to Vladivostok by rail. On April 21, Maxa and Čermák, the representatives of the Branch of our National Council in Russia, were arrested at Moscow.
Of these events and their sequel I learned only in America. Towards the end of May our detachments agreed at Tchelyabinsk to march through to Vladivostok as a military force; and on May 25th the fight, the armed warlike “Anabasis,” began. The first vague reports of successes against the Bolshevists came at the end of May, particularly the news of the capture of Pensa on May 29. Then followed the tidings that other towns on the Volga, like Samara and Kazan, and places in Siberia and on the Trans-Siberian railway had been captured.
The effect in America was astonishing and almost incredible—all at once the Czechs and Czechoslovaks were known to everybody. Interest in our army in Russia and Siberia became general and its advance aroused enthusiasm. As often happens in such cases, the less the knowledge the greater the enthusiasm; but the enthusiasm of the American public was real. Political circles, too, were affected by it. Our control of the railway and our occupation of Vladivostok had the glamour of a fairytale, which stood out the more brightly against the dark background of German successes in France. Even sober-minded political and military men ascribed great military importance to our command of the railway. Ludendorff induced the German Government to protest to the Bolshevists, alleging that the march of our men had prevented the German prisoners from returning home to strengthen the German army. And in America the political effect was all the greater because the “Anabasis” was making a similar impression in Europe. Certainly it influenced the political decisions of the American Government. Thanks to the direct cable, news from Siberia reached the United States sooner than Europe, and the echoes in America were louder. By the beginning of August 1918 our legions were popular in America as they were, somewhat later, in Europe, though the attention of European political and military circles was more closely concentrated on the main theatre of war.[1]
- ↑ To show the American view of our Siberian “Anabasis” I may quote a passage from a letter written by the late Mr. F. K. Lane, who was then Home Secretary in President Wilson’s Administration: “. . . Isn’t this a great world? And its biggest romance is not even the fact that Woodrow Wilson rules it, but the march of the Czechoslovaks across 5,000 miles of Russian Asia—an army on foreign soil, without a Government, without a span of territory, that is recognized as a nation. This, I think, appeals to my imagination as
