That is merely a type of their conduct towards ordinary people.  There is, however, one excuse for them:  given the right circumstances, they treat all alike.  A battalion commander was not quite the sort of material to operate upon, for the simple reason that he was usually surrounded with sufficient force to secure proper respect, but a general without a powerful escort was always fair sport for their gentle attentions.  Not even the chief of the British Military Mission could hope to escape from the most insulting behaviour.  An incident placed my unit in charge of a part of the telegraph system, which enabled me to handle personally the sort of message which entered the Japanese Headquarters relative to a special train that was approaching their station.  I handled the message myself.  It ran as follows: 

“A special train, No. ........., will enter your section at .........
time; it conveys the chief of the British Military Mission, General
........., and Staff from Vladivostok to Ufa for important conference
with General Surovey, the Commander-in-Chief of the Czech and Russian
Armies.  You will please give ‘line clear’ throughout the journey.”  Did
the Japanese give “line clear” throughout?  That will never be the way
that this highly efficient and interesting little people will do
anything, if their army is a sample of the whole.  They stopped the
train, and boarded it with a squad of men with fixed bayonets.  They
insulted the chief of the British Mission by placing him and his Staff
under arrest, and then proceeded to make elaborate inquiries to find out
whether they were not German emissaries in disguise.  The impudence of
the whole proceeding was so remarkable and yet characteristic that when
the Staff of the General reported the occurrence to me I did not for a
moment know whether I should die with rage or laughter.

I went to Siberia entirely biassed in favour of this admittedly wonderful people.  I took care to instruct my soldiers to salute every Japanese officer and to be most polite to every Japanese soldier, and they carried out my instructions to the letter; but my attention was called to the fact that only on rare occasions did a Japanese officer take the trouble to return the salute of my men, and still more rarely did a Japanese soldier salute an English officer.  He was much more likely to give an insulting grimace.  I say quite frankly that I admire the workmanlike way the Japanese go about their soldierly duties, but it is impossible to ignore their stupidly studied arrogance towards those who are anxious to be on terms of peace and amity with them.  It is unfortunately true that they were misled into believing that Germany was ordained to dominate the world, and, believing this, they shaped their conduct upon this awful example.  They quite openly boast that they are the Germans of the East.  Let us hope that they will read aright the recent lesson of history.

During my stay in the maritime provinces I never saw or heard of a single act or order from the Japanese Headquarters which would help in the slightest degree in the administrative reorganisation of the country.  On the contrary I saw many things which convinced me that the Land of the Rising Sun was at that time more concerned in maintaining disorder as the surest way of fostering her own ambitious designs.