"Under such circumstances we began our pilgrimage east. I was in the first train—there were then eighty trains of us—which was to prepare the way. We were determined to leave Russia without a conflict. Notwithstanding that we kept our word, that we surrendered all arms except the few necessary, our progress was hindered, and unending negotiations had to be repeated in every seat of a local soviet. We were threatened by machine guns, cannon, but we patiently stood it all, though the Bolsheviki Red Guard could have been disbanded by a few of our volunteers. After fifty-seven days of such tiresome travel our first train arrived at Vladivostok, where we were enthusiastically received by the Allied units stationed there.
"When the Germans saw that we, notwithstanding all their intrigues, were nearing Vladivostok, they exercised a direct pressure on Lenine and Trotzky; for the things that were committed by the Soviets cannot any further be explained away on the grounds of ignorance. The trains were stopped at different stations, so that they were finally stopped at a distance of fifty miles from each other. Provoking incidents of all kinds were the order of the day. The arming of the German and Magyar prisoners was begun on a large scale. One of the orders of Tchitcherin, Bolshevist foreign minister, reads: 'Dispatch all German and Magyar prisoners out of Siberia; stop the Czecho-Slovaks.' Three members of our National Council, who were sent to Moscow for an explanation of the stopping of our trains, were arrested. At the same time our trains were attacked at different stations by Soviet troops, formed mostly of German and Magyar prisoners.
"I will recall the Irkutsk incident. Our train, with about 400 men, armed with ten rifles and twenty hand grenades, was surrounded by a few thousand Red Guards, armed with machine guns and cannon. Their commander gave our men ten minutes in which to surrender their arms, or be shot. According to their habit, our leaders began negotiations: Suddenly there was heard the German command, 'schiessen!' and the Red Guards began firing at the train. Our men jumped off the train, and in five minutes all the machine guns were in their possession, the Russian Bolsheviki disarmed, and all the Magyars and Germans done away with. The Siberian Government, which resides in Irkutsk and which, as it appeared later, ordered this attack, can thank only the intervention of the American and French consuls that it was not destroyed by our embittered volunteers.
"To what extreme our loyalty was carried is shown by the fact that, although perfidiously attacked, and although we disarmed the Red Guard in Irkutsk, we still began new negotiations, with the result that we surrendered all our arms, on the condition that all German and Magyar prisoners would be disarmed and disbanded, and that we would be allowed to proceed unmolested."
As narrated in a previous volume of this work, the Czecho-Slovaks were thus compelled to engage in military operations against the Bolsheviki, and in doing so obtained possession of large areas in Siberia, including large cities, where they were welcomed by the populations and dissolved the Soviets. On the other hand, however, many large units of them found themselves isolated and unable to proceed on their way to Vladivostok. It was to assist them to extricate themselves from these positions that the United States finally agreed to dispatch a limited military force to Russian territory. Late in July, 1918, an arrangement to this effect was made with Japan. And on August 3, 1918, an official announcement was issued at Washington, in part as follows:
"In the judgment of the Government of the United States—a judgment arrived at after repeated and very searching consideration of the whole situation—military intervention in Russia would be more likely to add to the present sad confusion there than to cure it, and would injure Russia, rather than help her out of her distress. Such military intervention as has been most frequently proposed, even supposing it to be efficacious in its immediate object of delivering an attack upon Germany from the east, would, in its judgment, be more likely to turn out to be merely a method of making use of Russia than to be a method of saving her. Her people, if they profited by it at all, would not profit by it in time to deliver them from their present desperate difficulties, and their substance would meantime be used to maintain foreign armies, not to reconstitute their own, or to feed their own men, women, and children. We are bending all our energies now to the purpose of winning on the western front, and it would, in the judgment of the Government of the United States, be most unwise to divide or dissipate our forces.
"As the Government of the United States sees the present circumstances, therefore, military action is admissible in Russia now only to render such protection and help as is possible to the Czecho-Slovaks against the armed Austrian and German prisoners who are attacking them, and to steady any efforts at self-government or self-defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. Whether from Vladivostok or from Murmansk and Archangel, the only present object for which American troops will be employed will be to guard military stores which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense.
"With such objects in view, the Government of the United States is now cooperating with the Governments of France and Great Britain in the neighborhood of Murmansk and Archangel. The United States and Japan are the only powers which are just now in a position to act in Siberia in sufficient force to accomplish even such modest objects as those that have been outlined. The Government of the United States has, therefore, proposed to the Government of Japan that each of the two governments send a force of a few thousand men to Vladivostok, with the purpose of cooperating as a single force in the occupation of Vladivostok and in safeguarding, as far as it may be, the country to the rear of the westward-moving Czecho-Slovaks, and the Japanese Government has consented.
"In taking this action the Government of the United States wishes to announce to the people of Russia, in the most public and solemn manner, that it contemplates no interference with the political sovereignty of Russia, no intervention in her internal affairs—not even in the local affairs of the limited areas which her military force may be obliged to occupy—and no impairment of her territorial integrity, either now or hereafter, but that what we are about to do has as its single and only object the rendering of such aid as shall be acceptable to the Russian people themselves in their endeavors to regain control of their own affairs, their own territory, and their own destiny."
The Japanese issued a similar declaration a few days later, also disclaiming any desire for territorial aggrandizement at the cost of Russia.