1920
They were indeed still waiting on Waite to actually show up. He must have been coming on the last train to be sure, which was going to be a spot to argue over, but there was nothing to be done other than to wait. To wait, and to continue to work on all the other things that needed doing. Griswold grimaced flexing his hand, and shook his head, "No, we're not there yet." He muttered.
"Problem?"
"No problem." He replied glancing to his workmen, then gestured to his colt, "Mind if I see it." He raised an eyebrow and pulled the pistol from under his shoulder. "See this is one of Colt's early guns," He remarked turning to the two, as he dropped the gun and racked the slide back, "This pretty finish, see the markings on the slide, but," he snagged up a pair of calipers, you can more importantly see slight differences in the cutting,"
Allen sat down and listened to Griswold carry on about his preferred workmanship. In 1916 they had received the browning patents from FN... they hadn't heard anything about that from Colt. The Norwegians who had done the same thing they had done... buy up the patents from FN while they'd been in a lurch. Argentina had picked up the 1911 as well, and both the French, and the British Empire had taken them along as the war went along its merry way.
Griswold had already had enough experience with their own guns, that by the time commercial guns from the states started being a problem to source they'd been looking for an option. Of course by that point the army had bee in expansion, and was worth calling an army, "Anyway," Griswold said, "this has the grip safety cavalry insisted borrowing from the luger," He shrugged, "Which we will do away with in our production." more and more officers were pinning their grip safeties in place anyway and it would simplify production but the real saving would be the new standardized parker finish... which utilized manganese sources they had put under cultivation to sell to England during the war, whether they could sell it to the states or continue to sell it to the Brits would depend on factors at market but they were waiting for things to settle out... but in part it didn't appear as if the Russians under Lenin would be getting back into the market any time soon.
That was generally considered a beneficial thing to their exports of material that the Russian empire had furnished to market before the war in Europe. It might have been callous but so long as the war in Eastern Europe continued there was some degree of insulation, and there would be a market. "Sam I don't mean to rush you, but need to see about that train."
"I know." He replied, "Just wanted to make a point. You ready?"
Allen returned his browning to ready, and its resting place, "What is that about?"
"The college lectures on the Crimean war, and leaving aside needing to teach why we had to explain out Russia lost that one, we also have to explain why it was a transition between really modern war and the napoleonic fighting." The war between France and England in the 1850s had been against a Russia looking to throw its weight around, but it had been a limited war. A war that France and England had entered in because it disrupted the balance among the powers so to speak on the continent... but it had been the first real war defined by the railroad, and by proxy large volumes of steel production to provide for the army at war.
Six decades later here they were.
The primary rail artery ran east to west. A massive trunk line that had been made possible with steam drivers, dynamite, and standard steel with reinforced caissons to level it out. While they had made the attempt where feasible to be as efficient with time and space as possible, the Transoxiana as it connected through the Gansu corridor took the route of the ancient silk road, close enough that it might as well have been called such officially.
Since they'd never intended to build the Transoxiana line that was coincidental... but industry and the work of engineers made it appear a matter of forethought.... but part of that was demographics. The route through Gansu then across the Altai, and Tian Shan all of it went through and reached caravan cities, and the result was that the railways had a potential ability to support merchant trading towns along the route without needing to build up crossroad towns like the states had done... those existing towns let them build branch lines off the main line.
The massive staging yard west of Xian proper were a cloud of coal smokestacks from all the locomotives, a reminder of the engine shortage more than about the pollution they generated. The inter urbans would be cleaner and less obnoxious, they'd be more space conscious too. "That's Waite then." Sam remarked. "Lets go see what this whole mess is about." The men around them were equipped up to standard.
Triple aught, .000, was a mechanical tolerance, you took a piece of cloth, cotton for example, and you cut it and the machine sewed to that standard. A thousandth of an inch. Where that came into play were in the difference between uniforms. A quality northrop loom could turn out the twill for the engineers rain jackets which then went to mechanical needle machines for that degree of work.
It wasn't even that expensive. The big investment was in the machinery. A northrop loom bought in 1910 still worked ten years later, and paid for itself by saving time, and being precise. Singer machines for sewing handled the needlework. You paid up front for the machine, and it freed workers to do other jobs, or to run more of the same machines.
For military purposes you only needed them for specialty equipment. The British pack gear was really only designed for moving a man station to station. The problem with that logic, was that the reality of war in Europe had shown that sub par stiches came up and tore loose. Thus on a commercial export market the idea was a little more marketing to emphasize a brand name tailoring. "Winter doesn't look like it was all that nice to them." Allen observed regarding the czechs, "And there are a lot of them if he pulled all of them off."
Czechs was a short hand, and a misnomer if that were true, "We'll have to ship the poles to their own country."
"From the sound of it the Poles will at least be fighting the Russians."
"So give them a hair cut, a hot shower, and chow, issue them fresh uniforms and tell them to stay limber, but we'll have them home whenever the shipping situation is settled." That was the problem, there was no telling when that would be. "I hope to hell he's on this train."
"Looks like a lot cargo." Sam replied, "Which is odd because those 122mm howitzers were with tuesday's train, I would have figured the whole artillery park would have arrived by this point. Is there another train?"
"Not unless he plans to ride in after this lot I was told this should be the last of them."
"Maybe this is the last of the supply, but it probably would have made more sense to leave some stuff behind, seeing as the British are likely going to complain about carrying it all, and I doubt the States are going to be much better."
"Yeah, the maritime commission is still a pain," He agreed, then snapped his mouth shut, "Yeah there he is." Waite was in the company of men who were in the officer uniforms. "And their dependents, guess that makes sense..." He trailed off.
It did to a degree... Civilian baggage was possible, but still a bit much. They went to make the rounds and the acquaintances all the same.
--
Several hours later Waite let the bomb drop for the whole affair, "Leaving aside of course that yes I think this is a help to the state department, its more than that." and the state department per se wasn't who might throw bombs over this.
"Get on with it." Sam grunted, and Allen had to agree Waite had been incommunicado long enough that whatever this was would obviously call a stir. "We've cabled the MAK with your antics, and the European commission to let them know." In no small part to avoid having Bert get blindsided by some foreign office man in London.
"The czechs want to go home. To the point that there was a risk of mutiny," Waite spread his hands, "Kolchak's a son of a bitch, Graves is right not to like the man, and if you don't want to take his word Al will probably take Iseburo, but the admiral is the wrong man for the job and he doesn't have the right friends. So I extended a hand to the czechs that if they would do me the favor of making sure that they withdrew in good order we could all help each other." He remarked a conspiratorial lean, "You see," He cleared his throat, "the Tsar's gold reserves were loaded up... and that is where the business arrangement lies. Safe passage."
"Excuse me?"
"We're getting paid, Al."
"No I got that." He replied sharpishly... but the real question was...
"The Czechs aren't in much different straits than us, they have a young nation needs capital," and it wasn't until much later he considered exactly how Waite had meant that comment, "so it wasn't as if I pushed them hard."
The Czechs had in exchange for immediate passage through decided to bypass Kolchak entirely... the Russian admiral had not been happy when the legion had disappeared and had arrived in the northern most station of their trans oxiana line with an offer.
Three hundred tons of gold. Not the entirety of the Tsar's gold reserve. The tsars had been late coming to the gold standard only adopting it in 1897, but in twenty years they had built up a lot of it and then spent a lot of it, but still had a lot over all.
Three hundred tons was ... a lot of god damned money. Griswold put it perhaps best, "And you spring this on us without drink?"
He paused contemplative, "So that means that Kolchak doesn't have the gold, and it is here there is no chance then of Lenin getting it?"
--
Notes: this has been in the cards for literally years, this was part of the original conclusion written for the end of the Romanoff rescue epilogue for ww1, it sets up for a number of interwar facets including also parts of the Polish-Soviet war's references later on. It has effects on international diplomacy and so forth.
But this opens the calendar year 1920, and that's of critical importance from a timeline standpoint, because its here where in ideological terms where the break becomes permanent. The reason in some of the older material Confederation gets used is that the North China Confederation, or Xian's confederation starts with a relatively week consensus based system rather than over federal power. Shansi, Shensi, the western commanderies all have their own constitutions based on the same framework come into legal force this year. There is not explicit federal control over the provinces collectively. There would not need to be in 1919.
In 1920 after the constitutions have gone into effect though things begin to change ideologically, both 'domestically', in the broader Northern China region, and in China as a whole. This contributes to the British especially next year amping up the Prussia comparisons, but at 'home' Xian and its collection of provinces have to contend with political factions, and fallout from the permanent breaking up of the beiyang clique for good, and also Sun Yat-sen down south starts making friendly noises towards the soviets, and he also writes / publishes / revises (whatever one wants to call it) / an overhaul of his political thesis and that coupled with his lack of martial credibility undermines rather than strengthens his position, the other political problem ideologically is one that has been touched on and thats Feng (who is dead by this point, Cao Kun suceeds him) and Duan's espoused views about how the Peking government should move forward.
Specifically this is the issue of Duan pursuing a centralized authority around himself, and a continued aggressive attempt to bring the south into line by military force, versus the 'anti-war' faction under Feng who advocated Federalism and potentially just writing off the south in favor of a more cohesive northern union of beiyang provinces. This got the latter a lot of flak from the former's supporters, but it was out there in the ideological battleground. So what will happen is when the Anhui-Zhili war happens and Fengtien (Manchuria) go at it in the summer and Duan's goverment collapses it makes an ideological break that cleaves apart Northern Chinese unity... and part of that is that Zhili clique burns metaphorical bridges over its attempt to bring back the old parliament to the southern provinces and unlike Manchuria (fengtien) who opts to largely ignore this, ideologically with a new constitution in effect Xian and the western provinces go the old parliament has no legitimacy hold new elections entirely don't just put the old people in there, and that defeats the point of the compromise because the KMT parliament was a concession to power brokers in the southern provinces to get their ascent to a new nominally national unity government... and at home within Xian's public opinion where sentiment is riding high on how things are going, how things look it doesn't break well because the south has no reputation as anything other than a dividing factor.
That end result is that where 1919 was tumultuous, 1920 proves to an ideological breaking point.
