[Sidenote: 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. There is 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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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