XXVIII. THE UNITED STATES IN ASIA 316 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Siberian Types--When They Smile Less and Think More They Will Find Freedom _Frontispiece_ The American Army Mules Arrive in Vladivostok for Duty 24 Street Service in Vladivostok with Bay in Distance 24 An American Doughboy Helping Make Siberia “Safe for Democracy” 48 Night View of Vladivostok Harbor from Hill of City 48 Russian Soldiers Clearing the Track After a Wreck on the Trans-Siberian 100 Japanese Officers Talking with an American Officer 100 Ataman Semenoff, Chief of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks 158 Mongol and Tartar Descendants of Conquering Hordes with 1919 Model “Cars” 158 Siberians Celebrating the Signing of the Armistice 200 Room in House at Ekaterinburg where Czar and His Family are Reputed to Have Been Executed 200 An Example of Carving on a Typical Siberian House 230 Typical Russian Church in Cities of Siberia 230 Some American Railroad Men of the “Russian Railway Service” 250 Washing Clothes in Sixty-below-zero Weather 250 SIBERIA TO-DAY I EXILED TO SIBERIA “Let me see your palm!” A smiling major thus accosted me in the offices of the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff of the army in Washington the latter part of July, 1918. The weather was hot as Billy-be Hanged--hotter than I had ever known it in the Philippines, or so it seemed. It was hotter than the roadstead of Singapore, hotter than the mud-baked streets of Suez City, hotter than Malacca Strait. In former times of tropical soldiering, I had seen commanding generals working in their undershirts. But a new discipline pervaded our new army, and we were imitating the Prussian system, and doing our best to look and work as secretly as possible in uniform coats with high stiff collars. We realized that the more uncomfortable we might feel, the quicker the war would be won in France. I gave my limp and perspiring hand to the smiling major. I suspected that his pleasantry meant that I had been selected to pay for the dinner that night of our own particular little group of plotters against the Imperial German Government and its agents in the United States.