by the English armoured train, assisted by the machine-gun section of
the Middlesex Regiment under Lieutenant King. So the evacuation of our
splendid position regretfully began.




CHAPTER III

JAPAN INTERVENES


It should be remembered that directly it was decided by the Paris
Council that a diversion through Russia was the surest way of relieving
pressure on the French front, the English apparently decided to be first
in. Though Japan was unquestionably in the most favourable position to
send help quickly, she was known to have German commitments of such a
character as precluded her from taking the lead in what was, at that
time, more an anti-Teutonic than pro-Russian expedition. Her Press was,
and had been all through the war, violently pro-German, and however much
the Tokio Cabinet might wish to remain true to the Anglo-Japanese
Treaty, it was forced to make a seeming obeisance to popular feeling in
Japan. If it had been only an English expedition, Japan's hand would not
have been forced; but the American cables began to describe the rapid
organisation by the U.S.A. of a powerful Siberian expedition, which gave
the Japanese Government ample justification--even in the eyes of her
pro-German propagandists--to prepare a still larger force to enable her
to shadow the Americans, and do a bit of business on her own. Several
months earlier Japanese suspicions had been aroused by the dispatch to
Siberia of an alleged civilian railway engineering force to help Russia