German descent—who are known as the "German Barons"—and who terrorise over the peasants in the proper feudal and Prussian style). The beginning of 1918 found the German troops supporting the upper classes against the workers. The beginning of 1919 (the German troops having been withdrawn) finds this country supporting very much the same sort of people against the Bolsheviks.
Demand for Japanese Intervention.
But then came the demand, first in France (where the bond-holders were so active and so irate) and then in this country, that the Allies should intervene also.
One excuse given was that active measures must be taken to prevent Germany over-running Asia, and Japan was urged to land forces in Siberia before the German troops could cover the 7,500 odd miles which separated them from Vladivostock. And so foolish have our rulers been (did the War Office not send a shipload of sand to Egypt for the purpose of filling sandbags?) that it is quite possible that some of them believed in the reality of this danger.
Another excuse was that we had to intervene to rescue the Czecho-Slovaks who were wandering about Siberia and endeavouring, it was said, to get back to the Western Front. But when these unfortunate people got to Vladivostock the Allies sent them back into the interior to fight the Bolsheviks. And there they still are—75,000 of them. "Their one desire," says Professor Masaryk, President of the new Czecho-Slovak State, "is to get home." "The Allies," says the "Manchester Guardian," "are forcing them to stay in Siberia and kill and be killed, with no other result than to put in power a gang of reactionaries who are seeking to restore the good old days of the Tsar." However, in the end—good excuse or bad excuse—the interventionist agitation succeeded, and Allied landings were effected on the Murman coast, at Archangel, and at Vladivostock, the Allies at the same time stating that they had no annexationist intentions, and that they would not interfere with the internal affairs of Russia.
What has happened since?
The Truth About the Bolsheviks.
According to the Governmental Press, Russia under Bolshevik rule is the scene of daily massacres and of horrors unspeakable. Many of these stories are obviously untrue, and the well-known New York review, the "New Republic," has found occasion to protest against their circulation. "Is the anti-Bolshevik cause so weak," it asks, "that it must be sustained by all these lies?" Information of a very different character regarding the real state of affairs in Russia is filtering through, however. "Nine-tenths of the stories of outrages and murder are pure inventions of the regime," says Colonel McCormick, President of the American Society of Engineers. Mr. Reynolds Ball, who has spent two years in Russia, writes to say, from his own personal experience, that "It was possible to travel unmolested from Moscow to the southern limit of the Caucasus through Bolshevik territory," and that whilst in Moscow and Petrograd he "saw no scenes of violence and disorder." Mr. George Russell (A.E.) states that in Russia 30,000,000 people are now living under co-operative production and distribution, and that the Bolshevik Government, knowing that education is the foundation of all permanent progress, have already founded six new universities, are
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