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.
[Sidenote: 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 bluff or
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.
[Sidenote: 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.
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