Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/129



The story of the Czechoslovak conquest of Siberia reads like a romance. It has caught the imagination of the world, and journalists are hard put to it to find an analogy to it in the annals of mankind. One compares it with Xenophon’s Anabasis, the famous march of the ten thousand from the center of the Persian Empire to the Black Sea; another likens it to Cortez’s conquest of the Empire of the Aztecs. And many no doubt have in mind Napoleon’s great excursion into the heart of Russia and its disastrous ending. The wonderful adventure of the Czechoslovaks has not yet got beyond the first chapter; its outcome is on the knees of the gods. But this much is certain even now: it will remain the most marvelous episode of the greatest war in history.

The rough map attached to this article will help the reader to grasp the wonder of the Czechoslovak exploits. Way to the west of Russia, nowhere touching even its pre-war boundaries, is the little country which is the home of the Czechs (Bohemians) and Slovaks. A hundred Bohemias together would not equal the area controlled by the exiled sons of the Czechoslovak lands. It is not, as if little Bohemia made war on great Russia and gained victory; from the days of the Greek triumps over Persia there have been many cases in which small, well-knit countries defeated loosely organized empires. But the fact must be emphasized that the Czechoslovaks in Russia and Siberia are a small part only of the manhood of Bohemia—that part which was fortunate enough to escape from the Austrian ranks into which they had been drafted and cross over alive to the Russian lines. Czechoslovak soldiers in Siberia and Eastern Russia are former Austrian soldiers who occupied a great empire, not for Austria, but for the Allies.

It was not easy to go over to the Russians, and things were not made easy for the men who managed to get over. Some of the Czech regiments in 1915 went over to the enemy’s side with their bands playing, but others were caught by Austrian artillery in no man’s land and smashed. Still other regiments were surrounded by German and Magyar troops, before they could take any steps to carry out their intention of deserting, and every tenth man was shot. Those that were lucky enough to reach the Russian trenches thought that their troubles were over, that they would be received with open arms by their Russian brothers and given a chance at once to exchange the hated Austrian uniform for Russian and fight against their oppressors. How they were disappointed. In most cases they were loaded into box cars and jolted along for weeks, until they were carried into far Siberia, Turkestan or the Caucasus. These they were herded in one camp with other Austrian and German prisoners and had to suffer many indignities from German and Magyar non-commissioned officers, who looked upon the Czechoslovaks as traitors. Gradually, as Russia needed workmen and as pressure was exerted upon the authorities in Petrograd by the Czech residents of Russia, they were allowed to volunteer for work on the farm and in munition factories. Later still here and there they were permitted with the grudging consent of the Petrograd bureaucrats and with the help of the more enlightened local authorities to join the original Hussite legion composed of a few thousand Czech residents of Russia who were not Russian subjects. They rendered the Russian armies very valuable services as scouts, because of their thorough knowledge of the Austrian armies. But the czarist government hesitated to give encouragement to revolutionaries, even if they were Austrian revolutionaries, and not Russian. And so when the Czar was overthrown, there existed only three