placed on record. Admiral
Koltchak observed that the Japanese were still causing him much trouble.
They had been unable to approach him personally but had been "getting
at" his officers, whose business caused them to make frequent visits to
the Ural front. They made statements to the effect that the only state
which was in a position to help Russia was Japan. The other armies were
war-weary and clamouring for demobilisation and therefore unwilling to
fight the Bolsheviks. If Admiral Koltchak was compelled to make a
reasonable arrangement with Japan, their army would guarantee to
liquidate the Bolshevik forces in two months and establish a monarchy
satisfactory to the Russian officers. This propaganda had reached the
front, and had been referred to as assuming very serious importance by
his front-line generals in their dispatches. To counteract this
pernicious influence, he was proposing to visit the front himself to
point out the impossibility of Japan, as one of the Entente Allies,
being able herself to execute such a programme. I asked him how this
propaganda began and who engineered it. He answered: "General Muto and a
staff of twenty-six officers and intelligence assistants are working
hard here in Omsk to influence Russian opinion in their direction."
Finally the Supreme Governor said, "I make no complaint against these
very excellent Japanese officers, they are only carrying out the orders
of their political and military chiefs, but it makes my work of
restoring order much more difficult."

There were other little rifts within the lute. The Russian officers are
Royalist almost to a man, and will remain so, for they are all most
childlike in their adherence to this principle. Some gossip informs one
of them that Prince Kuropotkin is still alive and has been seen on the
Russian frontier. "Oh!" he exclaims. "Then the admiral will be handing
over his power to Kuropotkin directly he hears the prince is alive!"
Next day he may be told that the prince is not a soldier and his
enthusiasm at once oozes out of his finger tips. The next day some
British supplies arrive, and then he is all for reliance upon the
Allies. A few days later, the Government not having been recognised by
the Powers according to his wish, he curses the Powers and becomes
morose. The day following he hears in a restaurant that
Demitri-Pavlovitch is hiding as a peasant in Siberia, and he is
immediately in about the same ecstatic condition as the sheph