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Ward, John

"in Siberia"

When
this professional element had misled, bamboozled and deserted him, in a
frenzy of despair he determined to destroy this thing called education,
and made the ability to read and write one of the proofs of enmity to
his class on the same principle that our uneducated workmen of the first
half of the nineteenth century destroyed machinery and other progressive
innovations, whose purpose they did not understand. There would be less
chatter about revolution if our people could only understand what it
means to go through the horrors that have destroyed Russia and her
people more effectively than the most ruthless invasion.
We stopped at a station near a mining village largely peopled with
emigrant Chinese workmen. We removed the Bolshevik flag from the
flag-post, and insisted upon the Russian flag being run up in its stead.
A Russian woman told us to go back, and when we asked her why, she said,
"Well, it does not matter; our men will soon find enough earth to bury
you." But another Russian woman thanked us for coming, and hoped we were
not too late to save a country that was sick unto death.
That night we ran into Zema station, where we came to a sudden stop. I
sent my liaison officer to find the cause, and he informed me that a
body of men were beside the engine and threatening to shoot the driver
if he moved another foot.


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