Meanwhile, rumors of riots in the Fatherland encourage Bolshevism in other countries. We have had copious news of Bolshevist troubles in Germany. The fact that we get this news over German wires is evidence that Germany wants us to get it. It makes a fine smoke-screen behind which stand her great untouched factories with their unsmashed machinery.
The Germans told the Russians that the great war was a “capitalistic war.” Germany was right. But she neglected to say that it was designed to aid the German capitalists. And if enough fools in every other country can be induced to smash and tear and burn, saving only (take note) some raw materials, then with her own factories and machinery intact, Germany can flood the world with her own cheap manufactured goods.
For this is the joker in Bolshevism: The providing for Germany, of colossal markets!
And if she has these markets created for her, the indemnity which the Allies have demanded, and which Germany says is “staggering,” will be to her a mere handful of small change.
XXVIII
THE UNITED STATES IN ASIA
It must be fairly obvious to the reader in following my account of what I saw and heard in Siberia that I regard the whole adventure on the part of the United States in Siberia as a failure, whether it is regarded in the light of being an attempt at international diplomacy, military intervention, a gesture of friendship toward Russia, or an enterprise in the nature of insurance against the spread of Bolshevism.
Primarily, it began as a new campaign against Germany-to prevent Germany from getting possession of war-stores in Russia and Siberia and replenishing her stocks of food, munitions and men and to prevent her from penetrating the country for conquest. There was every reason for our being in Russia, both on the Archangel front, and in Siberia, to accomplish these ends. Our presence in Siberia alone was a menace to Germany, a threat of a thrust through her back door in combination with the other powers involved with us, including Russians, Czecho-Slovaks, British, French, Japanese and others interested and concerned.
But we went about it even before the armistice was dreamed of, in a tentative manner. We did not start a campaign, we began a debating society. We twiddled our thumbs all winter in Siberia, while the forces of evil, Bolshevist and others, took advantage of our lack of decision on anything and acquired a certain technique in a chicane suitable to the conditions existing to thwart us in any decision we might reach in the future.
We kept insisting that we were helping Russia by being in Siberia. The Czechs, the Russians and the Japanese knew that only action could help, and action meant fighting those who were ruining the country. We were helping Russia and Siberia in just about the manner a man might help a family which was being beaten and robbed by burglars if the man sat out on the front porch and remarked: “If this thing gets too serious, I am here with a gun to help.”
And while he sat there, the members of the family still alive, yelled frantically: “This is serious now—half my children are dead, and the biggest robber has me by the throat.”