It must be noted also that the Japanese, after the declaration of evacuation of Transbaikalia, issued on July 3, 1920, immediately occupied the northern part of Russian Saghalien, and only eight months later, on March 21, in Alexandrovsk occupation was officially declared by the Commander-in-Chief_ of the Expeditionary Army in Saghalien. In order to understand the mischievous conduct of Japan towards Russia in the Far East, it is essen. tial to study certain secret documents, which fortunately fell into Russian. hands and were published in Washington in 1922 by the Mission of the Far Eastern Republic. It is quite natural that the Japanese military' authorities should take every effort in the Press order to force public opinion to believe that these documents now published were manufactured by the Russians themselves, but the public were already acquainted with the Japanese denials that they supported Semenoff or even Chang The idea with which I am writing these articles is to show the reasons which brought Russia and Japan to an unavoidable conflict, and therefore I cannot be silent in regard to the secret documents mentioned above, the identity of which are beyond: suspicion.
On July 12, 1920, General Oi, in his communication to the Commander of the th Japanese division in Habarovsk, in a most cynical way described how the military administration must act in order to seize power over the district, and on August 2, the same general, in his secret Order 2428, writes the following significant lines: To the Commander of the Japanese 14th division: The offensive against the Amur Province must take place not later than the end of August... The offend sive must begin either from Ussuri or Sungari." Then a, long description is given of the distribution of the Red forces, and he added: If our attack be made with lightning speed, we shall have the benefit of routing these troops in a month, and they will seatter in the direction of Chita."
Fortunately for Russian Far East, Japan was forced to abandon these schemes. The success of the Russian Red Army in the European theatre of war and the hostile feeling towards the Japanese in the United States and China forced the Japanese War Office to order General Oi to refrain from his aggressive action against the Bolsheviki.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.