Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/58

 earth. Until the German autocrats and the Austrian oppressors were conquered and crushed there was no liberty and no life worth living for the Czechs, and that was why they had formed their legion, and were determined to keep it up and to fight for their own freedom, whether the Russians helped them or not.

This threw a cold chill on the Soviet orators, who found no answer to the straightforward retort. It was so entirely different from what they had expected that they accepted their defeat and left the camp. Our men had by that time seen so much of the misdeeds of the Red Guards and such evidences of the anarchy encouraged by the Bolsheviks that their very name became odious. We mixed little with the Russians after the Bolshevik riots in Petrograd and Moscow and the disorders in Kieff. But we had ample opportunity of seeing their work in the country and at small stations. It was pitiful to see the ruthlessness with which the Bolshevik bands ransacked and villaged where they could, and destroyed railway material and public buildings. Our soldiers could say to themselves that if their own dear country, Bohemia, should ever become the scene of such disorder and such a collapse of civilisation, it was not worth while fighting for. Better go out into the vast steppes or the wild woods than witness such scenes. Only an abject race could look on and bear such things.