entirely exploded the English legend of the landless Russian peasant
pining for a few acres of land.

We arrived at Irkutsk and proceeded to investigate the situation. When
we passed here four months before it was the centre of Siberian life;
official indolence had, however, again reduced its status to that of a
third- or fourth-rate town.

I was anxious to know how the new Rumanian Division under French
auspices was progressing. Fourteen thousand rifles that could be ill
afforded from the front had been left here some six weeks previous by
one of our British supply trains. I found that the local Russian
military authorities knew nothing, nor had they ever been consulted
about it. They knew that not more than three thousand Rumanians lived in
the district, and these had mostly embraced the opinions of the
Bolsheviks. I made inquiries through the usual English channels, but
they were equally uninformed. A visit to the Russian railway department
elicited the fact that a French officer had signed the necessary orders
for the trucks containing the rifles to remain at Irkutsk, that three
thousand rifles had so far been unloaded, and that there was a French
proposal to send the remainder to Tomsk, where it was hoped they might
be got rid of amongst some Serbian bands with Bolshevik tendencies. This
may or may not represent all the facts, but it indicates the
unmistakable necessity that English help shall be given only by English
hands.

Russian officers were beginning to recover their old characteristics,
and nightly filled the entertainment halls and restaurants and led the
gaieties of the town. Very little thought was given to the grim
struggle their half-clad comrades were waging with the forces of anarchy
along the Ural mountains.

British Consul Nash kindly entertained Colonel and Madame Frank and
myself, and generally helped me in the organisation of this end of my
campaign. He did not think much of my objective, but he helped all the
same.

CHAPTER XVII

MY CAMPAIGN

I held my first meeting in the repairing shop at Irkutsk at 3 P.M.,
March 4. It was a big crowd of working men and women. The Russian women
work on the railways in such employments as carriage and wagon cleaners,
snow and ice shovellers, and even repairing gangs on different sections
of the line have a sprinkling of the fair sex.

This audience listened to an explanation of the rise of the trade union
movement in England with the greates