It is common belief that the Chinese will never return to power in Urga. A recent despatch from a Japanese source asserting that Moscow has declared Mongolia a federated state of Russia has not been confirmed, but it might as well be that in name as well as in fact. As I write, a story comes through that the “Living Buddha” is asking China to take charge of the country once more, but that again is from a Chinese source. The hard, cold facts in political matters are difficult to find in such a double-faced realm as the Orient. But the future of Mongolia will be worth watching, as will the apparent tendency of the Soviet to continue the imperialistic thrust toward the south and east which it inherited from the czarist régime.
As if they wished to make up for their earlier harshness, the “Reds” made my departure from Urga extremely easy. Perhaps I should see a less flattering motive in their leniency. In any case my baggage was barely opened and shut again, though most travelers find departing a more trying ordeal than arrival, and ordinarily every line of writing leaving the country is rigidly censored. The only unpleasantness that befell us was the failure of the greasy Mongol holding the official seal to reach the _Okhrana_ before noon, though we had been there ready to start since eight. Booted soldiers again rode with us to the far outskirts of the city, halting us at various _yamens_, so that the sun was well started on its decline before our papers were examined at the last _yourt_, and we were free to reach if possible the first distant stopping-place before nightfall. Not until the next afternoon, however, when the frontier outpost of Ude passed us without comment, did that sense of apprehension which seems just now to hang like a cloud over Outer Mongolia give way to one of relief and confidence of the future.
Long caravans that we had passed a fortnight before were still laboriously making their way toward Urga. Men all but unrecognizable as such under their many sheepskin garments still squatted at trenches dug in the desert, coaxing wind-shielded fires to blaze, or bowed their fur-clad heads to the bitterly cold wind sweeping at express speed down out of the north; and we drove for nearly a hundred miles through fields of snow and ice, though September was not yet gone when we stumbled down the pass into Kalgan.