ABSTRACT
THUS began the policy of assisting the Russian people to rally round a native Government of a kind agreeable both to themselves and to the Allies. The Japanese were absolved of any charge of setting up their own authority in Russia, at the cost of handing over the people to the brutalities of two rapacious and dissolute Cossacks. One thing at least was certain, that neither Semenoff nor Kalmikoff was tainted with the subversive doctrines of Marx or Lenin, though tortured and plundered bourgeois may have failed to appreciate the soundness of their political philosophy. Both made themselves notorious by wholesale murder and robbery. Semenoff in particular levied toll on every train that passed, and, being an amorous soul, earned notoriety by the dashing quality of his female companions. Kalmikoff was credited with a logical mind; in his view, if the whole population was Bolshevik, then the only remedy was to hang or shoot the whole population. The third Russian who had the countenance of the Allies was a far better man-General Horvath, the manager of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He kept to his job, so far as he was allowed, and, since some sort of administration was necessary, he assumed a vague kind of dictatorship over the railway, which, of course, was all on Chinese territory, though not under Chinese control.
