Contrary to general Allied opinion, the American command declared a neutral zone in the Suchan district. Armed operations by Russian, i.e. Admiral Koltchak's or Red Guard forces, were prohibited within this zone. Lenin and Trotsky's officers jumped at this order and at once began to collect their scattered forces together. Within three weeks they raised their Bolshevik flag on their own headquarters, under the protection of the flag of the United States. From this neutral American zone the Bolsheviks organised their forces for attacking the Japanese on the Amur, for destroying British and other supply trains on the Ussurie Railway, and finally exchanged shots with the Russian sentries near Vladivostok itself, always bolting back to the American zone when attacked by the forces of the Supreme Governor.
The other Allies and the Russians having got the measure of this neutral zone business, naturally took steps to protect their men and property, and for a time the operations of this very energetic Lenin officer were confined to robbing and destroying a few isolated villages in the maritime provinces; but the utter absurdity of American policy was at last brought home to the Americans themselves. The Red Guard commandant, chafing under the restrictions imposed upon him by the Russian and Japanese forces (in which the British also joined when Captain Edwards could get near with his good ship Kent), decided to attack the unsuspecting Americans themselves. The Red Guard were very clever in their operations. The American troops were guarding the Vladivostok-Suchan Railway; the neutral zone was situated at the extreme end of the line. If the Red Guard had attacked the end near the zone their tactics would have been discovered at once. They therefore usually marched out from the American zone, made a detour through villages and forest, and struck the railway at a point as far distant as possible. Destroying a bit of line—perhaps, if they had good luck, burning a bridge—they usually exchanged a few shots with the American troops, and if pressed, marched back to the zone under the protection of a section of the very forces they had been raiding. The American command naturally became more vigilant on the distant
Instead of proceeding to root out this nest of pirates, someone suggested that a more comprehensive and binding arrangement was necessary between the American and Red Guard forces, to prevent such regrettable occurrences in future. It was common talk that a conference between the Red Guard commander and General Graves, the American G.O.C., was actually arranged, but was dropped when the Supreme Governor's representative in the Far East declared to General Graves personally that his proposed conference with the enemies of the Russian Government would be considered as a hostile act. The breaking off of these negotiations caused great annoyance to the Soviet Government at Moscow, and they ordered their commissars in Ussurie to use the forces which had been organised under American protection to attack their protectors, which they at once proceeded to do. This doubtless altered the relationship of these two parties, though the chances are that the powerful influence which forced the American commanders into this ill-fated policy will be powerful enough to prevent an open American declaration against the Reds in the Far East.
It is well at this stage to estimate the effect this American muddle has had, and will continue to exert, upon the effort of the Allies to secure some sort of order in the Russian Empire, and upon the position of the Americans themselves in their future relations with the Russian people. The American troops were spread over the whole province from Vladivostok to Nevsniudinsk, a point just east of the Sea of Baikal. They were almost entirely confined to the railway, but in this country the railway is the centre and heart of all things. American policy at Vladivostok applied to the whole of this area, which is really the Transbaikal provinces, or all Siberia east of Baikal. In the early days of September, 1918, when I passed with my battalion towards Omsk, this immense area had been reduced to order by the efforts of the Allies, at the head of which I place the gallant Czechs. The American forces arrived too late to take part in the military operations, but began to settle down to the work of administration with energy and ability. The French moved forward after myself, and the Italian unit followed later, leaving the American and Japanese, with such isolated local Russian forces as had called themselves into being, in absolute possession of Transbaikal Siberia. There was not a single band of Red Guards one thousand strong in the whole territory. After nine months of Allied occupation the Reds organised, largely under American protection, two divisions (so called) of from 5,000 to 7,000 men, and numerous subsidiary units of a few hundred, who murdered and robbed in every direction, and destroyed every semblance of order which the Supreme Governor and the Allies had with so much labour attempted to set up. Thus this huge province in a short time descended from comparative order to sporadic disorder, simply because America had no Russian policy of her own, and rejected that of her friends.
It was a major mistake of England and France to leave America and Japan cheek by jowl without a moderating influence, to wreck the good work they had accomplished in the Far East. The rivalries of these two Powers in this part of the world were well known and should have been provided for. It was too much to expect that they would forget their concession and trade rivalries in a disinterested effort to help Russia. States are not usually philanthropic organisations, these two least of all. The work has therefore to be largely done over again, either by us or by the Supreme Governor, Admiral Koltchak. Or the Allies, finding the task too great, may retire and allow this huge province, probably the wealthiest part of the world, to recede back to the barbarism of the Bolshevik.
CHAPTER XXIII
JAPANESE POLICY AND ITS RESULTS
The lack of Allied cohesion produced by the defection of American policy from that of the European Powers may change completely the status and future of American enterprise in Siberia. America has transformed a friendly population into at least a suspicious, if not a hostile, one. Japan, on the other hand, has steadily pursued her special interests and taken full advantage of every American mistake, until she is now looked upon as the more important of the two.
The attitude of Japan to the Russian problem made a complete somersault in the course of the year August, 1918, to August, 1919. When Japan sent her 12th Division, under General Oie, to the Ussurie in 1918, she did so with a definite policy. Her ambitions were entirely territorial in character; they doubtless remain so. The line of her advance has, however, completely changed. In 1918 she had made up her mind that Germany was bound to win the war; that Russia was a conquered country; that any day she might be called upon to repudiate her English alliance and her Entente engagements, and assist Germany and her Bolshevik Allies in driving the Entente Powers from the eastern end of the Tsar's dominions. Provided Germany defeated the Allies on the Western front, as she confidently anticipated, this task was well within her power. So insignificant was the task assigned to her in this eventuality that she confidently expected the immediate surrender of such scattered Allied and American forces as would find themselves marooned in this back end of the world. Believing this to be the position, she acted accordingly, treating the Russians and the other Allied forces in the stupidly arrogant manner I have already described. With the naïveté of a young Eastern prodigy she not only made demands upon her Allies, but at the same time made definite proposals to such Russian authorities as retained a precarious control over the territory she had already assigned to herself. On landing her troops at Vladivostok she presented, through her proper diplomatic agents, to the commander of that province a set of proposals which would have placed her in control of the Russian maritime provinces. The Russian commander asked that these demands should be put in writing, and the Japanese agent, after some demur, agreed, on the understanding that the first demands should not be considered as final but only as an instalment of others to come. The first proposal was that Japan should advance the commander 150,000,000 roubles (old value) and the commander should sign an agreement giving Japan possession of the foreshore and fishing rights up to Kamchatka, a perpetual lease of the Engilsky mines, and the whole of the iron (less that belonging to the Allies) to be found in Vladivostok.