CHAPTER XIX
EXIT
The Bolsheviks will be crushed like egg shells," said the wisemen as the Allies started into Siberia. The idea of serious Soviet resistance was ridiculed. The Czar's government, then Kerensky's, had tumbled like a house of cards. Why should not the Soviet government go the same way?
The American Major Thacher has pointed out, why not: The Czar's power was based on his armies; it was only necessary to disintegrate these armies and the Czar fell. The Kerensky government rested in the cabinet; it was only necessary to surround his ministers in the Winter Palace and Kerensky fell. The Soviet government, however, was rooted in thousands of local Soviets—an organism made up of countless cells; to destroy the Soviet government, every one of these separate organizations must be destroyed. And they did not relish destruction.
As the alarm was sounded thru the Far East the peasants and workers rallied against the invaders. They fought fiercely, yielding ground only inch by inch. In the two cities north of Vladivostok the Soviets had been established without the killing of
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