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FROM PRESIDENT TO PRISON

of the food conditions for the detachments remaining in quarters and to our distinct bettering of both the medical service and the general treatment of the soldiers.

These successes of our Committee won the approval of the other committees working in the remaining large centres of the Far East and confirmed their acknowledgment of its leadership throughout the whole region. This brought under our control an immense area of eastern Siberia, stretching from the northern boundary of Manchuria to the Arctic Ocean and reaching eastward through the regions of the Amur and the lower Primorsk to the Korean frontier, as well as that part of Manchuria which lay north of the final battle line of the armies. The chief representatives of the former Russian authority in these regions also acknowledged our control, as was evidenced by the fact that General Linievitch asked our advice in all important matters and had my signature stand jointly with his on all the orders he issued for the army. General Horvat also acted as adviser to our Committee and accepted its authority, just as all the town and village administrations recognized our position and readily came under our supervising direction. Only General Ivanoff, though he did not openly protest, seemed to base his actions upon some esoteric knowledge of future events. We learned later that, while recognizing us and apparently working with us, this treacherous General had affiliations with the political police and with The Union of the Russian Nation, which had in contemplation the sowing of dissension in our Committee.

On the fifth day of our existence we received the first blow against our authority, when half of the Committee, made up of the representatives of the workers, left our body with the announcement that they did not wish to co-operate with the intelligentsia and that they would