While I was in Siberia I read in an American newspaper that an American member of Congress demanded information as to why the United States was not coöperating with the Russian Zemstvos in organizing a nucleus for a representative Russian government. If he had been with me the day I read of his demand, I could have taken him and shown him a zemstvo so drunk that its members did not know their first names. The only way in which anybody might have coöperated with them, would have been to buy them a bottle of vodka. This was their way of killing time while waiting for our government to make up its mind on Siberia. In answer to my suggestion that the Siberians of Chita should have gathered to discuss government in their _sobranias_, they might well state that if they attempted to discuss government in any way than to pass resolutions in favor of Semenoff’s government, they stood a good chance of being executed with dispatch. It would be a fairly good answer. Especially, as the United States merely showed mild interest when Semenoff executed a batch of people. If the United States as represented by the Siberian expedition, the commander being so instructed and properly backed up, had told Semenoff that he had not yet acquired the right to execute anybody and that he would not be allowed to usurp that right, that would have been coöperation with the people of Siberia. But coöperation of that kind might be interpreted as interference, and we were pledged by somebody not to interfere with the Siberians. So the Siberians took good care, and wisely, not to interfere with Semenoff. But we remained in Siberia with our forces, and proved ourselves to be so gentle and considerate of others, that certain Siberians have dared to interfere with us to the extent of killing some of our officers and soldiers. The Semenoffs and the Kalmikoffs did not love us any more because we did not interfere with them; the Siberians did not love us because we did not interfere with these petty tyrants; but we would have won the love of all hands if we had done something--that is, all hands but the Bolshevists, and since we have probed into their works at home, I doubt if we seek their love. At least the Bolshevists would have learned to respect us if we had done something beside invite them to the Prinkipo conference, an invitation which they greeted with loud laughter and other demonstrations of their scorn for our good intentions. So the _sobranias_ of Chita, and other cities in Siberia, served to while away the time for the populace, while they waited for the United States to make up its mind about what to do in Siberia. If we had taken a definite stand, and demanded that the Siberians show us what they could do while we protected them from themselves and the Cossacks, the _sobranias_ might have been filled with committees, and delegates, and people learning something about what they must do to have a government, instead of being filled with revelers.