CHAPTER VI ADMINISTRATION Shortly after the incidents referred to in Chapter IV, I received General Otani's orders to take over the command of the railway and the districts for fifty versts on either side, from Spascoe to Ussurie inclusive. My duty was to guard the railway and administer the district, taking all measures necessary to keep open this section of the line of communications. I was instructed to fix my headquarters at Spascoe, and make all arrangements to winter there. In accordance therewith I proceeded to get into touch with what remained of the old Russian authorities, civil and military, and the new ones wherever such had been created. So far as the men's comfort was concerned, new roads were constructed and old ones repaired, broken windows and dilapidated walls and woodwork were either replaced or renovated. Electrical appliances were discovered and fixed, and what had previously been a dull, dark block of brickwork suddenly blossomed out into a brilliantly lighted building and became at night a landmark for miles around. We also began painfully to piece together the broken structure of human society. For over a year no law but force had been known in these regions, and many old wrongs and private wounds demanded liquidation. I made many journeys to outlandish villages and settlements, with a small personal escort, fixed a table in the centre of the street, and with the aid of the parish priest and the president of the local council, heard and decided disputes, public and private, from threats and injury to the person to the possession and occupation of a farm. There was no appeal--the stolid Tommies who stood behind me with fixed bayonets put my judgments beyond question. I remitted one or two points of property law to legal decision, but all parties in each case protested that they would have preferred my instant judgment. Three murderers I remitted to a court which I called together with an old Russian officer to preside, but he was so terrified at the prospect of having to order their execution for fear they might be Bolsheviks--whose name was a terror to everybody--that I had to send them to another district to enable the law to be carried out. The report of these proceedings spread with such rapidity that it became quite embarrassing, if not impossible, to deal effectively and thoroughly with the daily increasing number of litigants. I began to understand the reason why in more civilised communities legal proceedings are made so expensive. Either the Russian peasant is a most litigious person, or else he mistook a free system of justice as a healthy English pastime which he thoroughly enjoyed.