Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/217

 Fighting is over on all fronts, except in Russia. On the frozen tundras south of the Arctic Sea a small force of Allies is skirmishing with the Reds; hundreds of miles to the southeast of them, between the Volga and the Urals, the Czechoslovaks are battling to keep the Bolsheviki out of Siberia.

It is difficult to understand the attitude of the Allies toward the Russian muddle. Indeed one may be permitted to doubt, whether the Allies have a Russian policy. The small force in the north is supposed to protect the supplies that were originally piled up at Murmansk and Archangel. The forces sent into Siberia were to assist the Czechoslovaks. As it happens, the Czechoslovaks have had a practical monopoly of the fighting; they broke through the Bolshevik cordon separating their western Siberian trains from their far eastern groups, and the American, Japanese, French and British columns merely cleaned up the scattered remnants of Red Guards on the Pacific slope. Since then British and Japanese troops have got as far west as Omsk, but the Americans are still near the Pacific, and the Czechoslovaks with more or less reliable assistance from Russians still do all the fighting against the reorganized red armies in European Russia. AmeriicaAmerica [sic] is sending the Czechs military supplies, but the new Czechoslovak republic will have to pay for all those machine guns, underwear and gas masks.

The Czechoslovak troops never numbered more than 100,000. Since May they have been in the thick of it continuously, without relief, without periods back of the lines. They are at the front and on duty every day and every night. Several weeks ago their casualties amounted to eight per cent dead and thirty per cent wounded. The enemy grows stronger every day; in place of undisciplined Red Guards the Czechoslovaks now face newly raised armies, fairly well organized and disciplined. Back of them in Omsk, where their supplies come from, a revolution just occurred, and the situation is such that they may find themselves between two fires.

Naturally they all wish to go home. They have not seen their families for four years and have had more than their share of active service. They could go, if they had a regard for their interests only. The Bolsheviks would be only too glad to get rid of them; Chicherin actually sent a wireless message to Prague offering safe conduct to the Czechoslovak Army in Russia. Of course the Czechoslovak fighters would take no safe conduct from a Bolshevik minister. But they know that they could cut their way through to the Black Sea or Ukraine; their problem has been not defeating an army, but holding immense territory and innumerable strategic centers with inadequate forces.

The Czechoslovaks are not ready to quit because they do not want to oppose the wishes of the Allies, and because above all they do not want to evacuate liberated Russian territory, leaving their Russian friends to be massacred by the terrorists, unless their place as defenders of redeemed Russia is taken by other armed forces. But they are tired to death of constant fighting and watchfulness, and of being left to fight alone. They have no illusions about their strength; they know that they cannot set up Russia on her feet unaided. And they cannot avoid being impatient with the delays of the Allies and their apparent lack of decision.

The Allies went into Russia and slapped the Bolsheviki in the face, but they hesitate to knock them down. They should either wash their hands of Russia, or finish what they started to do, so that the decimated Czechoslovak regiments may go home, before they get all killed.