Captain H——­ was in Omsk.  Behind him, as I talked with him, was a card index file showing the occupation and residence of forty thousand Czech artisans resident in Siberia.  Typewriters clicked in the bright office and outside a Czech wagon arrived with a ton of meat en route to the cold storage cellar which he had built in the outskirts of Omsk.

[Sidenote:  Food is obtained at high prices.]

“I arrived here alone and with only a few rubles,” said Captain H——.  “But I heard that some day my fellows would come through on their way to France.  So I began organizing our resources.  Many of our men have made much money as prisoners in Russia.  They were generous.  Men began to flock in and we took off their Austrian uniforms and put them into Russian uniforms—­the uniform of our expeditionary force.  Fighting men were listed and trained.  Artisans we merely listed, and there are forty thousand names classified by occupation and residence in those files.  In three weeks we have taken in 610 Czech prisoners and sent them out in the uniform of the expeditionary force to France.  Every shoe and belt and uniform is utilized and nothing is wasted except the hated Austrian uniform, which is in most cases worn to shreds anyway.  We have established friendly relations with the people.  Theoretically we are not supposed to be doing this.  Theoretically, we are not securing food.  But actually we are getting enough and to spare.  Ten trains a week get several days’ supplies here.  Only in disorganized Russia could such things be.  But we have to pay the secret agents of the local Soviet sixty-five rubles for meat.  Its market price is thirty-five.”

[Sidenote:  Professor Masaryk in America is the leader.]

In my note-book, I cannot find the names of a dozen leaders of the Czech expedition.  In a sense, there were no leaders.  The outstanding fact in the Czech army is the democracy of it.  The leaders are men who have been trained, but they owe their position to popular choice.  Yet there is no foolish idea that military decisions can be made by a committee of soldiers.  The Czech sacrifices personal ambition to his cause and that is why his cause is worth fighting for.  The Russian cause, a thing of chaos, is losing force every day.  I might almost say that the Czechs, in Siberia, were led by Professor Masaryk, in America, through the influence of his words in the daily paper.  As prominent a figure among the Czechs as any one man in the expedition is Kenneth Miller of New York, director of the Y.M.C.A., and held on a high pedestal in the affection of 10,000 men.  He has had much to do with the moving of the Czech trains in all their complicated travel arrangements.

[Sidenote:  How the Czechs came to control Siberia.]