a retirement was the only alternative to being
completely surrounded.

We there and then drew up the orders necessary to secure that the
retreat should be both methodical and orderly. The Czechs were to retire
first, past my lines, and entrain at Kraevesk, followed by the English
and the French, who were to bring up the rear, which was to be covered
by the English armoured train, assisted by the machine-gun section of
the Middlesex Regiment under Lieutenant King. So the evacuation of our
splendid position regretfully began.

CHAPTER III

JAPAN INTERVENES

It should be remembered that directly it was decided by the Paris
Council that a diversion through Russia was the surest way of relieving
pressure on the French front, the English apparently decided to be first
in. Though Japan was unquestionably in the most favourable position to
send help quickly, she was known to have German commitments of such a
character as precluded her from taking the lead in what was, at that
time, more an anti-Teutonic than pro-Russian expedition. Her Press was,
and had been all through the war, violently pro-German, and however much
the Tokio Cabinet might wish to remain true to the Anglo-Japanese
Treaty, it was forced to make a seeming obeisance to popular feeling in
Japan. If it had been only an English expedition, Japan's hand would not
have been forced; but the American cables began to describe the rapid
organisation by the U.S.A. of a powerful Siberian expedition, which gave
the Japanese Government ample justification--even in the eyes of her
pro-German propagandists--to prepare a still larger force to enable her
to shadow the Americans, and do a bit of business on her own. Several
months earlier Japanese suspicions had been aroused by the dispatch to
Siberia of an alleged civilian railway engineering force to help Russia
reorganise her railways, and the immense benefit that this force had
admittedly conferred on the Far Eastern populations was acknowledged on
all sides. But the very success of American enterprise in this
beneficent direction had created in the minds of the Japanese a doubt as
to the wisdom of allowing free play to American penetration.

Japan consequently hurried forward her preparations, and a few days
after I had taken over the Ussurie command her 12th Division, under the
command of General Oie, landed at Vladivostok. He at once established
his headquarters at Nikolsk, and his Chief of Staff, General Kan