Siberia has afforded an interesting race study ever since the Teuton prisoners began to arrive.  From the very first, German and Austrian prisoners mated with the sturdy peasant women of Siberia and settled to a happy and unhampered life in the undeveloped lands of the great plains.  Some of the women had husbands at the front, but nichevo never means “never mind” to a greater extent than it does in Russian marital affairs.  A man’s a man for a’ that, and there was little trouble until the two parents of different nationality and language discussed which language the children should be taught.  German and Russian produce the same tow-headed stock.  With the downfall of the Russian army the Russian husband sometimes returned and though quite willing to assume responsibility for the new offspring, insisted on asking the Austrian substitute at his bed and board to leave.  As often as not the Austrian left.  There were always a better farm and frau to be had elsewhere, and some Russian women are tiresome anyway.

[Sidenote:  Many Austrians do not go home.]

When conditions are like this in Siberia, why should an Austrian return to a hungry country to fight a heroic enemy?  A happy home in Siberia, which some other man has founded, or starvation in Austria?  No wonder the Austrians in Siberia are a mercenary and unpatriotic lot.  I saw many in the Bolshevik army.  Most of those I talked with were under arms for the sake of the 200 rubles per month, equipment and food they were paid by the Bolsheviks, without, as they told me, planning to run any unnecessary chances of losing their lives in actual fighting against the Czechs or any other enemy of the Bolsheviks for that amount of money, if they could avoid it; not a very difficult matter.

Allied military support of the Czechs in Siberia is not Japanese intervention, and sentiment in Russia and Siberia against intervention to-day is now what it was six months ago.  If the Bolsheviki do not represent the people of Russia, the only way the Russian people can develop confidence in themselves, and strength, is to throw off the Bolsheviki.  The Archangel and Siberian regions have started such moves.

Siberia seems ready to welcome the Czechs, and if the Allied forces in Siberia keep themselves sufficiently in the background, Siberia will probably welcome the friends of the Czechs.  The Allies have failed in Russia in the past because they have trusted upon material equipment rather than upon education of the people in the ideals of our cause.  A certain amount of military intervention is necessary in Siberia if we are to protect the Czechs and protect the supplies which an economic mission would furnish.  The danger lies in taking the control of that military intervention out of the hands of the Czechs.  If my observation among all classes in Siberia counts for anything, the day the non-Slavic forces of the Allies, especially the Japanese, whom the Russians despise, move ahead of the Czechs who have already the confidence of the Russians as no Allied army could, that day the Allied army will encounter difficulties.  This may spell tragedy for the cause of democracy.