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