We arrived at Nikolsk in the early morning, but the platform was crowded with inhabitants and two guards of honour, Czech and Cossack, with band, which mistook “Rule Britannia” for the National Anthem.  I was introduced to all the officers, the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Ledwards, and his energetic wife.  Breakfast was served to the men by the other corps, and my officers received the hospitality of the good Consul and Mrs. Ledwards.  Then a march through the town, to show the inhabitants that the long-sought-for Allied assistance had really arrived at last.

It appears that a very sanguine French officer had travelled over the line some months previously and had made lavish promises of Allied support, which accounts, perhaps, for my previous orders received at Hong-Kong towards the end of 1917.  The Allies had decided to make a much earlier effort to reconstruct the Russian line against their German enemies, but, like all Allied efforts, their effective action had been frustrated by divided counsels and stupid national jealousy.

It was the prospect of Falkenhayn, with the huge army of half a million men, flushed with its recent easy victory over Rumania, being freed for employment on the French front, that caused our hurried over-late expedition to Siberia.  If the effort had been made at the right time the Russian people and soldiery would not have become so demoralised and hopeless as they had when I arrived, and millions of lives would have been saved from untold tortures.  A famous statesman once sternly admonished his colleagues for their fatal policy of doing nothing until it was too late; in this case he himself is open to the same censure.

At Nikolsk had recently been fought an important battle between the Czechs and the Terrorists, and we were shown a series of photographs of horribly mutilated Czech soldiers who had fallen into the hands of the Bolshevik army as prisoners of war.  By a section of people at home the Bolsheviks are thought to be a party of political and democratic idealists, but when one is brought face to face with their work they are then proved to be a disgusting gang of cut-throats, whose sole business in life appears to be to terrorise and rob the peasant and worker and make orderly government impossible.

We received equally warm welcomes at many other stations, and at length we arrived at Svagena, which is the last fairly large town before Kraevesk, the station without a town, and very near the range of hostile artillery.  Here quite a full-dress programme was gone through by the Czech band and the Czech and Cossack soldiers, ending with a short march past, and speeches by the English and Russian commanders.  My speech was made along the lines of my instructions, which were mostly to this effect:  We Britishers had entered the territory of Holy Russia not as conquerors, but as friends.  The Bolshevik power had made a corrupt and dishonourable compact with their German