The humorous aspect of the invitation was that “all parties” were invited to be in Prinkipo, in the Sea of Marmora by the first of February, or some fifteen days after the invitation was issued. Considering the fact that it had taken me thirteen days to travel from Vladivostok to Chita, a distance of two thousand versts, fifteen days for all delegates from Russia and Siberia to get to Prinkipo revealed the fact that those who set the date were ignorant of the conditions of travel in Siberia--or bluffing diplomatically. So the Japanese were perturbed by the Prinkipo invitation--that is, as perturbed as a Japanese permits himself to be. The effect on the Cossack officers of Siberia, was to fill them with suspicion toward the United States, to make them feel that we were not playing fair with them, and to give them the impression that they had been betrayed into the hands of the Bolshevists. In other words, that the Bolshevists were right, and that all anti-Bolshevist forces were wrong. The information we got was to the effect that President Wilson recognized a state of revolution in Russia and desired no counter-revolutionary action. “But we are counter-revolutionists,” expostulated an officer high in the councils of Semenoff. “We have been fighting the Bolshevists from the first, and always will fight them. This information that your president is willing to hold a conference with a lot of robbers and murderers, spread broadcast over the country, gives the Bolshevists a standing they have never had before. And that is not the worst of it--we have in our armies men who have been Bolshevists, and who have been more or less argued out of it. These men are now beginning to suspect that our representations to them against Bolshevism are false, and we may have mutiny in our forces. It has been hard enough to fight Bolshevist propaganda, in and out of our armies, but this thing has made us afraid that we cannot hold the former active Bolshevists and Bolshevist sympathizers whom we have won to our side. Even if nothing is done toward a conference, this invitation in itself will do our cause great harm, and the Bolshevist leaders much good. We feel that the United States has turned against us, or will in time recognize the Bolshevist government.”