The successful resistance of Semenoff and Kalmakoff to the Omsk Government, backed up by the armed forces of one of the Allies, had a disastrous effect upon the situation throughout Siberia.  If Semianoff and Kalmakoff could, with Allied help and encouragement, openly deride the Omsk Government’s orders, then it was clear to the uninitiated that the Allies were hostile to the supreme Russian authority.  If Semianoff and Kalmakoff can wage successful hired resistance to orderly government at the bidding of a foreign Power, why cannot we do so, to retain the land and property we have stolen and prevent the proper administration of justice for the crimes we have committed?  It was intended as a deliberate attack upon authority and an incentive to the disorderly elements to continue the prevailing anarchy.  A united, well organised Russia is not the kind of Russia Japan wishes to see established.  If Japan is to succeed in her territorial ambitions in the Far East, Russia must be kept in a state of mental disorder and physical paralysis.  Germany used the Russian love of conspiracy and intrigue to create disorder and destroy the Muscovite power; Japan intends, if possible, to continue that disorder for her own political reasons.

Directly it became known that Semianoff and Kalmakoff had set the Omsk Government at defiance, numerous other would-be Semenoffs came on the scene until the very residence of the Supreme Governor and his Headquarters Staff scarcely escaped attack, and it became necessary to show the British Tommy on the side of order.  This was the position up till the early days of December, 1918.

Just about this time the fact that Germany was beaten began to take shape in the Japanese military mind, and the fact was hammered home by the terms of the Armistice.  For some days the Japanese Mission at Omsk flatly refused to believe the cables; their national pride refused to admit that they had so far misunderstood the power of Britain and her Allies.  It was a terrible awakening to the self-styled “Lords of the East” that all their schemes should be brought to nought, that British and American squadrons might be expected to cruise in the Sea of Japan, and perhaps hold the scales fair between her and her temporarily helpless neighbour.  I do not suppose it will ever come to that, but such was her fear.  From this time on, while the objects of Japan in Siberia were still the same, she pursued them by quite different methods.

The first sign of change was that Japanese soldiers were allowed to salute British officers and were no longer allowed to use the butts of their rifles on inoffensive Russian citizens.  Their military trains no longer conveyed contraband goods to their compatriots who had acquired the Russian business houses in the main trading centres along the railway.  The Staff no longer commandeered the best buildings in the towns for alleged military purposes and immediately sub-let them to private traders.  Japan at once re-robed herself with the thin veil of Western morals and conduct which she had rapturously discarded in 1914.  While Hun methods were in the ascendancy she adopted the worst of them as her own.  She is in everything the imitator par excellence, and therefore apparently could not help herself.