Outside of France, the chief Ally centers of interest lay in eastern Europe, in Italy, and in the United States. In the East, both Russia and Austria had presented new problems with the advancing year. When Boishevist Russia had definitely accepted the German peace, the land became dangerously like a German province. Freed Teuton prisoners took an active role in its armies and assemblies. The German government had only to demand the surrender of any supplies it wished, or to take possession of whatever was denied it. Of course exhausted and distracted Russia had comparatively little produce left to give; but she did possess considerable military stores previously loaned her by the Allies for use in the common cause. More important still, she possessed millions of ignorant and hungry men, who might easily be induced to join a German army. German officials became prominent everywhere in Russia. They toiled indeed in the cause of order and of renewed industry, but of German order and of an industry that was both German and military.

In fact, there now ensued between German militarism and Russian anarchy a peculiar and in some phases not unequal struggle. As part of the nominal peace, a Russian envoy settled in Berlin. He was an eager Boishevist, and with him came a long train of Boishevist supporters well supplied with money and with the typical Boishevist literature, full of impassioned denunciation of "capital" and impossible extravagance of promises for a poor mans paradise. There was in Germany much bitter discontent for such extravagant appeals to work upon; and if Autocratic Germany had crushed Russia, Bolshevik Russia was not now without influence in weakening Autocratic Germany. In fact, more than one German writer since the War, unwilling to admit the overwhelming military victory of the Allies, has ascribed his countrys defeat almost wholly to the "weakening of the Will to Victory" caused by the spread of the Bolshevist propaganda.

In this new Russian situation the Allies were sorely puzzled as to how to treat their former ally. To Czaristic Russia they had 1914 pledged friendship and support. The Democratic Russia which replaced it in March, 1917, had received new and stronger pledges, in which the United States had also joined. But to Bolshevist Russia the Allies owed nothing. Its leaders had not even been in Russia or been recognized as Russians when the mutual pledges had been given. Moreover, the Boishevists had repudiated every former pledge and declared themselves the enemies of every other government in the world, accusing all of being "capitalistic" and declaring themselves the only "friends of the people," those people who were perishing in agony by the hundred thousand under Bolshevisms blind and brutal lawlessness.

Ought the great Democratic doctrine that every civilized people had the right of "self-determination" of their form of rule, be accepted by the Allies as extending even to this Russian "no rule" and mob-massacre of all its nobler elements? Should the Ally governments stand passive and watch the destruction of all civilization extend abroad from anarchistic Russia, as it had threatened to extend from autocratic Germany? Bolshevism was not itself content with "self-determination." It challenged the whole world to war. It eagerly spread everywhere its delusive propaganda, calling for world-revolution, for the annihilation of every form of education, culture and wealth, except Lenines, and for the destruction of all established governments and all existing religions.

Tentatively, hesitantly, the Ally governments began to reach out the hand of interference within Russia. Wherever any Russians themselves rallied and declared a preference for order rather than disorder, for law and justice rather than dull prejudice and red injustice, there the Allies lent aid to the new parties opposing Bolshevism. The first definite step of this sort was taken in April, 1918, when the United States and Japan landed forces at Vladivostok, the chief Siberian port on the Pacific, to protect from Boishevist seizure or destruction the large Ally supplies which had been sent there for Democratic Russia. The Boishevists, it should be remembered, had repudiated all the debts of the former government, so certainly they had no claim upon the supplies those debts had purchased.

Allied Railway Equipment at Vladavostock

With Ally support, Siberian Russia soon shook itself free of the Boishevists and declared its independence of them. In similar fashion the Allies lent assistance to northern Russia. Ally troops, including some from the Unted States, were landed at Archangel, the chief port of Europes Arctic coast, and there aided the forming of a "Peasants Government of Northern Russia" with Archangel as its capital. In southern Russia, the Cossacks repudiated Boishevist rule, and allied themselves with the Ukraine. Thus in every direction there gradually formed a resisting front, limiting the extension of the Boishevist domain, or sometimes actively driving it back toward Petrograd and Moscow, its chief centers.

To the aid of these frontiers of resistance against the spreading anarchy, there came another force, one of the very strangest of all time, the "army without a country," the Czecho- (check-o) Slays. This remarkable army had its origin in the Austrian Empire. There the subject nations had grown increasingly desperate; for the Austrians and Hungarians had perforce tightened the reins of tyranny under the pressure of Austrian defeat and approaching starvation. The strongest of these subject people were the Bohemians, who with their neighboring related peoples have now become known as the Czecho-Slavs. These Czecho-Slavs had always wished to fight upon the Allies side rather than that of the Teutons. Hence there had gradually grown up in Russia a Czecho-Slav division in the Russian army. This began with some of the Slays of Russian birth, but in the later years was built up largely of Slav prisoners captured from the Austrian army. Many of these eagerly joined Russia and turned their arms against their former oppressors. This Czecho-Slav division, at the time of Russias military breakdown in 1917, furnished almost the only troops who still would fight. Austria had proclaimed them traitors, and executed any who were captured. Hence surrender to the Teutons meant for them now sure death. As the disintegration of Russia continued, these Czecho-Slavs drew ever closer together under officers of their own choosing, until they formed an army of their own

When the Boishevists made peace with Germany, the Czecho-Slavs refused to be included in this peace. They asked to be transferred to some Ally country where they might still continue the fight which had become to them an inescapable battle for independence or for death. The Bolshevist leaders tried to beguile the Czecho-Slavs with kindly words and then disarm them, tried, it would seem, to secure their surrender to the Teutons and to destruction. At any rate, the Czecho-Slavs believed this; and turning their arms against the Boishevists, they fought their way across all Russia to Siberia, and onward through Siberia till they reached touch with the Allies. Thus they achieved at last the most remarkable march and battle and escape in all history.