e rapidly stripped of
their wealth and now in the vicinities of our towns and monasteries you
can see whole settlements of beggar Mongols living in dugouts. All our
Mongol arsenals and treasuries were requisitioned. All monasteries
were forced to pay taxes; all Mongols working for the liberty of their
country were persecuted; through bribery with Chinese silver, orders and
titles the Chinese secured a following among the poorer Mongol Princes.
It is easy to understand how the governing class, His Holiness, Khans,
Princes, and high Lamas, as well as the ruined and oppressed people,
remembering that the Mongol rulers had once held Peking and China in
their hands and under their reign had given her the first place in
Asia, were definitely hostile to the Chinese administrators acting thus.
Insurrection was, however, impossible. We had no arms. All our leaders
were under surveillance and every movement by them toward an armed
resistance would have ended in the same prison at Peking where eighty
of our Nobles, Princes and Lamas died from hunger and torture after a
previous struggle for the liberty of Mongolia. Some abnormally strong
shock was necessary to drive the people into action. This was given by
the Chinese administrators, General Cheng Yi and General Chu Chi-hsiang.
They announced that His Holiness Bogdo Khan was under arrest in his
own palace, and they recalled to his attention the former decree of
the Peking Government--held by the Mongols to be unwarranted and
illegal--that His Holiness was the last Living Buddha. This was enough.
Immediately secret relations were made between the people and their
Living God, and plans were at once elaborated for the liberation of His
Holiness and for the struggle for liberty and freedom of our people. We
were helped by the great Prince of the Buriats, Djam Bolon, who began
parleys with General Ungern, then engaged in fighting the Bolsheviki
in Transbaikalia, and invited him to enter Mongolia and help in the war
against the Chinese. Then our struggle for liberty began."

Thus the Sait of Uliassutai explained the situation to me. Afterwards
I heard that Baron Ungern, who had agreed to fight for the liberty
of Mongolia, directed that the mobilization of the Mongolians in the
northern districts be forwarded at once and promised to enter Mongolia
with his own small detachment, moving along the River Kerulen.
Afterwards he took up relations with the other Russian detachment of
Colonel K