World's War Events $v Volume 3: Beginning with the departure of the first American destroyers for service abroad in April, 1917, and closing with the treaties of peace in 1919.
History
World's War Events $v Volume 3: Beginning with the departure of the first American destroyers for service abroad in April, 1917, and closing with the treaties of peace in 1919.
World War, 1914-1918
Siberia has afforded an interesting race study ever since the Teuton
prisoners began to arrive. From the very first, German and Austrian
prisoners mated with the sturdy peasant women of Siberia and settled to
a happy and unhampered life in the undeveloped lands of the great
plains. Some of the women had husbands at the front, but _nichevo_ never
means "never mind" to a greater extent than it does in Russian marital
affairs. A man's a man for a' that, and there was little trouble until
the two parents of different nationality and language discussed which
language the children should be taught. German and Russian produce the
same tow-headed stock. With the downfall of the Russian army the Russian
husband sometimes returned and though quite willing to assume
responsibility for the new offspring, insisted on asking the Austrian
substitute at his bed and board to leave. As often as not the Austrian
left. There were always a better farm and frau to be had elsewhere, and
some Russian women are tiresome anyway.
[Sidenote: Many Austrians do not go home.]
When conditions are like this in Siberia, why should an Austrian return
to a hungry country to fight a heroic enemy? A happy home in Siberia,
which some other man has founded, or starvation in Austria? No wonder
the Austrians in Siberia are a mercenary and unpatriotic lot. I saw many
in the Bolshevik army. Most of those I talked with were under arms for
the sake of the 200 rubles per month, equipment and food they were paid
by the Bolsheviks, without, as they told me, planning to run any
unnecessary chances of losing their lives in actual fighting against the
Czechs or any other enemy of the Bolsheviks for that amount of money, if
they could avoid it; not a very difficult matter.
Allied military support of the Czechs in Siberia is not Japanese
intervention, and sentiment in Russia and Siberia against intervention
to-day is now what it was six months ago. If the Bolsheviki do not
represent the people of Russia, the only way the Russian people can
develop confidence in themselves, and strength, is to throw off the
Bolsheviki. The Archangel and Siberian regions have started such moves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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