Page:John Rickman - An Eye-witness from Russia.djvu/11

 make the transport of 60,000 men over a stretch of 6,000 miles of line a very serious problem. In order not to hold up normal traffic, the trains were released slowly, so that there should be about 200 miles between each train and the next. Each of these trains had to be hauled over three mountain ranges, and the number of special locomotives available for this purpose was very limited. Life on such a journey as this was monotonous to a degree. Living on freight cars often held up days at a time at wayside stations, out of touch with civilisation and their comrades, it was natural that the troops should be brought to a condition of nervous irritability for which there seemed no remedy. Naturally active and holding in their minds all the time the ideal of fighting for and liberating their country from the hated German rule, they showed the impatience of youth and the suspiciousness of an oppressed people. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had placed the Bolsheviks in a bad position, and they suspected them of being in the pay of the Germans and of deliberately retarding their progress on the 20,000-mile journey to the French front.

There were grounds, perhaps, for this suspicion. Trotsky had hoped that if they were delayed long enough in free Russia they would come to see the Bolshevik position and would be as unwilling to fight for French capitalists as they were to fight fer Austro-German Imperial rule. While Trotsky was spreading Bolshevik propaganda among the troops, the Social Revolutionary Right and many who were frankly reactionary also employed propaganda. The latter group played on the anti-German passion of the Czechs as much as Trotsky appealed to the sense of international brotherhood and to the pacifist attitude. Some of the Czechs were afraid of being trapped by the Bolsheviks and handed over to Germany. On what grounds this fear was based I was quite unable to discover.

Owing to the prolonged inaction of the men_and to the tense atmosphere caused by so much propaganda, conditions were ripe for an outbreak. Towards the middle of May a disturbance occurred in Penza, and the town fell into the hands of the enemy, as at Jericho, at the blast of a trumpet. The Czecho-Slovaks seized ammunition and pressed on to Suizran. The Bolshevik guard at the great bridge over the Volga were surprised in the night, and Samara followed in the course of a few days.