Y.M.C.A. had secretaries with some of the trains and sent supplies of
literature and games. The Bohemians are the champion gymnasts of the
world and athletic contests were arranged at every station, until at the
call of a bugle the train would pull out, picking up sweating, happy men
as it gathered speed.

[Sidenote: The Czechs distribute President Wilson's speeches.]

At the larger stations we spent sometimes hours, sometimes days. That
gave a chance for the Czechs to mix with the Russian people. It gave the
people an awakening sense of acquaintance with this happy race, who,
while going from war to war around the world, were distributing the
words of President Wilson to prove the sanity of their cause and the
folly of the Russian collapse. The President's speeches were widely
read and much appreciated. But these enthusiastic, friendly Czech
soldiers were the living examples of the President's rather abstruse
lessons of democracy. President Wilson might seem a political Messiah,
but the Czechs were the John the Baptists who made the initial
impression upon the Russian and Siberian peasants.

An Austrian prisoner at a Siberian station shouted one day so all could
hear: "What is this freedom that you talk about?"

Immediately a thick-chested Czech strode forward.

"It is the one thing that makes a man a man," he replied. "It is the
thing that links men together without weakening them individually. It is
the thing that will wipe out tyranny, because a free man won't stand a
tyrant."

As he talked to the slow-minded Russians and the slouching Austrian,
this ruddy-cheeked Czech exemplified the advantages he preached. There
was no slouch in his body, or character. The power that had gathered
together a group which had been dispersed all over Russia and welded it
into a fighting unit was not only passionate desire for freedom and
willingness to fight for it, but the power of self-discipline which made
both possible.

[Sidenote: The spirit of crusaders.]

The Czech army was gay without license. In Irkutsk, during the Easter
holidays, it ate ice-cream sandwiches or went up in tiny Ferris wheels
in the true spirit of the reveler at a dry-town carnival. In Omsk one
night it stood silent for hours, listening to the art of a Czech
violinist playing for the wounded in the Red Cross car. It paraded the
streets with a smile and an air of pride. It is boyish, open-hearted,
lovable. It makes friends. Neat in dress, erect in be