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.
[Sidenote: The National Assembly of Bohemia.]
[Sidenote: 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.
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