Bulgaria's political evolution.
The accurate gaging by Allied statesmanship of Bulgaria's political evolution is specially noteworthy because that evolution was both complicated and obscure. In fact, its roots reach down to the fundamental aspirations of the Bulgarian people. Bulgaria's present volte-face is no chance product of panic, but a logical step in her national policy. Its consequences thus promise to be not ephemeral, but lasting. An understanding of the factors that brought about the existing situation is therefore worth careful study.
The Prussians of the Balkans.
Desire to attain race unity.
The Bulgarians have often been called the Prussians of the Balkans, and in this characterization there is a large measure of truth. A hard-working, tenacious folk, capable of great patience, docile to iron discipline, and appreciative of governmental efficiency, the material progress made by the Bulgarians during their forty years of independence is as striking in its way as the similar progress of the German people. Unfortunately, the Bulgarians resemble the Prussians not only in their virtues, but in their most unlovely qualities as well. There are the same tactlessness, brutality, overweening ambition, and cynical indifference to the means by which those ambitions are to be attained. This has shown itself clearly throughout Bulgarian history. When Bulgaria gained her independence of Turkey in 1878 she started with a perfectly legitimate ambition, the attainment of Bulgarian race-unity through the annexation of those Bulgar-inhabited portions of Macedonia that remained under Turkish rule. For this the Bulgarian people toiled and taxed themselves without stint. For this theybuilt up a military machine relatively the most formidable on earth.
Projects of the leaders.
But that was by no means the whole story. Race-unity may have been the goal for which the simple Bulgarian peasant drilled and delved. His leaders had more grandiose projects in view. This was specially true of the Bulgarian monarch, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a man of great political sagacity, but of a cynical unscrupulousness rivaling Machiavelli's "Prince." Ferdinand's dream was a great Bulgarian empire embracing the entire Balkan Peninsula, with its seat at Constantinople and his exalted self occupying the imperial throne. This implied both the expulsion of the Turks from Europe and the subjugation of the other Christian Balkan peoples. In the Balkan War of 1912 Bulgaria's hour seemed to have struck, but Ferdinand for once overplayed his hand, and Bulgaria's Balkan rivals beat her on the battle-field and forced her to the humiliating Peace of Bukharest in 1913.
the Peace of Bukharest.
The Peace of Bukharest was not a constructive settlement. It was an attempt on the part of embittered enemies to punish Bulgaria's ambitions and keep her permanently down. The result was most unfortunate. Playing upon their balked desire for race-unity, Ferdinand bound his subjects to his wider imperialistic designs. Raging under their humiliations and their failure to redeem their Macedonian brethren, the Bulgarians declared themselves ready to league with the devil if they might thereby tear up the Bukharest parchment and revenge themselves upon their enemies.
The opportunity for revenge.
The opportunity was not long in coming. The Pan-German devil was already preparing his stroke for world dominion, and when the blow fell in 1914, Bulgaria's alinement was almost a foregone conclusion. The military losses in the recent Balkan Wars had of course soweakened her that cautious diplomatic jockeying was a preliminary necessity, but when Russia had succumbed to Hindenburg's hammer-strokes in the summer of 1915 and the Germanic hosts menaced Serbia in the autumn, Bulgaria threw off the mask, struck Serbia from the rear, and joined the Teutonic powers. Thus did the "Berlin-Bagdad" dream grow into solid fact, and Mitteleuropa became a hard reality.
The people give hearty assent.
Germany promises cessions from Turkey.
Victory over Serbia and Rumania.
There can be no question that when Bulgaria entered the war on the Teutonic side in the autumn of 1915 she did so with the hearty assent of the vast majority of her people. The Germans had promised Bulgaria those things which Bulgarians most desired. A Teutonic alliance offered Bulgaria immediate possession of Serbian Macedonia, where lived the bulk of the Bulgarian element still outside Bulgaria's political frontiers, together with the practical destruction of the Serbian arch-enemy. The Teutonic alliance likewise offered prospects of reclaiming the Bulgarian populations of Greek Macedonia and of the southern Dobrudja, annexed by Rumania, in 1913, should Greece and Rumania, both notoriously pro-Ally, strike in on the Entente side. Lastly, the German Government agreed to use its good offices with its ally, Turkey, to obtain for Bulgaria a Turkish cession of the Demotika district of Thrace west of the Maritza River, thereby giving Bulgaria direct railroad communication with Dedeagatch, her one practicable outlet on the Ægean Sea. All these things presently came to pass. Serbia lay crushed, and Serbian Macedonia was under Bulgarian control before the close of 1915. Turkey soon yielded Demotika. In the spring of 1916 the quarrel between the Greek King Constantine and the Entente powers permitted Bulgaria to occupy the coveted Drama-Serres-Kavala districts of Greek Macedonia,while that same autumn Rumania's intervention on the Allied side resulted in her speedy defeat, with Bulgarian troops overrunning the whole Dobrudja as far as the Danube mouth, and Bulgarian regiments triumphantly parading through the streets of Bukharest. Small wonder that up to the close of 1916 Bulgaria remained a loyal member of Mitteleuropa, thoroughly contented with her bargain.
Effects of defeats on Russia.
The Russian Revolution.
Bulgaria only a link in Mitteleuropa.
The year 1917, however, saw the beginning of that estrangement from Germany which has finally caused Bulgaria's abandonment of the Teutonic cause. The first rift in the lute was the Russian Revolution. This event was a great shock to Ferdinand and the Sofia politicians. When Bulgaria had joined Germany in the autumn of 1915 her political leaders had divined the fact that Russia's war spirit was broken by the crushing defeats inflicted upon her by the Germans and that she would ultimately retire from the war. But Sofia had looked forward to a Russian retirement under imperial auspices and thereafter to a Russo-German rapprochement in which Bulgaria should be the connecting-link, extracting a profitable brokerage by playing off one against the other in Balkan affairs. The idea was subtle, yet not without reason when we remember that it was toward this very state of things that the last czarist governments of Stürmer and Golytzin were feeling their way. However, Bulgarian expectations were completely dashed by the credo of Revolutionary Russia, which renounced imperialism and eschewed all those near-Eastern ambitions which had been the watchword of the old régime. Now, Bulgaria did not like the new situation. For though Russia was definitely out of the Balkans, Germany and Austria were emphatically not, and their weight was too heavy to be borne pleasantly even by their friends. Itwas one thing for Bulgaria to be the connecting link of Mitteleuropa, with mighty Russia always potentially present to redress the balance. It was quite another matter to be just the link. That this was to be Bulgaria's future rôle in Mitteleuropa, Germany's new attitude made increasingly plain. The progressive disintegration of Russia through 1917 riveted Teutonic domination on the Balkans and even offered alternative routes to the East. This meant that Germany no longer needed to show Bulgaria special consideration, and what that fact implied to Teutonic minds was quickly shown by the series of bitter disillusionments that Bulgaria had to experience.
Germany disposes of the Dobrudja.
The first shock came regarding the Dobrudja. When the Teuton-Bulgar armies had swept the Rumanians out of the Dobrudja at the close of 1916, Bulgaria had expected to acquire the entire peninsula. But Germany soon showed that she had other ideas on the matter. The Dobrudja not only controlled the mouth of the Danube, but also contained the port terminus of the main railroad trunk-line from Central Europe to the Black Sea. These things Germany had no intention of placing in Bulgarian hands. Accordingly, Bulgaria was given only the southern Dobrudja, the rest of the peninsula being held "in common." And when in the spring of 1918 Russia's final collapse forced Rumania to make peace with the Central powers, it was to them, and not to Bulgaria, that Rumania ceded the Dobrudja prize. Of course Germany temporized, and extended the Dobrudja "condominium" until the final peace settlement, but Bulgaria could see with half an eye that her hopes in this quarter would never be realized.
The dispute with Turkey about Thrace.
A second shock was presently administered by Turkey. In return for Bulgaria's extension of territory in the southern Dobrudja, Turkeydemanded compensation by Bulgaria's retrocession of the Demotika district of Thrace. This district, it will be remembered, was vital to Bulgaria's railway communications with her Ægean seaboard. Bulgaria therefore angrily rejected the proposal, Turkey as vehemently insisted, and by the beginning of 1918 a very pretty quarrel was on between the two allies, culminating in at least one bloody mix-up between Turkish and Bulgarian troops. In these circumstances Bulgaria appealed to Germany, but was deeply chagrined to receive from the Wilhelmstrasse a Delphic utterance which might have been interpreted as an indorsement of Turkish claims. The reason for this was that Germany was then overrunning the Ukraine preparatory to the occupation of Transcaucasia and the penetration of the middle East. For such far-flung projects zealous Turkish cooperation was a prime necessity. Accordingly, Turkey had to be favored in every possible way. As for Bulgaria, she must not embarrass Germany in her march to world dominion.
Germany does not promise Saloniki.
Reservation regarding Macedonia.
A third shock was in store. Ever since the spring of 1916 Bulgaria had occupied the Drama-Serres-Kavala districts of Greek Macedonia. In 1916, Greece was clinging to an ambiguous neutrality, but a year later the Entente powers deposed King Constantine, and Greece ranged herself squarely on the Allied side, with a declaration of war against Bulgaria as one of the first consequences. Thereupon Bulgaria urged Germany to allow her definitely to annex the occupied districts and to promise her Saloniki when victory should crown the Teuton-Bulgar arms. But here again Bulgaria discovered that Germany had other fish to fry. Ex-King Constantine and the Greek royalists might yet be very useful to Berlin. Therefore they must not be alienated by giving Bulgariaterritories which would render every Greek an irreconcilable foe to Mitteleuropa. Also Saloniki, the great Ægean outlet of central Europe was far too valuable a prize to be committed exclusively to Bulgarian hands. But Saloniki could be reached from central Europe only across Macedonia. Therefore in the final Balkan settlement there must be reserves regarding Bulgaria's control of the Macedonian railroad system. For that matter, this might have to be applied to Bulgaria's own railroad system, since it was the trunk-line from central Europe to the East.
German interests first.
So reasoned the suave German diplomats. The effect upon Bulgarian sensibilities can be imagined. How far removed was this drab reality from roseate dreams of imperial Bulgaria dominating the entire Balkans and treating with Teutonic partners as a respected equal! The grim truth was this: Bulgaria's promised gains were being whittled away according to the shifting exigencies of German policy. Was anything certain for the future? No. Because German interests came first, and the junior colleagues must "do their part." Here once more appeared the Nemesis of PrussianRealpolitik, that sinister heresy the crowning demerit of which is that it is not even "real," since it reposes on short-sighted egoism and disregards those moral "imponderables," good faith, fair-dealing, etc., which weigh most heavily in the end. Having turned the neutral world into enemies,Realpolitikwas now ready to turn Germany's allies into neutrals.
Bulgaria is discontented.
Bulgaria suffers also from previous wars.
Thus by the opening months of 1918 Bulgaria was no longer a contented member of central Europe. Most of her political leaders were profoundly disillusioned, and uncertain as to the future. Of course these political matters were still somewhat veiled from the masses. But meanwhile the Bulgarian peasant had beenundergoing a little educative process of his own. German diplomats might ask Bulgaria to make sacrifices. The Bulgarian peasant could answer roundly that this was already the case. For Bulgaria was suffering—suffering in every fiber of her being. When she entered the European struggle in 1915, Bulgaria was still weak from two bloody wars. True, the Bulgarian conscripts had marched gladly enough once more, because they were told that it was a matter of a single short campaign, ending in a speedy peace. But two long years had now passed, and Bulgaria's manhood still stood mobilized in distant Macedonia, while at home the fields went fallow, and the scanty harvests, reaped by women and children, had to be shared with the German. Everywhere there was increasing want, sometimes semi-starvation. Bulgaria, like Russia, was proving that a primitive agricultural people may make a fine campaign, but cannot wage prolonged modern war.
Premier Radoslavov resigns.
All this discontent, both above and below, presently focused itself in the parliamentary situation. The opposition groups in the Bulgarian Sobranje steadily gained strength until on June 17, 1918, Premier Radoslavov was forced to resign. Radoslavov had been in power since 1913. He had been the architect of the Teuton-Bulgar alliance and was known to be a firm believer in the Mitteleuropa idea. His successor, Malinov, naturally gave lip-service to the same program, but his past leaning had been toward Russia, and he had never displayed marked enthusiasm for the Teutons.
Of course this change of ministry did not mean that Bulgaria was then ready to make a separate peace with the Entente Allies. Every Bulgarian knew that such an act would mean the abandonment of Bulgaria's whole imperialistic dream and the immediate relinquishment of supremely prized Macedonia. But it didmean that Bulgaria was discontented with her present situation and that she was resolved to take a more independent stand toward her Teutonic allies even though Germany was in the full flush of her great Western offensive and dreaming of a speedy entry into Paris.
The changes of fortune in the West.
Peace demonstrations.
The tales of Bulgarian prisoners.
The capitulation.
But just a month after Malinov's accession came the dramatic shift of fortune in the West. The German offensive broke down, and the Allies began their astounding succession of victories. Instantly the Balkan situation altered. Bulgaria knew that the spring offensive had been Germany's supreme bid for victory. To fill the ranks for the rush on Paris and the channel ports the last German veterans had been withdrawn from the East. Gone were those field-gray divisions which had stiffened the Macedonian front and kept down popular discontent by garrisoning Bulgarian towns. The peasant voice was at last free to speak, and it spoke in no uncertain terms for an end of the war. Agrarian disturbances increased in frequency. Peace demonstrations occurred in Sofia. In fact, some of these demonstrations were tinged with revolutionary red. Bolshevism, that wild revolt against the whole existing order to-day manifest in every quarter of the globe, had not passed Bulgaria by. Of course there was the army, but the army itself was not immune. By early July, Bulgarian deserters and prisoners taken on the Macedonian front were telling the Allied intelligence officers strange tales—tales of midnight soldiers' meetings at which "delegates" were chosen in true Russian fashion, and which Bulgarian regimental officers found it wisest to ignore. Such was the situation in early summer. By the first days of autumn Bulgaria was cracking from end to end. It was in mid-September that General Franchet d'Espérey, the Allied commander, ordered the Macedonian offensive.Small wonder that within a fortnight Bulgaria had surrendered and retired from the war.
Turkey's doom sealed.
The consequences of Bulgaria's capitulation should be both momentous and far-reaching. In the first place, Turkey's doom is sealed. Cut off from direct communication with the Teutonic powers save by the Black Sea water-route and staggering under her Palestine defeats, Turkey is now menaced at her very heart. By the terms of the recent armistice Bulgaria has agreed to allow the Allies free passage across her territory, including the full use of her railways. This means that the Allies can move through Bulgaria upon Turkish Thrace, the sole land bastion protecting Constantinople. Turkey's military situation is thus hopeless, and it is not impossible that before these lines appear in print Turkey will have followed Bulgaria's example and will have thrown up the sponge.
Rumania to be freed.
A second possibility is the liberation of Rumania. The "peace" imposed upon Rumania by the Central powers last spring was one of the most shameless acts of international brigandage in the annals of modern history, and though dire necessity compelled Rumania to sign, it was plain that she would submit to her new slavery only so long as the Teutonic pistol was held to her head. This pistol took the form of a Teutonic army of ten divisions camped upon her soil. But to-day Rumania is thrilling to the great news, and when Allied bayonets begin flashing south of the Danube these heliographs of liberty will light a flame of revolt which second-rate German divisions will be unable to stamp out. With the ground burning under their feet the Teutons will probably evacuate Rumania with only the most perfunctory resistance to the advancing Allies.
German prestige in the East crumbles.
And southern Russia is in much the same case. To-day it is bowed beneath the Teutonyoke, yet the Teutonic corps of occupation are mere islets lost in its vast immensity and ruling more by prestige than by physical power. But German prestige is crumbling fast, and when Turkey's surrender opens the Black Sea to the Allied fleets, southern Russia, like Rumania, should be in a blaze. From the Ukraine to the Caucasus the land is already seething with disaffection. The Don Cossacks have never been subdued. Will the Germans dare to hold their thin communication lines till the guns of Entente warships are thundering off Odessa and Batum?
Austria's condition is desperate.
Lastly, there is Austria-Hungary. Bulgaria's capitulation opens the way for the liberation of Serbia and an Allied push to the Austrian border on the middle Danube. Beyond lie whole provinces full of mutinous Jugoslavs and Rumanians. For that matter, all the non-German and non-Magyar peoples of the Dual Empire are in a state of suppressed revolt, held down by armies largely composed of their disaffected brethren. Perhaps the Balkan winter may delay the Allied advance, perhaps Germany may find enough troops to stifle Austrian disaffection, but the condition of the Hapsburg realm is at best a desperate one, full of explosive possibilities.
Bulgars are disillusioned about Germany.
There may be a Balkan confederation.
These are the major consequences which seem likely to flow from Bulgaria's surrender. There remains the question of the future attitude of Bulgaria herself. Will she remain a passive spectator of these momentous happenings, or will she, striking in on the Allies' side, do her share toward bringing them to pass? The latter eventuality is more than possible. The Bulgarians, from czar to peasant lad, are realists, not given to vain sacrifices. They see that Germany's game is up and that her Balkan grip is broken forever. They have also been bitterly disillusioned about Mitteleuropa, and must to-day realize that under Mitteleuropa whatever Balkan territories might have been colored "Bulgarian" upon the map, they themselves would have been virtually serfs of a Germany whose idea of empire was the outworn concept of a master race lording it over submissive slaves. With their eyes thus opened, the Bulgarians are in a position to appreciate the Allies' profession of faith with its program of freedom for the smallest peoples and fair-dealing even toward the foe. Imperialistic dreams must of course be banished forever. But solicitude for race-brethren outside Bulgaria's present frontiers is a sentiment which the Allies recognize as wholly legitimate and which they are pledged to satisfy either by permitting annexation to the homeland or, where this is impossible owing to superior claims of intervening races, by assuring the unredeemed Bulgars full cultural liberty. The Allies' hope is a Balkan confederation in which its varied races may pull together in common interest and mutual respect instead of rending one another in vain dreams of barren empire achieved through blood and iron. Is it too much to hope that so level-headed a people as the Bulgarians will come to realize that in such a Balkan settlement their lasting interests will be far safer than in a Balkans precariously dominated by a Bulgarian minority holding down a majority of sullen and vengeful race enemies?
Copyright, Century, December, 1918.
The most picturesque army raised during the great war was that formed by large numbers of Czecho-Slovaks, formerly prisoners of war in Russia and deserters from the Austrian armies. This force fought its way through Russia and Siberia, opposed by the Bolsheviks who had promised them safe conduct to France. A description of these famous fighters is contained in the following pages.
The romantic Czecho-Slovak army.
The Czecho-Slovak Expeditionary Force is one of the most romantic armies of the ages and an important step toward world democracy and idealism. I learned to know the Czechs in a journey across Siberia on one of their trains. They furnished me a bed when beds were scarce, transportation when transportation was scarcer, and shoes when shoes were necessary. I have never seen a real Czech that I could not endorse.
Two methods of travel in Russia.
A journey on a Czecho-Slovak train.
Last March there were two ways to travel in Russia. If one was an American—relief worker, correspondent, Y.M.C.A. man—one could get a private car. Many Americans rode that way for a trifling cost and without inconvenience. And it was in such cars that some of Russia's severest critics traveled. The other way was intimate travel with the common herd. I started thus. It was at Irtishevo, a junction point near the lower Volga, that I changed. In a crowded station in the Russian disorder, I suddenly found myself looking into the eyes of a spirited, smiling young officer, who had evidently learned that I was an American journalist and who was explaining to me in three languages that there was no way out of my riding to Vladivostok with his military train. He wore a red and white ribbon. His alert bearing and enthusiasm marked him in the numbers of nondescript soldiers who were still traveling in the Russian chaos of lastspring. I was about to protest mildly in French when three of his fellow soldiers of fortune seized my baggage, carried it around a countless number of trains and stowed it away in a compartment from which another officer, warned of our arrival just in time, was removing his personal effects. He may have stood up all night. Anyway, I was a quite willing captive on one of the forty odd trains of the Czecho-Slovaks which had started to cross Russia and Siberia to fight for their liberty in France.
My friend was of medium height, well knit, deep chested, smart in bearing. The red and white ribbon on his cap was the badge of the Czechs. Before I had left them at Vladivostok five weeks later I could have picked a Czech out from any crowd by his air of determination backed by an enthusiastic good cheer which everywhere won its way from Austrian prisoner to warmhearted Russian peasant woman. All that night I heard them singing in that splendid, low, group chorus of theirs along the entire line of the train.
The Czechs are finely disciplined.
I found these finely disciplined fellows next morning sitting in the doorways of their freight cars. Some were playing on violins they had whittled out in the prison camps. The future of their cross country jaunt to the Pacific worried them not at all. They had fought their way out of the Ukraine, where German elements had tried to stop them. As former citizens of the Central Powers, they were quite happy in the chance to fight again for what their ancestors of five centuries before had stood. Bolsheviks there were among them. But a Czech Bolshevik differs from a Russian in that he shaves and thinks before he acts. Never have I seen more sharp salutes or stricter discipline, and these men were in Russia where discipline was a curiosity. ACzech is so anxious to accomplish that he is willing to discipline himself. When a Czech marches, he marches irresistibly. In theory, he may be a Socialist. In action, he is a patriot.
Teaching English to Czech officers.
I found my place on the expedition as teacher of English to a group of Czech officers and members of the National Assembly. My class wanted English in order to be able to understand President Wilson's speeches as they traveled across the United States, for they rank the President with their own national leader, Masaryk. The Czech is literate in several languages, and if he wants another he gives a week-end to it. In my class were university graduates, artisans, engineers and musicians. The Czech is a natural-born good mixer.
The young men make friends everywhere.
When our train would reach a town, these young men of action won friends wherever they went. Milk woman and bread seller all along the Trans-Siberian liked them, for they pay spot cash, deal honorably and don't know what ruffianism means.
The miracle accomplished by the Czechs is the result of discipline and courage rather than strategy. Their rise to power was on their own initiative. They could have stayed passive as have so many times their number among the prisoners from other parts of Austria. But their stand for freedom from the Austrian yoke is uncompromising. They started out determined to fight for France and victory. The great bulk of the remaining Austrian prisoners are completely satisfied if only they can keep away from war. The Czechs are passionate in their burning patriotism. The Austrian prisoners in Russia who still feel a certain degree of loyalty to Austria are passive in their sentiment. Most of them shrink from enforced military service—either back in Austria or in aGerman-Austrian prisoner offensive on the spot in Siberia.
Groups that have no love for the Germans.
Willing to join the Czechs.
This Czechish heart centre of virile independence acted as a powerful magnet wherever their bands moved. All through Russia and Siberia, there are refugee groups from Poland, Lithuania, Courland and the Riga District. These people have no love for the Germans who drove them from their homes nor for the Junkers of their own communities who handed their lands over to the Germans rather than have them divided by the Bolsheviks. Germany is finding that there is a difference between saving landed proprietors from hostile peasants and workingmen and the huge task of enslaving these same peasants under the Prussian yoke. Hundreds of these elements in Russia's great refugee population wanted to enter the Czech expedition, but these fighters were compelled to keep their army small, compact and homogeneous. Transportation was insufficient. Even Czech artisans were refused a place in the trains unless they could pass rigid examinations. The willingness of other forces to unite with the Czechs may well be counted on when the call for them comes in Siberia and Russia.
The National Assembly of Bohemia.
Attractive decorations of the cars.
The General Staff train on which I rode carried, in addition to the cars for officers and men, a hall for the National Assembly meetings, a complete printing outfit, a photographic dark-room, with full equipment for still and motion pictures, a bakery, kitchens and a laundry. It was on this moving train, all parts of which were connected by telephone with the car of the commanding officer, that the plans for a New Bohemia were being worked out. A daily four-page newspaper was published on the General Staff train. It gave the ideals of the expedition, the current news translated into Czechish, lessons in French forthe use of the forces on landing in France, and quotations from Professor Masaryk. About four thousand copies of this paper were printed every day and distributed not only among the Czechs but among many of the Austrian war prisoners, who were thus informed of the ambitious plans these fighting independents saw before them. Their trains showed their versatility and love for decoration and home-making. Not only were they clean, but hundreds of the cars were decorated with life-size drawings, and with quaint designs in evergreens. To enable the men to find their friends, a roster of the occupants of the car was printed on the red flanks of their freight wagons. On the roofs, model aeroplanes and wind-mills spun in the breeze. A Czech train reminded me of a picnic, and, aside from the earnestness, it was.
Study and athletic contests.
For some travelers, the Trans-Siberian trip is monotonous. It was not for the Czechs. They read and studied. They were always busy—even before their clashes with the Bolsheviks began to take up some time. The Y.M.C.A. had secretaries with some of the trains and sent supplies of literature and games. The Bohemians are the champion gymnasts of the world and athletic contests were arranged at every station, until at the call of a bugle the train would pull out, picking up sweating, happy men as it gathered speed.
The Czechs distribute President Wilson's speeches.
At the larger stations we spent sometimes hours, sometimes days. That gave a chance for the Czechs to mix with the Russian people. It gave the people an awakening sense of acquaintance with this happy race, who, while going from war to war around the world, were distributing the words of President Wilson to prove the sanity of their cause and the folly of the Russian collapse. The President's speecheswere widely read and much appreciated. But these enthusiastic, friendly Czech soldiers were the living examples of the President's rather abstruse lessons of democracy. President Wilson might seem a political Messiah, but the Czechs were the John the Baptists who made the initial impression upon the Russian and Siberian peasants.
An Austrian prisoner at a Siberian station shouted one day so all could hear: "What is this freedom that you talk about?"
Immediately a thick-chested Czech strode forward.
"It is the one thing that makes a man a man," he replied. "It is the thing that links men together without weakening them individually. It is the thing that will wipe out tyranny, because a free man won't stand a tyrant."
As he talked to the slow-minded Russians and the slouching Austrian, this ruddy-cheeked Czech exemplified the advantages he preached. There was no slouch in his body, or character. The power that had gathered together a group which had been dispersed all over Russia and welded it into a fighting unit was not only passionate desire for freedom and willingness to fight for it, but the power of self-discipline which made both possible.
The spirit of crusaders.
The Czech army was gay without license. In Irkutsk, during the Easter holidays, it ate ice-cream sandwiches or went up in tiny Ferris wheels in the true spirit of the reveler at a dry-town carnival. In Omsk one night it stood silent for hours, listening to the art of a Czech violinist playing for the wounded in the Red Cross car. It paraded the streets with a smile and an air of pride. It is boyish, open-hearted, lovable. It makes friends. Neat in dress, erect in bearing, enthusiastic in outlook—the Czechs win the Russian masses. Thereis the spirit of the Crusaders in these fighters, a spirit of personal and national cleanliness. Liberty to them is not a thing to wave a flag over but to die for, if necessary. They are too sincere to be dramatic.
A force in establishing confidence.
Having come out of Armenia, with its remnant race of human wrecks, and after months of the demoralizing fatalism and moral laxity of the Russian, I was astounded by the miracle of stability of the tiny Czech force in establishing an economic frontier between the Germanophile sections of Russia and freedom-loving Siberia. Not only is this force the key to the military problem of opposing Germany in Siberia. But from the standpoint of sympathetic friendship between confused Russia and America, the Czecho-Slovaks offer the most helpful force in establishing confidence and turning into fact the good will which America bears to Russian citizenry.
They can best tell their own story. Lieutenant B—— of my English class was typical.
"When war was declared, I was in Switzerland," he told me. "Late in July I climbed to the heights overlooking Austria. I could throw a stone over into that land of oppression. That very day, when I went down into the Swiss village, I heard that the Austrian mobilization had been ordered. I could not believe that war would come. I returned to the land I hated and in two days I had joined my class. We were to fight Russia. This was unthinkable. Better to mutiny against our German and Magyar officers than murder our brother Slavs.
Czech regiments went over to Russia by companies.
"And so it was that the word was secretly passed through whole regiments of our men to desert to the Russians. The opportunity came when we faced Brusiloff's army. The Russians knew and were ready to receive us. We walked over in companies, with banners flying andbands playing and men falling before the shots that rang out behind us. We hoped to turn and fight against our oppressors. And for a while some of us did. But one by one those of us who had entered the Russian ranks were removed and sent to prison camps, whence we were scattered among the homes and factories of Russia. My own band of companies was soon thoroughly broken up and dispersed from Turkestan and the Caucasus to Tobolsk and Irkutsk. As German influences strengthened at the Russian court we were sent to worse and worse positions, malarial and barren territories. But we prospered in spite of all that was done to oppress us.
Waiting the time to strike for liberty.
"For a while I managed a cotton factory in Turkestan and later I went to open some mines further in the country. But all the while we kept in touch with one another and day by day we waited for the time when we could strike for liberty and Bohemia. Professor Masaryk was to give the signal for the blow for liberty.
The Russian Revolution.
Czechs ask to go to France.
"Then came the Russian Revolution. With the Czar, the German influences at Court were overthrown. We left our farm work and our shop benches. We poured out of the dark mines and united in Czech battalions to fight in the armies of Kerensky. At Zborov, we pierced six enemy lines but were forced to retreat because the other fighters failed to advance as fast as we. Then came the long wait for the time when Russia should find herself, as she is still trying to do. The Slav is not a coward once his mind is trained. There is hope for his ultimate recovery. The power of Czardom was enforced ignorance, and this made possible the infamous treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But we saw that there was no hope for a mere handful of us to hold the Russian front, and to attempt this would be to antagonize the Russian people. So we applied for permission to leave Russia and go to France.
The journey to Vladivostok.
"Everyone said that it could not be done. It meant going almost round the world. But we were determined and soon we had gained the support of the French Government and the permission of the Bolshevik leaders, who were glad enough to get us out of the country. They feared we would start a counter-revolution. But here we are in Siberia and the hardest part of our journey is over. Two weeks more should find us in Vladivostok and from there we can go very quickly to France, where thousands of our fellows are already fighting for the cause of liberty."
The men are classified by occupation.
Captain H—— was in Omsk. Behind him, as I talked with him, was a card index file showing the occupation and residence of forty thousand Czech artisans resident in Siberia. Typewriters clicked in the bright office and outside a Czech wagon arrived with a ton of meat en route to the cold storage cellar which he had built in the outskirts of Omsk.
Food is obtained at high prices.
"I arrived here alone and with only a few rubles," said Captain H——. "But I heard that some day my fellows would come through on their way to France. So I began organizing our resources. Many of our men have made much money as prisoners in Russia. They were generous. Men began to flock in and we took off their Austrian uniforms and put them into Russian uniforms—the uniform of our expeditionary force. Fighting men were listed and trained. Artisans we merely listed, and there are forty thousand names classified by occupation and residence in those files. In three weeks we have taken in 610 Czech prisoners and sent them out in the uniform of the expeditionary force to France. Every shoe and belt and uniform is utilized and nothing is wasted except the hated Austrian uniform,which is in most cases worn to shreds anyway. We have established friendly relations with the people. Theoretically we are not supposed to be doing this. Theoretically, we are not securing food. But actually we are getting enough and to spare. Ten trains a week get several days' supplies here. Only in disorganized Russia could such things be. But we have to pay the secret agents of the local Soviet sixty-five rubles for meat. Its market price is thirty-five."
Professor Masaryk in America is the leader.
In my note-book, I cannot find the names of a dozen leaders of the Czech expedition. In a sense, there were no leaders. The outstanding fact in the Czech army is the democracy of it. The leaders are men who have been trained, but they owe their position to popular choice. Yet there is no foolish idea that military decisions can be made by a committee of soldiers. The Czech sacrifices personal ambition to his cause and that is why his cause is worth fighting for. The Russian cause, a thing of chaos, is losing force every day. I might almost say that the Czechs, in Siberia, were led by Professor Masaryk, in America, through the influence of his words in the daily paper. As prominent a figure among the Czechs as any one man in the expedition is Kenneth Miller of New York, director of the Y.M.C.A., and held on a high pedestal in the affection of 10,000 men. He has had much to do with the moving of the Czech trains in all their complicated travel arrangements.
How the Czechs came to control Siberia.
The democracy of the Czech army and the ease with which it made friends continually surprise me. The officer who induced me to join them was a mere lieutenant, yet he never consulted anyone about taking me in. Was I not an American? Each day some officer was told off to arrange matters with the station masters. They moved their trains without bluffor bluster. Sometimes the Soviets hindered them in order to get what guns and supplies they could. But not till weeks after they started did any Soviet have the temerity to try to stop or disarm the men. The Russian masses were quickly won to friendship for the Czechs and the only force that tried to interfere was the Bolshevik battalions who acted under orders from distant points, where the man who gave the order enjoyed comparative safety. The way that their control of Siberia through an attempt to disarm them came about is as romantic as any feature of their story.
They have passes to leave the country.
The presence of forty thousand well-disciplined Czech soldiers whose loyalty to the cause of freedom was stronger than that of the rapidly changing Russian proletariat made it seem desirable to the Bolshevik authorities to rid the country of men so willing to fight and so little subject to the extreme socialistic doctrines then rife in Russia. Both Lenine and Trotzky by agreement with Professor Masaryk furnished these men with passes for leaving the country and in spite of the chaotic condition of transportation ample rolling stock, amounting to about sixty trains of forty freight cars each, was placed at their disposal or secured by the Czechs through their own efforts. Arrangements had already been made with representatives of the French Government so that plenty of money was provided for provisioning, equipping and transporting a minimum of forty thousand men over about six thousand miles.
Military equipment being taken away.
The Czechs resist.
Before these trains had gone far one local Soviet after another had insisted on their leaving behind the armored motor cars, aeroplanes, machine-guns and other military equipment which had been allotted to them by the Russian Government during the Kerensky offensive. By the time Penza—one day's run west of theVolga—was reached, after machine-guns had been mounted on the engines in fighting their way through the Germanized Ukrainian districts, the arms of each train had been reduced to 140 rifles and ammunition. But the Czechs knew enough about Russian conditions to realize the necessity for at least one gun to a man and when the Bolsheviki, early in June, started to disarm them, guns and rifles appeared from secret hiding places, to the extreme consternation of the disarmers.
Siberian Soviets delay the Czechs.
The Czechs overcome their captors.
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.