Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

For a week or two after my return to Vladivostok, I familiarized myself with the Intelligence organization at Headquarters. So far as I could see, we had no authority over anybody who happened to be suspected of enemy activity, or actually guilty of some act against the American or Russian laws.

When we found a man who had come in under a fraudulent passport, and had in our files data which proved him to be a Bolshevist agent, or sympathizer, we could take no action, other than hold his American passport. Then we notified the Czech commandant, and he was arrested after passing from our custody.

So we exercised no military or police authority over anybody but our own nationals, or such Russians or other foreigners as fraudulently claimed American citizenship and attempted to travel as such.

In order to watch the incoming ships, all the Allies sent passport officers aboard them, and each officer conducted the examination of his own nationals. There was a line of Russian steamers, running between Tsuruga, Japan, and Vladivostok, known as the Russian Volunteer Fleet; and a similar line owned by the Japanese. These little steamers served as ferry-boats, gathering in Japan all travelers bound for Vladivostok who arrived in ports of the Far East in liners—this was the funnel through which passed the stream of civilians who came first to Shanghai, Nagasaki, Yokohama and other ports.

And before these steamers docked, they were boarded by a Japanese, a Czech, a Russian, a British, an American and a French officer, and the polyglot lot examined before they were allowed to land. I attended some of these examinations, provided with a list of suspicious characters, and with the various interpreters in action, the smoking-room put to shame anything that must have been heard at the Tower of Babel.

But so far as we were concerned, it was all a silly farce. Technically, we had no right to examine anybody. I once asked an Allied officer the basis for his authority, whereupon he told me that the city was under martial law, and controlled by an Allied Council which delegated the powers of examination to all the Allies. But this was promptly denied by another Allied officer.

In fact, it appeared that we Americans, in an effort to avoid interference, claimed no rights of control over anybody on Russian soil, making it necessary for us in order to question suspected enemies, to resort to autocratic methods. That is, we disclaimed all intentions of interfering and asserted no authority, except this plan of going through the motions of authority, which was a taking of power which might have been granted had we asked for it.

For my part, I prefer an autocracy working in the open, to a power which denies it is autocratic and then proceeds to act autocratically without any warrant. Such methods puzzled the decent Russians, and they began to doubt the things which we wanted them to believe, and which it was essential that they believe if we were to have the confidence of the Russian people.

A few days after I had raised the question of the rights of the American officers in passport control, we relinquished by order the rights we had been exercising. When Russian or other officials held men or women as suspicious, who professed to be American citizens, they brought them to American headquarters, where the examination took place. And if the facts cited by them were refuted by our information, we could do nothing but advise the Czechs of the case, and let the latter act without any suggestions from us, thus, like, Pilate, washing our hands of the whole affair.

A Czech officer, upon being asked what he would do with a certain suspect, said casually, “I don’t know—maybe we shoot him.” And maybe they did. No doubt we had to “save our face,” and if the Czechs were willing to serve us as jailers or executioners, that took a disagreeable job off our hands.