THE ALLIES AND SLBERIA.*
Cowries. WARD'S amount of his experiences in Siberia in 1918-19 with the 25th Middlesex is very welcome because it is obviously honest and sincere. He says that he wrote it from day to day for the benefit of his children, in the event of his failing to return, and that he has left the narrative untouched. But he adds that " many things have happened since which seem to show that we were not always right in our estimate of the forces at work around us." " It is best to believe nothing one hears in Russia," he says elsewhere, " and what one actually sees is not always what it seems." Yet he adheres to his main conclusion—namely, that if the Allies had united in recognizing Admiral Koltchak's Government and in fulfilling their promise to assist the Admiral, the Bolsheviks would long since have disappeared. " Koltchak has not been destroyed so much by the acts of his enemies as by the stupidity and neglect of his Allied friends." We are bound to say that he makes out a strong case for this view, although he admits that the unfathomable ignorance of the Russian people and the selfishness and dishonesty of the politi- cians might have thwarted far stronger and wiser men than Admiral Koltchak. Colonel Ward blames Japan and America in particular. He asserts that the Japanese supported the Social Revolutionary faction, who invited them to occupy Siberia up to the Urals, and that Admiral Koltchak's refusal to endorse this bargain caused the Japanese to protect his rival, General Semianoff or Semenoff. Colonel Ward also declares that the American troops in the Amur Province promoted a revival of Bolshevism by declaring the neutrality of the occupied district and allowing the " Reds " to use it as a place of refuge, where they could organize raids on the adjacent districts. We have no means of verifying these statements, but it is clear, at any rate, that Japan and America did not support Admiral Koltchak, as Great Britain and France tried to do in a half- hearted way.
Colonel Ward with his garrison battalion of " B one-era " arrived at Vladivostok in August, 1918, and, after taking part, in one action on the Ussuri which freed all Eastern Siberia from the German, Magyar, and Bolshevik forces, he was sent to Omsk. His trains, he says, were delayed by the Japanese railway authori- ties. At one town, west of Irkutsk, he was held up by a local Bolshevik rising which he had to repress by a show of force. When he reached Omsk, he found a Social Revolutionary Government and a Monarchist Government caballing one against the other, and leaving the armies at the front to look after themselves. Ho went on to the front, west of the Urals, with the regimental band, which played in the trenches and appar- ently annoyed the Bolsheviks. The patriot armies were very short of rifles, boots, and olothes. Colonel Ward returned to Omsk just in time to see Admiral Koltchak's coup d'etat of November 18th, 1918, and to save the lives of the Social Revolu- tionary dictators, whom he sent under escort to the Chinese border. The Admiral then began the offensive which resulted in the capture of Penn. Colonel Ward declares that it was deprived of its full effect by the retirement of the Czech Legions, under Social Revolutionary influences. The Czech General Gaida joined the Russian army, which had no foreign help in its advance. For months after, Colonel Ward declares, the route from Archangel te Penn was open, so that the Allies might have sent assistance to the Siberians. As nothing was done, the Bolsheviks regained courage and began a fresh advance towards the Urals, with the results that we all know. Colonel Ward says that the Allies' proposal of a Conference of patriots and Bolsheviks at Prinkipo in January, 1919, caused " a sudden reaction against the European Allies " and was at once rejected by Admiral Koltchak. But it may be inferred from his narrative that dissensions among the Allied Missions and the intrigues and incompetence of the Omsk Adminis- tration were the real causes of Admiral Koltchak's collapse. Colonel Ward in his outspoken way says of the Admiral's Ministers : " The pigmies by whom he is surrounded are so many drags on the wheels of State. There is not one that I would trust to manage a whelkatall." He left Omsk with his battalion -in May, 1919, and reached the Pacific coast without difficulty.
The author reverted at times to his old work as a Labour organizer, and addressed meetings of workmen at towns along the Siberian Railway. He seems to have had attentive and
With the "Die-Herds" in Siberia. By Colonel John Ward. land= CoeselL floe. gd. nets]
friendly audiences, but he formed a very low opinion of the Russian workman's intelligence:-
" Let there be no mistake, Bolshevism lived by the grace of the old regime. The peasant had his land, but the Russian workman had nothing. Not one in a thousand could tell one letter of the alphabet from another. 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 organize or manage them. All the alleged representatives of Labour who have from time to time visited England pretending to represent the Russian workman are so many deputational frauds. There cannot be such a delegate from the very nature of things, as will be seen if the facts are studied on the spot. The lower middle classes, especially the professional teacher class, have invented the figment of organized Russian labour for their own purpose. The condition of the Russian workman is such that he can only formulate his grievances by employing others to do it for him. Hence there has come into existence numerous professional councils, who for a consideration visit the workers in their homes and wherever they congregate, and compile their complaints and grievances. But these professionals always point out that the rectification of small points like rates of wages and working hours is 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. He found himself bound hand and foot in the meshes of this professional element, who did not belong to his class and, except in theory, knew nothing of his difficulties. When this professional element had misled, bamboozled, and deserted him, in a frenzy of despair ho determined to destroy this thing called education, and made the ability to read and write one of the proofs of enmity to his class on the same principle that our uneducated workmen of the first half of the nineteenth century destroyed machinery and other progressive innovations, whose purpose they did not understand. There would be less chatter about revolution if our people could only understand what it means to go through the horrors that have destroyed Russia and her people more effectively than the most ruthless invasion."
That passage explains a great deal. The author thinks that, between the reactionaries and the Bolsheviks, the moderate parties were thrust aside. But he reports the significant remark of a workman at Petropavlovsk. " It is all right so long as they do not want to bring back the old regime, but if that is their object I can tell them that Russia will never submit to live under the old regime again." How a strong moderate party is to be formed which will give the people freedom and decent government, as distinguished from a Communist or a Tsarist despotism, is the problem which Russia must solve in her own fashion. The Allies, all pulling different ways, evidently did more harm than good by their intervention in Russian politics.
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