“WHITE RUSSIANS.”

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 315, 21 November 1929, Page 1

“WHITE RUSSIANS.”

ANTI-BOLSHEVIST ARMY. Their Role in China. Menace to the Reds. In the clash between Russia and China, engendered by the Chinese seizure of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the White Russians have loomed large. There have been intr.nations that roving bands of them have crossed the frontier and provoked the Red Russian detachments. Whether the Chinese, with one eye slyly closed and an inscrutable smile, have given the Whites a free hand is less certain. What is certain is that the Soviet Government in Moscow has demanded that the Chinese immediately disarm their white allies, says a writer in the New York Times.

The “ White Russians ” are politically opposed to Bolshevism and favour the restoration of the Monarchy; they are not to be confused with the White Russians of racial stock who inhabit an area roughly in the west of European Russia in the vicinity of Lithuania and Poland. They are remnants of the white army which fought the Bolsheviki after the Armistice, and have made their way to China, living there in a state of semi-independence. Most of them do not belong to that more select coterie of exiles which is to be seen at Shanghai, Hongkong, Tientsin and even Pekin.

Live by Their Wits. They are not all officers of the erstwhile Imperial forces ; most of them are from the rank and file and have joined first one Chinese war lord and then another, living mostly by their wits. Because they have been useful, because they are ever ready to fight, it is alleged that the Chinese Government has let them alone. As a matter of fact, even the power of a unified Chinese Government does not extend to the vast territories of Mongolia and Northern Manchuria. Their modus operand! has been possible, it seems, because they have been extremely adroit in playing off one war lord against another.

In the early days of the White movement against the Bolsheviki the Whites were rather popular with the mass of the Russian rural population. But when it was found that a White victory usually meant the return of rthe former landlords and the reinstitution of virtual bondage and thorough-going abuses of personal liberty a change of heart took place and the Whites were even more cordially despised than the Reds. After the defeat of Deniken, Wrangel, Yudenitch, Kolchak and the rest, Russia was for some time molested by the depredations of the socalled White Guards. These were usually small bodies of men commanded by former Imperial officers and they lived as best they could off the countryside, often taking what they wanted by force, according to some accounts. At first they were not necessarily reactionary and a more politic attitude toward them on the part of the Moscow authorities might have prevented some of them from swinging to being uncompromising Monarchists.

Their Exit From Russia. The Bolsheviki wages a relentless war upon the White Guards, and the peasants, tired of continual struggles in which they usually had most to lose and having enough troubles of their own, eventually lost all sympathy with the Whites. Unable to exist in Russia, the Guards crossed the frontiers in various places and there pursued a policy of watchful waiting. One of the most fertile places for them to hatch their plots is Inner Mongolia. Although there is no direct and reliable evidence that these Whites are in any way subsidised by the various White organisations scattered to the four corners of Europe, there are grounds for supposing that some sort of liaison exists between the heads of the Monarchist Group, formerly under the control of Grand Duke Nicholas and since his death chiefly commanded by the Grand

I Duke Cyril, and the various outposts of Monarchism. According to some observers, the Whites, who have not been slow to project themselves into the dispute between China and Soviet Russia, are subtly aiming to cause the overthrow of the Bolshevist regime from the outside. It is argued by these authorities that if the Reds drawn into a prolonged struggle in Asia, far away from their military base and depending solely on the Trans-Siberian railway, a singletrack road over much of its length, they will face sure defeat. This, however, pre-supposes a united China, and a united China is far from a reality, as recent dispatches indicate. Playing Their Own Game. The plans of the Whites are said to be to assist China with all the power at their command—an assistance they have offered over zealously. As they see it, a defeat of the Reds will weaken their military hold in European Russia, cause the fall of the dictatorship and leave the way open for the return of the Monarchists. It seems more certain that the Whites, exiles from their native land, are playing their own game in a manner which happens to suit the aims and ambitions of some local Chinese war lords who may or may not be in league with the Nationalist Government at Nanking. But so inscrutable are the ways of the Chinese that there is no sure way of gauging what the White Russians are up to.