prise me. The officer who induced me to join them was a
mere lieutenant, yet he never consulted anyone about taking me in. Was I
not an American? Each day some officer was told off to arrange matters
with the station masters. They moved their trains without bluff or
bluster. Sometimes the Soviets hindered them in order to get what guns
and supplies they could. But not till weeks after they started did any
Soviet have the temerity to try to stop or disarm the men. The Russian
masses were quickly won to friendship for the Czechs and the only force
that tried to interfere was the Bolshevik battalions who acted under
orders from distant points, where the man who gave the order enjoyed
comparative safety. The way that their control of Siberia through an
attempt to disarm them came about is as romantic as any feature of their
story.

[Sidenote: They have passes to leave the country.]

The presence of forty thousand well-disciplined Czech soldiers whose
loyalty to the cause of freedom was stronger than that of the rapidly
changing Russian proletariat made it seem desirable to the Bolshevik
authorities to rid the country of men so willing to fight and so little
subject to the extreme socialistic doctrines then rife in Russia. Both
Lenine and Trotzky by agreement with Professor Masaryk furnished these
men with passes for leaving the country and in spite of the chaotic
condition of transportation ample rolling stock, amounting to about
sixty trains of forty freight cars each, was placed at their disposal or
secured by the Czechs through their own efforts. Arrangements had
already been made with representatives of the French Government so that
plenty of money was provided for provisioning, equipping and
transporting a minimum of forty thousand men over about six thousand
miles.

[Sidenote: Military equipment being taken away.]

[Sidenote: The Czechs resist.]

Before these trains had gone far one local Soviet after another had
insisted on their leaving behind the armored motor cars, aeroplanes,
machine-guns and other military equipment which had been allotted to
them by the Russian Government during the Kerensky offensive. By the
time Penza--one day's run west of the Volga--was reached, after
machine-guns had been mounted on the engines in fighting their way
through the Germanized Ukrainian districts, the arms of each train had
been reduced to 140 rifles and ammunition. But the Czechs knew enough
about Russian conditions to r