Both Bicherakoff and Baratof were loyal to the cause of Imperial Russia and her Allies, and refused to bend the knee to Lenin and Trotsky. They were willing to make war on our side as subsidized auxiliaries. In short, these heterogeneous cohorts were for sale; they possessed a certain military value, and the British taxpayer bought them at an inflated price, and also their right, title, and interest, if any, in the abandoned motor lorries, machine-guns, and {71} military stores of all kinds which littered the track of the retreating, disorganized Russian Army. The British military treasure-chest also honoured a proportion of the Russian requisition notes which had been given to the extent of millions of roubles in exchange for Persian local supplies, and which the Persian holders knew full well would never be liquidated by any Bolshevik Government in Petrograd or elsewhere. Our friends, the Russians, having sold us their supplies for the common cause, made some difficulty about handing them over. The soldiers, it was said, claimed that war material was national property, and objected to its appropriation unless they, representing so many national shareholders, were each paid on a cash basis a proper proportion of the purchase price. This was a deadlock that was never satisfactorily adjusted. Our new Russian allies also offered to sell us the 160 miles of road from Kasvin to Hamadan which had been constructed by a Russian Company, and was being maintained by a system of tolls levied upon goods and passengers. But the price was so formidable that, if we had closed with the bargain, the British Exchequer would have needed the wealth of Golconda to complete the transaction. Bicherakoff and his volunteers concentrated at Kasvin, at the junction of the roads leading to Resht and the Caspian in the north, to Tabriz in the north-west, to Teheran in the south-east, and to Hamadan {72} and Kermanshah in the south-west. Here they imposed an effective barrier against the flowing tide of Bolshevism coming from the Caspian, and it was hoped that they might be able to keep open the road from Kasvin to Resht and Enzeli. The distance from Kasvin to Resht is about eighty miles. Half-way, at Manjil, there is a road bridge over the Kizil Uzun River, and the country beyond is covered with thick jungle, which fringes the roadway on both sides.