Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/214



Little has been heard recently of the Czechoslovak soldiers in Siberia. Just a year ago they appeared for the first time in the war bulletins as an Allied force, the very existence of which was unknown up to that time by the average citizen of Allied lands. For several months they held the attention of the world and every one sang their praises. They scattered the Red Guards, wherever they came in contact with them; they saved Siberia from Bolshevik rule and German exploitation; they rebuilt broken down tunnels on the Siberian railroad and helped the Russians to organize a new government. Some of their regiments got as far Vladivostok, but when President Wilson early in August announced that he would send American soldiers to assist the Czechs, the troops at Vladivostok promptly marched back to the Urals to help their hardly pressed brothers to keep the Bolsheviki out of Siberia. American, Japanese, British, French and Italian troops landed at Vladivostok in August and September, but all they did was to clean out the remnants of Bolshevik bands in the Amur country. If they had pushed forward at once and joined the Czechoslovaks between the Urals and the Volga, the Bolshevik bogy would have disappeared long since.

The Czechoslovaks fought steadily from May till December. With them it was not a question of four days in the trenches and four days or a week in the rest area. They were on duty all the time, every day and every night; their casualties were enormous; the strain on their endurance was ever more severe. And when the armistice with Germany came, when they heard that the Czechoslovak state for which they battled in Siberia was a reality, when they saw the Allied soldiers in Siberia spend their time in billets and make no move to get to the front, what wonder that finally the Czechoslovak soldiers themselves decided to withdraw from the war area and let the newly raised Siberian army do the fighting.

At the end of November General Milan Štefanik, Czechoslovak minister of war, arrived in Ekaterinburg, at that time head quarters of the Russian branch of the Czechoslovak National Council. This revolutionary organization, elected at a congress of the delegates of the soldiers, surrendered their authority into the hands of the man who represented the government of their liberated country. Stefanik confirmed General Syrový in command of the army and appointed Bohdan Pavlu representative of the Czechoslovak government at Omsk, the seat of Admiral Kolchak’s authority. Dr. Václav Girsa who was in charge of Czechoslovak interests in Vladivostok ever since the first three regiments detrained there in May was continued in his post at the Pacific port, where all the intricate diplomatic negotiations concerning the Russian muddle took place. Out of these long negotiations came forth the plan to have the Allied troops in Siberia make themselves useful by guarding stretches of the long iron road from the Pacific to the Urals, so as to enable the newly raised Siberian troops to push into European Russia. In the division of territory among the various Allies the Czechoslovaks were assigned the line between Omsk and Irkutsk. There they are today, performing the comparatively easy duty of guarding the only artery of traffic from attack of local Bolshevik bands. They ride up and down in their armored cars and occasionally pursue the bandits into the wild Siberian forests. Their technical experts have taken charge of hundreds of factories and shops, and as far as repairing railroad rolling stock is concerned, they have beaten the engineers of all nations, including the Americans; for the Czechoslovaks know how to handle the Russian worker, and that is more than the Americans can do.

After General Štefanik had settled the affairs of his countrymen in Siberia, he hastened to Paris by sailing around Asia, in order to make arrangements for the return of the boys home. Since the Allies could not make up their minds to undertake an offensive against Lenine, there was nothing to be gained by leaving the Czechoslovaks indefinitely thousands of miles from their homes. Much complaint has been voiced in this country about the hard lot of American soldiers who have been fighting for the greater part of a year in the province of Archangel, and agitation is now carried on to bring home the American “exiles” in Siberia who did not have the luck to see any fighting at all. What about the Czechs who