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Show IEIBERIA PICTURED 'DfDTHFICEB Possible Fall of Kolchak Administration Told in Letter. Lieutenant Ashby Describes Attitude of Natives Toward To-ward Progress. The possible defeat of the Kolchak government in Siberia and a subsequent subse-quent reign of Bolshevism indicated by the defeat of the Siberian army and the approach of the Bolshevist forces to a point 500 miles from Omsk, the seat of the present administration, are told in a letter just received by J. C. Clark, assistant general manager of tho local safety department of tho United States railroad administration, from I Lieutenant R. S. Ashby, formerly chief dispatcher for the Oregon Short Line i railroad. Lieutenant Ashby, who is j now assistant traffic inspector of the Siberian railroads in the vicinit3' of Irkutsk, also gives a description of the country where he is stationed and an analysis of the Eussian mental attitude toward Americans and others who have tome to aid the starving millions of tho country. The letter is in part: "I have recent!- changed location and am now about 2300 miles west, of Vladivostok or just 100 miles east of Irkutsk, the old Siberian capital city. The village here is located on the extreme ex-treme southern end of Lake Baikil and the mountains regular ones, too form a horseshoo down to the lake shore." Instructs in Train Handling. He gees on to say that their food and quarters have been greatly improved im-proved and they are now '"sitting pretty." 'Normally my duties are instructing in-structing the Russians in our methods of train handling under the control of one man instead of their system under which each station master had the whole say as to who had the right of way. If a person remains here six months or longer he ib certain to form an entirely different opinion about ever3'think from that he had when he first landed. At the present time the people as a whole impress me as being the most ungrateful under the sun, without ambition, lazy, inert, egoists to the nth degree, full of dreamy theories and an abiding faith in something or someone, that the future will take care of itself in first-class shape without any particular effort on their part. ''In spite of all this one must admit ad-mit a more hospitable people would be hard to find. Tl:3 averaae one you meet and this doesn't mean the peasant peas-ant either on an acquaintanceship of five minutes, will relate to you the entire en-tire history of his life and family without with-out restraint or holding back anything. Even among the educated classes there do not seem to be such thinks as personal per-sonal affairs or secrets, confidence, etc., that the world 6houldn 't know, ' and a spade is always called a spade.' Another An-other American ,iust came in, so I asked him his opinion Of Russia. Here's his opinion: ;'The biggest little country you ever Baw and neither the country nor the people are worth worrj-ing about. Churches Many, Schools Few. "Some of us who have decided to stick it out to the finish really think there is something worth while to the country and the people. When one considers con-siders that for 304 years the Russian government under the Romanoffs systematically sys-tematically educated them to be drunkards drunk-ards and grafters, one sometimes wonders won-ders how they do as well as they have. Another genuine American expression over here is: 'Gee, there's lots of churches in Siberia but not half so many schools. ' ' ' He says that the railroads are slow and are operated under the depart; mental system, a divisional organization organiza-tion being unknown to tho natives. "The idea of a district superintendent or higher officer getting out on the road for an inspection or other real work is preposterous," declares Lieutenant Lieu-tenant Ashby. "The majority of the Russians aro not in favor of this intervention business busi-ness at all", as they figure they managed man-aged to eet along fairly well'before wo came. They can 't see how we are going go-ing to help them now without somo ulterior motive, and they feel- that in the . long run they will have to pay dearly, This is the wav they think, t.itV,otor,,Hr, !, fnot tll-lt n t, prominent Russians are now in America Amer-ica and Europe staying up late at night making speeches asking more help for bleeding, suffering Russia. "Siberia is a country of untold resources re-sources but the Russians have not developed de-veloped them and they aro afraid that, some foreign power intends to develop them for its own benefit. Personally, I don't believe they realized that there was so much to develop until tl'i foreigners for-eigners pointed out the possibilities to them. . "The povernment is as a whole military, mili-tary, each of the allied nations ffuard-ing ffuard-ing a certain section of the railroad. The Russians have their miliria, or military- police, also to act as guards around the stations. But the commander ; of the stations has the most men to j bark up what he says. ; "Tf wc tell them a better way of do- ing a thing, they sav 'all right,' and then do it as they please. j Siberian Army Defeated. j "Tic Siberian army has suffered many reverses and. according to persistent per-sistent reports, has been in retreat for (he last couple of weeks. It is said that tho Bolshevik army is only S00 miles from Omsk, the seat of the Kolchak Kol-chak government. Tf this Kolchak government sails it is surely going to look black for Siberia and Bolsheviks will rise right up out of the grass. "It's only 130 miles directly south to the Mongolian border but the mountains moun-tains arc terribly high and the traveling travel-ing is rough. "The Siberian troops are well equipped and have plenty of ammunition coming in regularly but thev don't seem to care much about fighting the Bolsheviks, Bolshe-viks, or any one eke. for that matter. As for saving 'bleeding' Russia, it's 'let George do it. ' "It is hard to figure out how it will end but I intend to stick around end sec as much a3 possible. I |