The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-10-27

through the so-called Friendly" bol- shevik territory, we would instantly
 have chosen the former But we pa- tiently suffered it all. We were de- termined to leave Russia without a con. flict We were met with cannons and machine guns, but we remained quiet Our first train, after 57 days of such trials, succeeded in reaching VIyadis- vostok, where We received a great wei come from the allied units stationed there.
 Enemy pressure, however, began to be eXerted on Lenine and Trotsky and our other trains were stopped so in cessantly that finally they were 90
 miles apart. The arming of the Ger man and Magyar prisoners in Siberia was then we'll under way. and ChiCh-
 erin the bolshevik foreign minister, sent a dispatch to them which read: Dispatch all German and Magyar prisoners out of Siberia, stop the Czecho-Slovaks," Three members of
 our national council who were sent to Moscow to secure an explanation of the stopping of our trains, were ar
 rested. At the same time, our trains began to be attacked in different sta
 tions by Soviet troops, formed most ly of German and Magyar ex-prisoners. INCIDENT AT IRKUTSk l will recall the Irkutsk incident Our train with about 40 men, armed
 with 10 rifles and 20 hand grenades,
 was surrounded by 1000 red guards,
 armed with machine guns and can
 nons Their commander gave our men
 10 minutes to surrender or be snot
 According to their habit, ours began
 negotiations Suddenly there was
 heard the German command "schies-
 sen,' and the red guards began firing
 at the train. Our men jumped off the
 train and in five minutes all the ma
 chine guns were in their possession,
 the Russian bolshevik disarmed and
 all the Germans and Magyars done away with. The Siberian government
 which resides in IrlSutsk and which
 ordered this attack, can thank the
 American and French consuls that 1t
 was not destroyed by our rightly em-
 bittered volunteers.
 To what extremes our loyalty carried
 us is shown by the fact that although
 perfidiously attacked and although we
 disarmed the red guard in Irkutsk we
 still began new negotiations with the
 result that we surrendered all our
 arms on the condition that all Ger
 mans and Magyars would be disarmed
 and disbanded and that we would be allowed to proceed unmolested. The siberian government guaranteed us
 unmolested passage and, taught by the
 bitter experience that it is dangerous to attack even unarmed Czecho- Slo-
 walks, allowed us to proceed to Vladi- vostok.
 True, this concerned only the trains in the immediate vicinity of Irkutsil,
 but the trains west of Irkutsk were
 under the orders of Moscow, attacked
 in the same manner, but always with
 the same result: everywhere the boi-
 shevks were disarmed Toward the end of June, as a result of the arrest of the three members of our national council, we took over the Siberian government and even then we were trying to enter into negotiations with the bolsheviks. But Lenin and Trot- sky proclaimed us as murderers and when they began mobilization against us, we were forced to seize the bridges over the Volga
 Everywhere we were greeted with joy by the great majority of the Rus
 sian population Meanwhile, the Ger man failed to unseat us from our pom ularity by spreading rumors that we had committed brutalities during these battles. That 1t not true The faes
 is that Russian bolsheviks taken pris- oner by our troops were disarmed and
 sent home. while German and MaeNAc
 prisoners taken with arms in hand,
 were killed. That was made known t.
 them beforehand The Austrians hanged
 all our wounded men whom they cap
 tured on the Italian front and they
 attacked one of our trains of wounded
 in Siberia, The four years of a strux-
 gle for life taught us to be on oul
 guard