned to go to Vladivostok before I was relieved. They delayed their departure in order to go with me. And we went in the private car of a Russian colonel who was going to Harbin. He was in Semenoff’s service, but I surmised that he was too high a type of officer and gentleman ever to get very far in the councils of the Ataman. I did not remember having met him before in Chita—a rougher element held the front of the stage most of the time.

As the colonel’s car was in the yards, we did not have to sit in the station and wait for the train which was due to arrive from Irkutsk at nine o’clock in the evening of January 31st.

It seemed to be the coldest weather I had ever experienced when with Captain B——, Mrs. B——, and Werkstein, I set out from the Hotel Select. There was a gentle breeze blowing—a barely perceptible movement of the air—which intensified the seventy-below temperature. In the five minutes we were crossing the square before the station, walking against the pressure of a zephyr barely strong enough to stir a feather, the tears ran out of my eyes and froze on my cheeks, and my nose was frost-bitten before I could get the fur band of my cap across it.

I looked back at the line of shops and restaurants. The lights were shining through a gray haze of frozen fog, the doors were shrouded with arches of icicles like entrances to fairy grottoes.

We plunged into the dark labyrinth of lines of cars in the yards. A private train of Semenoff, with the palatial coaches of the old days, protected by a few stamping sentries. Nearby was the Ataman’s armored cars, with the muzzles of field-pieces and machine-guns jutting out over the steel sides which were gleaming white with hoar frost in the pale light of the chilled stars. A dim light spilling from our private car, revealed letters a yard high painted on the end of an armored box-car, in Russian “Cemehobr,” or Semenoff.

I could see in the distance, lights in the upper rooms of the Ataman’s residence. Probably a council of state was being held—or only an informal gathering of women who had recently been brought up from Harbin. Above the clamor of the crowds of refugees in the station, I heard the howling of wolves in the hills.

We got aboard the colonel’s car, and went to bed. The train which was due at nine that night to pick us up, did not pull us out of the city of convicts till nine in the morning of February 1, 1919.

I was started on my journey for New York, exactly on the other side of the world. I was content.