The other Allies and the Russians having got the measure of this neutral zone business, naturally took steps to protect their men and property, and for a time the operations of this very energetic Lenin officer were confined to robbing and destroying a few isolated villages in the maritime provinces; but the utter absurdity of American policy was at last brought home to the Americans themselves.  The Red Guard commandant, chafing under the restrictions imposed upon him by the Russian and Japanese forces (in which the British also joined when Captain Edwards could get near with his good ship Kent), decided to attack the unsuspecting Americans themselves.  The Red Guard were very clever in their operations.  The American troops were guarding the Vladivostok-Suchan Railway; the neutral zone was situated at the extreme end of the line.  If the Red Guard had attacked the end near the zone their tactics would have been discovered at once.  They therefore usually marched out from the American zone, made a detour through villages and forest, and struck the railway at a point as far distant as possible.  Destroying a bit of line—­perhaps, if they had good luck, burning a bridge—­they usually exchanged a few shots with the American troops, and if pressed, marched back to the zone under the protection of a section of the very forces they had been raiding.  The American command naturally became more vigilant on the distant sections of the line, and this forced the Bolsheviks to operate nearer and nearer the protected zone; but in the meantime they managed to kill several Russian soldiers, wound a few Americans, and destroy five different sections of the railway.  Then they operated too near the zone, and the American troops pressed them straight into their own zone, where, to add insult to injury, they claimed that in accordance with the American proclamation they could not be molested as military operations were prohibited within the zone!

Instead of proceeding to root out this nest of pirates, someone suggested that a more comprehensive and binding arrangement was necessary between the American and Red Guard forces, to prevent such regrettable occurrences in future.  It was common talk that a conference between the Red Guard commander and General Graves, the American G.O.C., was actually arranged, but was dropped when the Supreme Governor’s representative in the Far East declared to General Graves personally that his proposed conference with the enemies of the Russian Government would be considered as a hostile act.  The breaking off of these negotiations caused great annoyance to the Soviet Government at Moscow, and they ordered their commissars in Ussurie to use the forces which had been organised under American protection to attack their protectors, which they at once proceeded to do.  This doubtless altered the relationship of these two parties, though the chances are that the powerful influence which forced the American commanders into this ill-fated policy will be powerful enough to prevent an open American declaration against the Reds in the Far East.