Capt. Walker and his assistant, Capt. R. C. Carthew, returned to Chita after I had been there a few days, and at once commenced, with the assistance of the American Railroad Corps, who had a direct wire to Verkni-Udinsk, to make inquiries in respect to the officers and men of the British Railway Mission who had been captured by the Bolsheviks at Krasnoyarsk.
When Capt. Carthew induced the Bolsheviks, through Krassnochokoff, the Commissar at Verkni, to have these prisoners brought to Irkutsk, he obtained a safe conduct to proceed there with food, clothing and medical supplies and kindly offered me a place on his car provided I was able to procure a similar safe conduct.
I then telegraphed Krassnochokoff intimating that I wished to go to Irkutsk for the purpose of discussing trading possibilities with the authorities there, and requested a safe conduct. He telegraphed me back the Russian Socialistic Federated Soviet Republic’s full safe conduct to travel to Irkutsk, guaranteeing my liberty of movement while there, and the right to leave the territory of his Government at my will.
Armed with these documents we said goodby to “Johnny” Walker and Thomas on a bitterly cold afternoon in April and proceeded with a special train consisting of our private car and a goods wagon for our interpreters and servants. We flew a large Union Jack from our observation platform which created a great deal of attention at the stations at which we stopped. We met the last Czech echelon east of Moxon and felt that we had then said goodby to civilization, Carthew for a couple of weeks and I—indefinitely.
PROSPEROUS IRKUTSK REDUCED BY RULE OF REDS
By Hector Boon.
Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).
At Irkutsk we found a small Japanese outpost under the command of a junior officer who, although we presented our papers signed by the Japanese Chief of Staff in Chita, declined to allow us to proceed until he had first communicated with the staff. Eventually we were permitted to go on, and reached the advanced Red position at 1 P. M. We called upon the military commandant, who was careful to impress upon us that we were not in Soviet territory but in that of the Far Eastern Republic, at that time called the Buffer State. We were quite willing to take his word for it, but we noticed with amusement that the entire population was sporting hastily improvised red stars and rosettes. In the course of the afternoon our wagons were attached to the post train which was already running daily between Hilok and Irkutsk.
We arrived at Verkni-Udinsk at 11 A. M. the next day and the Commissar Krassnochokoff’s aide-de-camp met me at the station with a motor car and conducted me to the Commissar’s house. I found Krassnochokoff, who had spent many years in America as the head of a Jewish orphanage in Chicago, living in a small room modestly furnished with a deal table, a few chairs and a truckle bed. He made a very pleasant impression upon me.
When, however, he asked questions concerning the conditions in Chita and the intentions of the Japanese, I had to decline to answer them. He was at some pains to impress upon me that the Bolsheviki I had known in 1917 and 1918 had changed decidedly for the better since that time. He went on to say that he realized, however, there was still a strong disinclination on the part of the Entente and America to have trade relations with the Far Eastern republic, and he therefore felt that the establishment of the Far Eastern Republic, extending from Verkni-Udinsk to Vladivostok, would provide a medium for trading with the Soviet. He assured me that there would be no confiscation or requisitioning of private property and that the communistic system would not be indulged in.