Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/428

Now that the Czechoslovak army in Siberia is beginning, after many heart-breaking delays, to embark at Vladivostok on the long ocean journey home, it seems timely to say something about one phase of its activities in Russia which has hitherto remained unmentioned in America, namely, the work of its Technical Corps.

When the break with the Bolsheviki came in May, 1918, the position of the small Czechoslovak army seemed almost desperate. It was surrounded by bolshevik power on all sides, it was completely cut off from the world and from the help of its friends, and its only reliance was placed in the Siberian railroad, which it proceeded to get into its control. In that the Czechs were successful, but when they got possession of the roadbed and stations they were faced with the problem of carrying on the necessary traffic without locomotives and cars, across bridges which the Bolsheviks damaged, with railroad shops employing unskilled Russian labor. Without good communication by railroad, the army was in danger of being destroyed piecemeal, and the same danger threatened, unless Siberian industry was re-organized so as to produce munitions and the various supplies without which an army cannot exist. When Siberia was liberated and a front created in European Russia, it was necessary to create a supply basis in Siberia, and for this purpose the Technical Corps of the Czechoslovak army was organized.

A luncheon at the Officers Training School at Sludanka.
At head of table Gen. Syrovy, Gen. Janin, Pohdan Pavlu, the Czechoslovak plenipotentiary, and Rudolf Medek, repres. of war ministry.

The principal tasks of the Corps were to maintain railroad communications and to get the factories in liberated territory going at full speed. The heads of the Technical Corps, Engineers Znameníček, Holna and Roubínek, called at once a conference of the principal Ural manufacturers in Cheliabinsk. The conference resulted in the formation of the Ural Industrial Committee, consisting of four Russian representatives of the Ural industry and Engineer Holna as the Czechoslovak delegate, representing the military power of the district. The committee investigated the financial condition of the various plants and then assigned to the important factories Czechoslovak engineers and foremen, who as officers of the Technical Corps were authorized by the newly established Siberian government to control the running of the factory to any extent they found advisable. That this Czechoslovak interference in Russian industry was necessary and proper, and that the experts made good, is made clear from the fact that both owners and workingmen soon were flocking to the Technical Corps with