Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

“The Russian people say they have freed themselves of capitalists. The United States say they are free people—but the capitalists of the United States have conscripted the ‘free’ working men of the United States, and compelled them to come here to Russia to fight the free Russian working men. That is what the Russian people say. You think you are serving your country by being here. The Russian people say you are serving your capitalists, to again enslave the Russian working men. The Russian people say they have a right to run their own country in their own way, but the capitalists of the United States send an army of conscripts over here to prevent the Russian people from keeping their freedom. If the working men of the United States were satisfied with their country, would they want a Russian army to go over there, and tell them how to run it? But the Russian people know that the people of the United States did not send this conscript army over here—the capitalists did that. And for that reason the Russian people do not want to fight you—they do not want you to fight them. Japan and England do not want a republic here—they want to put the Czar back. Both those countries have thrones, and their rulers do not want to see new republics. And the reason they want to see the Czar back here, is that they can make secret treaties with the Czar, but they could not make secret treaties if we had a government of the people. The Russian people say the American capitalists sent an army here to help Japan and England put the Czar back on his throne. If he is put back on the throne, and partly by your help, are you sure that the Czar, the Emperor of Japan, and the King of England, will not combine, and some day send their armies to force the people of the United States into having an Emperor? The Russian people say to you: ‘Comrades, we understand. You, too, must overthrow your capitalists, as we have done, and control your own country for the benefit of the working men.’ The Russian people say you are not free yet—no man is free, if he can be conscripted for the benefit of capitalists, and sent to the other side of the world to fight the working men of another country.”

And some officers thought Red Sweater did not “amount to anything.” This was because they had no way of knowing that his itinerary included every station where American troops might be found, and because he was clever enough to look like a poor tramp, and wise enough to act the fool when the occasion demanded that he conceal his purposes.

He deserted my train after he had traveled far enough to plant his insidious propaganda in my mind. The next time I saw him, he did his best to get me to ask the Japanese troop-train commander to let him ride with us. I did no such thing, whereupon he concealed himself between the cars, and I was now interested to see at what point he would leave us. This was one of the reasons I was willing enough to pass through Bira.

The night following our passage through Bira, I got to sleep about ten o’clock. At a quarter to eleven I woke with a start, for no apparent reason. D—— was sleeping soundly beside me, and my interpreter was snoring on an upper shelf. The train was toiling up hills slowly, and then dashing down the other side recklessly, or so it seemed to me. Many bridges had been blown out by the Bolshevists, and small rivers and gullies were crossed by the railroad over temporary trackage, laid on amazing grades, and poorly ballasted, for the purpose of making detours around the wrecked bridges.

I felt the train making painful progress up a slope. The engine puffed laboriously. We reached the crest of the hill, and suddenly began to go down at a rapidly increasing rate, and at the same time I missed the noise of the engine, some thirty or forty cars ahead. Our car was the last on the train.

There was a terrific crash, far ahead, and then every moveable thing on our car started for the front end. My interpreter was hurled off his shelf amid all the cooking utensils and food in the car, D—— was slammed up against the side of the section, and I skidded on my elbows out on the floor, barely avoiding taking an iron support which held the shelf above me, off with my head.

The car swung round sidewise and lurched downward, and amid the sound of rending timbers, appeared to be headed for a river below. I was sure we had gone through a blown-out bridge.

But the derailed car settled over gently on its side, and came to rest. We got out as quickly as possible, not sure that the wrecked train was safe from attack by Bolshevists. Under a cold, clear sky, we saw that the train had been shattered in the center, the wreck occurring on a sharp down grade between the banks of a cut. Several of the small and light box-cars, containing horses and Japanese soldiers, had been smashed, but the damage was not great, due to the fact that the shock had been absorbed by the cars bulging upward into an inverted V. The Japanese were busily engaged in getting out horses, and in checking up their men, to ascertain if any had been killed. There were a few minor injuries.

It was too cold to linger outside long in my pajamas, and I went back to the car, and finding our electric flashlights, sorted ourselves out and went back to sleep. In the morning we learned just what had happened.

The train had broken open in the middle at the crest of the hill. The engine, with the forward half, had run down into the valley over temporary trackage. Then the engineer discovered what had happened. The tail end of his train was just gaining headway over the crest, and coming down with increasing speed. So, in order to go back and get it, he reversed his engine and came back at top speed, meeting us in the cut when we had acquired good speed from the descending grade. It was a splendid example of how not to recapture the runaway half of a troop-train.