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About a fortnight later I received a despairing message from the local militia chief at Zema for help; he said he was nearly surrounded by the Baikal Bolshevik contingent, which had suddenly appeared. I took the message to Russian Headquarters at Omsk, and called attention to my wire to Irkutsk and the refusal to protect this part of the line.
At Nikolsk had recently been fought an important battle between the Czechs and the Terrorists, and we were shown a series of photographs of horribly mutilated Czech soldiers who had fallen into the hands of the Bolshevik army as prisoners of war.
We removed the Bolshevik flag from the flag-post, and insisted upon the Russian flag being run up in its stead. A Russian woman told us to go back, and when we asked her why, she said, "Well, it does not matter; our men will soon find enough earth to bury you." But another Russian woman thanked us for coming, and hoped we were not too late to save a country that was sick unto death.
Such were the causes which had established a favorable scope for Bolshevik propaganda; to introduce their domination they knew how to make use of the shortcomings of the people and the defects of Russian life. In fine, what is Bolshevism in its essence?
That the people were passive, worn out, and distracted, content to wait for the Constituent Assembly, only makes the Bolshevik crime appear the greater. Let us consider the facts very briefly. Less than three weeks away was the date set for the Constituent Assembly elections. Campaigns for the election of representatives to that great democratic convention were already in progress.
But just the same the doughboy was proud to see the 310th Engineers cited as a unit by General Ironside who called the 310th Engineers the best unit, bar none, that he had ever seen soldier in any land. He knows that without the sturdy and resourceful engineer boys with him in North Russia the defense against the Bolshevik army would have been impossible.
The Bolshevik contention is that for men or women to call themselves Socialists, and then to hesitate to take a hand in the complete extermination of the bourgeois ruling classes, now there is a chance of doing so in Russia, is to act the part of poltroon and traitor to the cause. The "treachery" is all the greater if the objector is a workman or a workwoman.
After sleeping, one woke unable to open one's eyes. The absence of any protection wore out the patience and nerves of the men, and the searching Bolshevik shells were accepted as a welcome diversion. No blame was attached to my chiefs; I was fully equipped as a B1 Garrison battalion, and as such I was dispatched to Vladivostok.
It is, however, quite probable that provocateurs worming their way into Lenine's and Trotzky's good graces tried to use the Bolshevik agitation as a cover for their own nefarious work. As we have seen already, Lenine had previously been imposed upon by a notorious secret police agent, Malinovsky.
No one could distinguish them from a distance, and every peasant could be Bolshevik. Who knew? In fact, we had reason to believe that many of them were Bolshevik in sympathy.
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