Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/83

 The Russians then sent a deputation to ask leave to return to the port and land. The Japanese commander refused to give the permission and on the following Sunday they surrendered their ships to the the Japanese. Our troops took command of the town and invited the inhabitants to elect a local government, and even authorised them to form a small militia to police the town. Members of various parties met and elected M. Agarev, their former mayor, and re-establis municipal administration as it had been before the Bolsheviks came.

With the taking of Vladivostok our occupation of the entire Siberian line was complete. It stretched from Pensa and Yekaterinburg down to the great eastern port, a distance of about 8,000 kilometres, and, as we held the railway line, we commanded all Siberia and a large district of the Volga and in the Urals. Without fully realising it at the time, we had performed one of the most extraordinary exploits of the war. Our service to Russia, as will doubtless be realised in the future was enormous, not only by our enabling the inhabitants of Siberia to continue their peaceful pursuits whilst the war still waged with fury and to go on producing and cultivating their vast fields, but also by preserving intact the great Siberian railway line and much of its material.

The service we rendered to the Allies was no less important. When it is considered that hundreds of thousands of war prisoners were still scattered all over Siberia, that their repatriation had been urgently demanded by the Germans and Austrians, and that the Bolsheviks not only consented but would have facilitated thein [sic] task, it might have meant the reconstitution of an army of exprisoners compensating for a while all that America was able to send to Europe. Our occupation of Siberia put an end immediately to the reflux of these ex-war prisoners. They eventually scattered in all directions, seeking and obtaining work among the farmers or passing over to China. A certain number of them were armed by the Bolsheviks, and assisted them in various engagements we had, but their number and importance gradually diminished. Finally we rendered a third service, perhaps equally great. We prevented, on the one hand, the Bolsheviks from drawing vast supplies for themselves from Siberia, and, on the other hand, we also defeated the ambitions of Germany and Austria to draw upon the vast resources of Siberia in food for the maintenance of their armies. These services we rendered were, we willingly admit, far above and beyond the importance of our own little army, but they nevertheless were a result of our action, and only enhance the splendour of the achievement.