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136 demand for the suspension of martial law in Poland and in certain other parts of the Empire where, through this military control, the lives of the people were in the hands of the field tribunals.

On the day the telegram was received a large general meeting was held in the rooms of the Railway Club, at which the opening speech was delivered by one of the senior civil engineers of the Chinese Eastern Railway, Ignace Nowakowski, a Pole, who explained the significance of the protest of the Railroad Union and spoke of the crimes of the Government which forced the Russian nation and the peoples united with it, through being members of its body politic, to futile and bloody civil war. Spurred on by this spirited and powerful speech, the meeting decided to select and empower a general, guiding committee to take over the control and assume the administration of the Russian Far East. In the election of its members, which was participated in by the Europeans in Manchuria and by the representatives of Vladivostok and the other east Siberian towns which had been telegraphically informed regarding the developments Nowakowski and I were chosen and with us the following Poles: W. Sass-Tisowski, M. Juszczynski, E. Ceglarski and A. Kozlowski. Among the Russians elected were the Assistant Director-General of the Chinese Eastern Railway, W. Lepeshinsky and the General Traffic Manager, K. von Dreyer. The total number on the Committee was fifty-six.

An hour after the general meeting adjourned, the Committee assembled for its initial meeting to select its executive board. It was then that I had conferred upon