ABSTRACT
IT is time to direct our attention once again to the Siberian expedition. As a contribution to the war it had no longer any justification. From time to time it was the subject of bitter complaint. Viscount Kato, who had presented the Twenty-one Demands to China, who was quite unrepentant on that subject, and whose hectoring style was now being out-hectored by Mr. Obata, the Minister in Peking, denounced the Siberian expedition as wholeheartedly as the most thoroughpaced pacifist He dwelt on the purposelessness of the quest, on the sufferings of the Japanese soldiers, and on the deep discontent that had been growing for a long time. As he was leader of the Opposition, such denunciations might have been merely political, but others less interested in party politics spoke of the expedition in the same strain. Among the soldiers Siberia was as unpopular as if it were a penal settlement. They were totally unaccustomed to such a climate, and, though it was glorious to die in battle, there was no glory in the rather too frequent accident of freezing to death on sentry-go. The official pronouncements on the subject were to the effect that it was true that the menace of the German prisoners of war had been extirpated, but that the Czechs were still in Siberia, and that for various reasons the safety of the Czechs, the security of the railway, the protection of Japanese residents, the dangers threatening from Bolsheviks and Bolshevised Koreans on the Korean border, it was still impossible for Japan to withdraw her troops as yet. As for Admiral Kolchak and the Omsk Government, that promising project had unfortunately come to nothing, but the supply
M
of stores, for which payment was guaranteed, still went on, playing its part in the paralysis of transport which brought Kolchak to his death. Another M contributory factor to this disaster was Semenoff’s insubordination, but when Kolchak endeavoured to remove him the Japanese prevented him, and when he arrived in full retreat they compelled him to appoint Semenoff Commander-in-Chief-after which he was left to the vengeance of his enemies. Semenoff appealed to the Czechs, now streaming eastwards, not to desert him-for seeing the fate of Kolchak he began to fear for his own-but the Czech commander advised him to appeal to the patriots of his own nation who had hitherto crouched behind the protecting line of Czech bayonets, or to the heroes like himself who had kept as far from the firing-line as possible.
