Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/39

Rh in the war area and thus save the railway from the necessity of transporting these supplies from Europe.

The Manchurian spring, which merges so quickly into summer, found me busily engaged in this new and absorbing task. The fresh levies of soldiers from Europe arrived with the first swallows, coming as though out on a sporting expedition and decked in white, blue and pink blouses, which gave to the whole neighbourhood of Harbin the appearance of bright groups of flowers. It was a pleasing sight to watch these gay spots of colour on the dark emerald ground of meadows and the foliage that is so rampant in Manchuria.

But when these same brilliant colours were transferred to the battle lines around Liaoyang, they served as admirable targets for the Japanese gunners and riflemen, who found such shooting easy and often wiped out whole companies or even battalions. Only then, after these costly and fatal lessons, was the difference between the uniforms of the Russians and the Japanese appreciated. The Japanese had adopted the regular khaki and enjoyed its natural protection against the greenish-brown background of the landscape. A popular outcry soon arose for a change in the disastrous hues of the multi-coloured blouses and had its repercussion in my laboratory, where I soon found a method of extracting from the lignite, or brown coal, that abounds in the region, a dye for giving a neutral hue to the soldiers' linen.

In the meantime my voracious soap factory was always demanding more and more of the soya bean oil. As it was then not available in sufficient quantity on the Harbin market, I determined to start out in search of a district where the oil was plentiful and from which it could be readily transported to Harbin. With my assistant and two Cossacks I journeyed up the Sungari River in a