The Making of a State/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
IN THE FAR EAST
(Tokio. April 6—20, 1918)
INSTEAD of going to America by sea direct from Vladivostok, as I wished, I was compelled by a number of obstacles to take the Manchurian railway and to travel right through Korea as far as Fusan and to sail thence for Japan. Therefore, on April 1, 1918, I started by way of Kharbin and Mukden, reaching Shimonoseki on the 6th and Tokio on the 8th. In Tokio I was almost in Europe again, thanks to the foreign Embassies. Mr. R. S. Morris was the American and Sir Conyngham Greene the British Ambassador. Mr. Morris asked me for a memorandum—destined for President Wilson on the state of Russia and Bolshevism, and submitted a number of questions to me. I answered them with the following short statement upon the need for a well-considered policy in Russia on the part of European Powers. After what I have said about Russia, it calls for no remark except that its date and the position at the moment should be remembered.
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.
Written April 10, 1918, in Tokio.
(1) The Allies should recognize the Bolshevist Government (de facto—the de jure recognition need not be discussed); President Wilson’s message to the Moscow Assembly was a step in this direction. If the Allies are on good terms with the Bolshevists they can influence them. The Germans recognized them by concluding peace with them. (I know the weak points of the Bolshevists, but I know also the weak points of the other parties; they are neither better nor abler.)
(2) The Monarchical movement is weak; the Allies must not support it. The Cadets and the Social Revolutionaries are organizing themselves against the Bolshevists; I do not expect any considerable success from either of these parties. The Allies thought that Alexeieff and Korniloff would win a big success on the Don; I did not believe it and refused to join them, though I was invited to do so by the leaders. The same applies to Semyenoff and others.
(3) The Bolshevists will hold power longer than their adversaries suppose. Like all the other parties, they will die of political dilettantism. It is the curse of Tsarism that it did not teach the people to work or to administer; and the Bolshevists have been weakened by their failure in the peace negotiations and in the land question. On the other hand, they are gaining sympathies because they are learning to work, and because the other parties are weak.
(4) I am inclined to think that, after a time, a Coalition Government (the Socialist Parties and the Cadet Left) might meet with general approval, though there would have to be also Bolshevists in the Government.
(5) A lasting Democratic and Republican Government in Russia will exercise great pressure on Prussia and Austria through the Socialists and Democrats. This is one reason why the Germans and the Austrians are anti-Bolshevist.
(6) All the small peoples in the East of Europe (Finns, Poles, Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians, Czechs and Slovaks, and Roumanians) need a strong Russia lest they be at the mercy of the Germans and the Austrians. The Allies must support Russia at all costs and by all possible means. If the Germans subdue the East they will then subdue the West.
(7) A capable Government could induce the Ukrainians to be satisfied with an autonomous Republic forming part of Russia. This was the original idea of the Ukrainians themselves. Not until later did they proclaim their independence, though, in reality, an independent Ukraine will be an Austrian or a German province. The Germans and the Austrians are pursuing the same policy in regard to the Ukraine as towards Poland.
(8) It must be remembered that the South of Russia is the rich part of the country, with fertile soil, the Donetz Basin and the Black Sea. The North is poor. Russian policy will gravitate towards the South.
(9) The Allies must have a common policy upon the best way of supporting Russia.
(10) The Allied Governments must not leave their representatives in Russia without instructions. In other words, they must have a clear Russian policy.
(11) I hope the Japanese will not oppose Russia; that would suit the Germans and the Austrians. On the contrary, the Japanese should fight alongside of the Allies; the gap between Japan and Germany would thus be widened.
(12) Nowhere in Siberia did I see, between March 15 and April 2, armed German or Austrian prisoners. The anarchy in Siberia is not greater than in Russia.
(13) The Allies must oppose the Germans and Austrians in Russia:—
(a) By organizing a company to buy up corn and sell it where it is needed. Thus they will prevent the Germans from getting it. But the Russian and Ukrainian peasants will not sell their corn for money, which is useless to them. They need goods, such as boots, clothes, soap and tools. Since the Germans have no manufactured goods, the Allies have an excellent opportunity to get hold of the Russian market. The scheme only needs energy and organization. The capital that may be invested in it will repay itself.
(b) German and Austrian agents will flock into Russia. Counter-measures are necessary and must be organized. American and other agents should bring samples and, perhaps, a small travelling exhibition of selected goods, together with illustrated catalogues.
(c) The Germans influence the Russian press less through special journalistic agents than through the German prisoners of war who write for all kinds of papers throughout the country, especially in the smaller towns. Our Czech prisoners are counteracting their influence to some extent, but the whole thing needs organization.
(d) The Russian railways must be kept up. Without railways, there will be no army and no industry.
(e) The Germans have bought up Russian securities so as to control industry in future.
(f) The Germans are known to have influenced prisoners of war, for instance, by training Ukrainian prisoners for the Ukrainian army. The Allies might influence the German and Austrian prisoners who remain in Russia by means of the press and special agents.
(g) I succeeded in organizing a corps of 50,000 men out of Czech and Slovak prisoners. I have agreed with the French Government to send it to France; the Allies can help to transport it. They are excellent soldiers, as they showed in the offensive last June. We can organize a second corps of the same size. This must be done to prevent our prisoners from returning to Austria, where they would be sent to oppose the Allies on the Italian or the French front.
The Allies have agreed to provide us with the necessary means. In France we have also a small army, partly sent from Russia and partly composed of our refugees; and I hope that we shall likewise be able to form an army in Italy.
The significance of having the whole Czech army in France is obvious; and I must acknowledge that France understood the political importance of the matter from the outset and has supported our national movement in every way. M. Briand was the first statesman openly to promise our people the help of the French Republic. He it was who succeeded in putting into the Allied reply to President Wilson the explicit demand that the Czechoslovaks should be liberated. The Czechoslovaks are the most westerly Slav barrier against Germany and Austria. In present circumstances 100,000, nay, even 50,000 trained soldiers may be very important.
(14) My answer to the oft-repeated question, whether an army could be formed in Russia, is that a million men could be raised in from six to nine months. The Red Guard is unimportant and the Bolshevists have called upon the officers of the old Tsarist army to join their army as instructors. For the army, railways are needed.
Note.—To-day’s “Japan Advertiser” (April 11) publishes the following news:—
VOLUNTEERS LAY DOWN THEIR ARMS.
The Czechoslovak Corps on its way to France is Intercepted by Trotsky
Moscow, April 5.
As a result of an understanding between Trotsky and the French Ambassador, the army of Czechoslovak volunteers which was going to France surrendered its weapons to the Soviet authorities. With the exception of General Dieterichs, who was accompanying the Corps to France, the officers have been dismissed.
This news is good. The corps going to France needs no weapons, as it will be armed again in France. The officers in question are Russian officers who had joined our army.
To the French Ambassador, M. Regnault, I expressed verbally the same views. At the English Embassy I heard what was happening in Europe. I called also upon the Japanese Foreign Minister. At that time the Japanese, naturally, knew little about us, and I gave the Secretary of the provisional Shidehara Cabinet a memorandum in Russian, and asked the British and the American Ambassadors to use their influence on our behalf with the Japanese Government. We needed Japanese help for the transport of our men from Vladivostok onwards, eventually across Japan, and for supplies of clothing, boots and other things that were unobtainable in Russia and Siberia. Everywhere I raised the question of getting ships.
In Japan, as elsewhere, I was in touch with the press—and had, for some days, trouble with the Tokio police, whom my English passport perplexed. The newspapers called me by my name, whereas the passport was made out in another name. It was not surprising that it took the Japanese police a few days to clear up the discrepancy, for in London the same thing happened to me. There, my passport bore my own name but had been issued by Serbia, and the police could not understand how this fitted in with the facts of the case. I had already lectured at London University; the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, had sent one of his colleagues to introduce me to my audience; but the police of my quarter were uneasy for days. St. Bureaucras is the same everywhere—though the officials were quite right to do their duty.
While in Japan I read the well-known speech of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Czernin, of April 2. His personal attack did not surprise me. The important point was that the former French Prime Minister, Painlevé, and especially Clemenceau, should have answered so categorically the Austrian falsehoods about Austria’s peace proposals, and that the letter written by Prince Sixtus of Bourbon on March 31, 1917, should be published. Austria lied, the behaviour of the Emperor Charles himself was unseemly and pusillanimous, and the affair ended with Czernin’s resignation on April 15th. As I shall show, this episode was particularly important for us because it gave the Allies incisive proof of Austria’s untrustworthiness and insincerity. In Tokio, too, I heard some account of the Rome Congress of oppressed Hapsburg peoples on April 8, 1918; of this, and of the important Declaration of Corfu which had been signed by the Serbian Prime Minister, Pashitch, and Dr. Trumbitch on July 20, 1917, I shall have more to say when I deal comprehensively with our relationship to the Southern Slavs.
My fortnight in Japan added little to my knowledge of the country, for my whole attention was given to the fate of our Legions, to the war and to the prospective peace. I visited various temples in Tokio, saw what was accessible, but cannot say that I studied Japan. I sought, indeed, to learn something of her economic condition and to see what the economic effect of the war would be upon so active a country. The circumstance that England and, to a certain extent, France, were prevented from exporting their goods to the Far East, naturally gave the Japanese an opportunity to extend their business in Asia and even as far as Egypt. I kept an eye on bookshops and art dealers, bought a few woodcuts and not a few European books. The influence of German (particularly German medical) literature was obvious, and I found a second-hand bookseller who dealt chiefly in German books.
On April 19th I went on to Yokohama. By a lucky chance, a big boat, the “Empress of Asia,” was starting for Canada. She was intended to transport troops from America to Europe. Thus I reached the American continent quickly. We sailed on April 20, 1918, at noon, and reached Victoria and Vancouver only nine days later.