Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/35

 they, told the people that it was their Government that was responsible for the war. They excited them by saying that the Russian Government was oppresing them, that they were slaves, and to the workmen they said that they were only working and sweating for the Russian Government, with no benefit to themselves. Where they could they incited the working-classes and the whole population, and told them they would have to change the Government. This was openly going on in our district, and as colonels of our type were rather the rule than the exception, it can be imagined what a vast propaganda these German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners were carrying on throughout Siberia and Russia. They became a pest and a danger wherever they were.

In order to be able to speak to the inhabitants freely, the officers used to give their Russian soldier guards ten kopeks to go and amuse themselves. During that time the Germans were free to go into all the houses and shops of the village, to preach discontent among the people and the necessity of changing their Government. They even collected crowds round them and made speeches to them. Sometimes our officers interfered and challenged the Germans, telling them they had no right to speak against the Russian Government. This made them furious, and one day a Croatian captain insulted M. Kotnia, a well-known Czech writer and editor of one of our newspapers in Prague. He had come from Petrograd, and was organising the Czechs. The Croatian captain publicly called M. Kotnia a “traitor to Austria“. He added, “All Czechs are traitors.“ Nothing could be done to him as the colonel would listen to none of our complaints.

On this occasion it came to blows between the Croat and the Czech. A Ukrainian officer listened, and took sides with the Germans. He had admiration only for the Germans, and said, “The Slavs are only second-rate nations.“ One of our officers answered, “You may speak for yourself, not for us.“ Hostilities between us became so great that the colonel finally had to separate us from the Germans, Poles Austrians, Magyars, and Croats. These were given a separate house, and we were at last in comparative peace. For days we had refused to sit or eat at table with some of the Austrian officers. Our “club“ then was very happy, and we could communicate freely with our compatriots at Moscow and Petrograd, and we then heard for the first time of the scheme of forming a great patriotic organisation.

But we were not yet so numerous as we became in 1916, and our agitation was limited to the few centres that were gradually being formed. We suddenly received notice that we were to be transferred farther into Siberia. The Germans, Austrians, and Magyars, in fact, were to be sent to the uttermost end of it—to Ust Kamenogorsk, on the Chinese frontier. We wished them to the most volcanic of all regions. Our orders, on the contrary, were to go to Ishim. What Ishim was we 3*