Chapter II: Part 2

I saw these American boys embark at Archangel and Economy--four great liners loaded with them--for Brest. Archangel was busy welcoming an incoming British army. There were no demonstrations here except those of American joy; exuberant, selfish joy. For the war at last was over in those last days of June for these five thousand men who for a year had done the work of twenty-five thousand on a job that called for fifty thousand or more. And the very last to leave were those who perhaps had done the hardest work--Companies A, B, and C of the 310th Engineers. These men embarked on a transport at Archangel on June twenty-sixth, and the American expedition was at an end.

When these men were gone Archangel was a lonesome place for an American. They were affectionately remembered by the Russians, and there certainly were some among them to remember the love and gratitude and admiration of old Russian eyes in wrinkled faces, and the simple, wonderful faith of these backward and romantic peasants in the land that symbolized to them freedom, education, and justice.

*X*

*THE NEW BRITISH ARMY*

In June a splendid new British army took over the fronts in North Russia from the Americans and the Canadians and the old British "category" men. They came to finish the job, to clean up North Russia, to take Kotlas by July fifteenth, Viatka and Vologda in another thirty days, and Petrograd before snowfall. This was quite on the cards. This new army had come to Russia with much boasting and had been received in Archangel with great ceremonial and flourish. They were "men from France" who "knew how to fight," and they would "show the Yankees how to lick the Bolos."

This boastfulness was unlike that of the first Yankees to go to France in that it was indulged in more by the officers than by the men. Many small British officers had acquired with reason a feeling of resentment toward the Yankee privates which during the spring found relief in big brag about what the new army was going to do in comparison with what the Yanks had done.

There were ex-colonels who came as corporals, and lords who came really to fight. It was an army to be proud of, an army of which much could be expected, an army which certainly would put across its program. It was very much bigger than the army that had borne the winter's campaign. The equipment was better in every way. They had new rifles that would not jam at every other shot as the old ones often did. They had more and better artillery. They had a large air force with an abundance of equipment. More than all they had the best time of the year in which to conduct a campaign. Moreover, they had small Bolshevik forces to contend with, as the Bolsheviki seemed to be busy just then elsewhere.

In the address of welcome that was made to this new army on its arrival, the commanding general said that no better equipped army had ever been sent out by the British Empire. This was easy to believe. Not only was there the newest and latest equipment, there was quantity, such amplitude of everything as to inspire the greatest of confidence, and we who had lived through the poverty of the previous winter felt that there would be no such handicap upon those who should now turn the tide of battle and march victoriously to Petrograd.

About half of the men in this new army were volunteers. Many of them told me that they had enlisted because they could not find work, but that they had specifically volunteered to come and rescue besieged British soldiers from Archangel. When they found themselves three hundred miles up the Dvina River engaged in an expensive offensive they groused as hard as the Americans or Canadians ever had, but this did not interfere with their fighting. These men gave a good account of themselves, and they would have gone right through to Kotlas and Viatka and Vologda if something entirely beyond them had not changed the British plans.

*XI*

*THE NEW RUSSIAN ARMY*

There were broadly three classes in the Russian army: first, the volunteer Slavo-British Legion of men who enlisted in order to draw army rations and buy from the Y.M.C.A; second, the conscripted "mobilized" army of men forced to join against their own choice; and, third, a large body of ex-Bolshevist prisoners who chose the army in preference to prison and labor, and who because of this volition on their part were made a part of the Slavo-British Legion. In each of these classes were many men who had been on the "Eastern" front in February, 1917, and who then threw down their arms and went home, "having finished with war forever." Politicians and militarists who were unable to understand that act have been equally unable to understand any of the subsequent acts of these strange and natural men.

I am horrified at what these men have since done, and abhor it, but I think I understand it, at least somewhat.

These Russian soldiers were provided with food and rum and cigarettes. They liked this. But they disliked everything else. They were sometimes commanded by British officers, which they hated. They were permitted to wear the British name on their shoulders when they went into battle, which they could not do with patriotic enthusiasm, and when they visited their friends, which they did with explanations and chagrin. They were Russians, but they were not a Russian army. I have seen many a Russian officer shrug his shoulders in quizzical dismay as he spoke about the British uniform he was wearing.

But there was real fighting ability in this new Russian army. It was greatly increased in numbers and much better organized and officered than the army of the previous winter. It was supplied with the new equipment, and much was justly expected of it. It was thoroughly saturated with British stories of Bolshevik atrocities, as fear is a mighty motive with the Russian soldier and the British were determined he should be thoroughly afraid of the Bolsheviki.

But this army of Russian peasants did not altogether believe the atrocity stories, did not in the least believe that England was there for the good of Russia or for the general good of mankind, and did not want to fight.

*XII*

*MAKING BOLSHEVIKI*

In May General Miller, the Russian commander at Archangel, issued a proclamation calling upon all people of Bolshevist sympathies to leave Archangel within a prescribed time, offering them transport to the Bolshevik lines and two days' rations, and threatening severe penalties to all who failed to go. This was startling. All the Bolsheviki had left when we came in. None had been permitted to come in since the campaign began. Where, then, did these come from who were reported officially as being in Archangel in "large numbers"? The obvious answer is the correct one. They had developed Bolshevist sympathies in Archangel. Some of them took their two days' rations and crossed the line, the military command ordered quite a number of them shot, but others kept springing from the ground until the British command had ample ground for its theory that if you scratch a Russian you find a Bolshevik.

How are these numerous Bolsheviki to be accounted for? They were made in Archangel. They were made by the British militarists, the Russian monarchists and the Bolshevik propagandists. The making of Bolsheviki in Archangel had not proceeded according to the pet American theory of Bolshevist-making. They had not been made by hunger. Archangel had been fed. Not by charity, but by work. Plenty of work, fair pay, and ample supplies.

The first great step in the process of making Bolsheviki was the conscription of men for the army. This was not done until ample opportunity had been given everybody to enlist voluntarily, but not everybody volunteered. The Russian point of view and ours were quite different in this matter. We had undertaken to fight the Bolsheviki for him and he was glad to have us do it. Our men and officers, on the other hand, declared it was preposterous to suppose they were going to do this fighting while the "lazy Russians stayed at home." So conscription went into force. At first a small class of young men, then a larger class, and finally practically every able-bodied man from seventeen to fifty. Here was another story. Here was war, real war, again. The new thing called Military Intervention or Allied Assistance or anything else had proved to be the old thing that Russia knew so well. And the peasant of North Russia did not want it. As early as January some of these conscripted companies at Shenkursk went over bodily to the Bolsheviki.

The suppression of all expressions of interest in Russia's "new-found freedom" was a stupid blunder. There were no public meetings, no open discussion of political questions, no real freedom of the press. The Russian soldiers were even afraid to sing the "Marseillaise," and confined themselves to the innocuous if beautiful folksongs, leaving all of the many excellent freedom songs of the revolution to the exclusive use of the Bolsheviki. The British never discovered that the Russian loves these freedom songs, because they took counsel solely of the reactionary monarchist element they had placed in power.

I have known a single strain of one of these freedom songs to throw a roomful of people into panic with fear that it meant a fresh revolt. And I have seen a crowd of Russian soldiers respond with keen pleasure when their officer, a friend of mine with whom I had talked the matter over, told them to go ahead and sing the so-called Bolshevist songs. This was toward the end of the chapter of Military Intervention.

The suspension of all kinds of democratic and political experiment and experience by the Military Intervention was a matter of grave consequence. After a year of Military Intervention a member of a Zemstvo Upravda said to me, "We have made no progress in government. We have lost ground. It could not have been worse under the Bolsheviki." The people under Military Intervention felt that they were robbed of the freedom they had waited for so long and enjoyed such a little time. The belief that the Bolsheviki would have robbed them equally or worse comforted them for a time, but this comfort wore away as time stretched on and Military Intervention made constantly increasing demands upon them.

Conscription for the army was accompanied by labor conscription. This was followed by more labor conscription. This labor was employed largely in building something to be blown up, loading cargoes to be reloaded, hauling supplies backward to be hauled forward again and other ostensibly wasteful operations which accompany all military operations, more or less, in this case more. This conscripted and wasted labor was taken away from farm work at times when it could not be spared without the loss of a season's crop. But it had to be done and military necessities do not take farm seasons into account. The Military Intervention had been here all winter and had consumed every bit of the country's surplus. This year there must be a big crop or starvation. It has been a good crop but a small one because of labor conscription. And those "ignorant" peasants can tell you what that means to them however many useless paper roubles the Military Intervention may leave behind it.

The execution of suspects made Bolsheviki right and left. The inquisitorial processes of the Russian puppets of the Military Intervention were necessarily so much like those of the old regime that they went far to dispel all illusions about the Military Intervention that might have remained in the peasant mind.

When night after night the firing squad took out its batches of victims it mattered not that no civilians were permitted on the streets. There were thousands of listening ears to hear the rat-tat-tat of the machine guns, and no morning paper could have given all the gruesome details more complete circulation than they received in the regular process of universal news gossip by which Archangel keeps itself in up-to-the-minute touch with all local affairs.

The details were well known. Some one had seen it all. Some one also thought he knew who were to be included in the new batch tonight. These little gossip groups discussed freely the merits of the shooting and the charges. The Military Intervention tried to prevent this but it couldn't. Every victim had friends. These friends and their friends rapidly were made enemies of the Military Intervention. And this enmity naturally spelled Bolshevism, as far as the Military Intervention was concerned.

I witnessed the anguish of one woman whose husband and father were both in prison as suspects. They had both won honor in the war against Germany. The husband had been wounded. The charges of Bolshevist sympathy on which they were arrested were based on slight evidence. She could not visit them. Only through the underground methods of the native Russians could she learn anything about them. She, too, listened every night for the rat-tat-tat until she could bear it no longer. So she was arrested a few days before I left Archangel for having said something for which the Military Intervention could not stand. Another Bolshevik.

If the Russian soldiers whom we organized, equipped, and paid to fight the Bolsheviki went over as they did in whole companies to the Bolsheviki it was not because of any lure or reward that our enemies held out to them. It was because we in our stupidity thought of them as "swine" and employed such methods of administration and control in our Military Intervention as they had been only too familiar with in the old days of Tsarism. We failed to win their hearts or their confidence. We destroyed all their illusions about us. And they turned "Bolshevik."

Of course English and American soldiers did not turn Bolshevik, but it was startling sometimes to hear their exclamations of sympathy with the Bolsheviki and their protests against the whole fact and practice of the Military Intervention. This was not unusual among the Americans and Canadians of the winter army and was so common among the new army that I felt at one time they were more likely to make trouble for the Military Intervention than the Russians were.

A gentleman who was very much in sympathy with the Military Intervention was lecturing to an audience of these men one night in Archangel on "Why are we here?" His lecture had been O.K.'d carefully by the Intelligence Department and was considered safe, in fact, most excellent. After the lecture the men were given an opportunity to ask questions, and some of the questions they asked were, "Is England going to take the port of Murmansk?" "Did a British syndicate get control of the lumber industry of Archangel?" "Who cashed in on the new rouble deal?" "Are we trying to set up a monarchy here in Russia?" This from British Tommies was too much. The Intelligence Department sent around word the next morning that this lecture had better not be given any more. What the troops needed was entertainment and amusement.

*XIII*

*THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN*

The relations between the English and the Russians were not on the whole pleasant or friendly. The English themselves do not know this. So long as they were not shooting each other there was nothing missing in the estimation of the average English soldier in his relations with the Russians. Feeling at heart the pressure of the white man's burden he had great scorn for the white Russians who now had added to its weight.

I have heard English officers curse Russian soldiers so violently that I knew they were giving themselves boldness under cover of their foreign tongue, and I knew too that the soldiers were refraining from protest under the pretense of not understanding. I once heard an English captain call three Russian captains "filthy swine" in their hearing and one of the Russians afterward told me in perfectly good English that he had frequently been so abused by Englishmen who thought he did not understand their words. This word "swine," in fact, was the favorite appellation of the English for the Russians.

Since it is necessary in this writing to generalize about the Englishmen and British officers somewhat I must say here that there were among them some splendid men. I had the privilege of knowing a few who are among the finest men to be met anywhere--tactful, human, sympathetic, and strong. But these were too small a minority.

The expedition called for military skill and it called for leadership, sympathy, social skill. There was a sad failure to realize that an expedition of this sort is bound to run into social and political problems that are quite as important, perhaps more so, than mere military practice. The management of this campaign has ignored all social and political considerations that might have contributed to its success or failure and has blundered stupidly whenever these matters have forced themselves to the front. And the military blunders have been so obvious that they have been openly acknowledged in part and are on record presumably in the war office today.

The failure of the North Russian Expedition was the failure of the British to make friends of the Russian people. There was no purpose of conquest here. The purpose of his government was to be helpful to the Russian people. But the British soldier does not think in these terms. He had been a pupil in the school of imperialism too long to become a conscious knight-errant of the League of Nations so suddenly. He took his imperialism to Russia with him, and Russia would not stand for it. He failed in Russia and the causes of his failure were:

1. The Russian distrust and dislike of the British.

2. The British inability to understand the Russian mind.

3. The British lack of respect for the Russian character.

4. The British tactlessness in dealing with the Russians.

5. The stupid propaganda conducted by the British.
6. The British war-weariness.

Probably the last of these reasons is the one that will seem most important to those who have been hearing the noise made by English politicians, but I believe it to be the least. It did not prevent the sending out of that fine new army with its marvelous supplies of stores and equipment. It did not spoil those precious plans for getting to Petrograd before winter. For it was neither British Labor nor the Bolsheviki that drove the British army from North Russia. It was the peasant population of North Russia that did this.

In April, May, and June I was told dozens of times by Russians that if the Americans left Russia, the English would be compelled to go. They did not believe the British would withdraw voluntarily. They expected to have to fight to drive them out. Some of them said they would ask the Bolsheviki to help them. Constantly new causes of irritation arose between the military and the peasants and violent expressions of military disgust with "swine" were increasingly heard. When things went wrong all blame was laid on the Russians. And it was laid on them in such a way as to increase the malady. Each day bitterness, distrust, and resentment increased on both sides. In August a British colonel said to me that he feared nothing from our enemies the Bolsheviki but everything from our friends the Russians, and he doubted if they would let us get out without another great tragedy of treachery. In August also a Russian officer told a friend of mine that the quicker the English got away the surer they were of getting away safely.

No Russian believed in the disinterestedness of England's motives. All kinds of stories were invented and believed as to the concessions and ports she was to receive, as to the debt Russia would owe her after the war, and as to King George's interest in the restoration of the Czar to his throne. Bolshevik propaganda was not idle and was all too easily believed.

The Russians knew, too, that the English liked the monarchists, took them into their confidence, had them to dinner, danced with them, and they came to believe that with England in North Russia the revolution was lost.

It was a common thing to hear an English officer say that every Russian was a Bolo. And this appellation was intended to be most opprobrious. A discussion of this charge involves an understanding of Bolos as well as of other Russians, and the statement emanates from an utter lack of such understanding. I must say that the great number of Russians that I have come to know somewhat are not at all open to the charge of being like the British idea of Bolos. They are, on the contrary, loyal, generous, honest, and reliable; neither crazy radicals nor indolent dreamers, but a plodding, persistent, patient people who also can dream dreams and turn over new pages.

On our way back to Archangel in the very last days of August we welcomed almost any suggestion that seemed to afford a pleasant justification for our retreat, and we talked much about the failure of Kolchak to meet us at Kotlas or Viatka and the unwisdom of risking another winter with Archangel for a base and such impossible lines of communication as we maintained last winter. In truth we were quite willing to realize that what we had undertaken to do there was from a military point of view stupid and utterly impractical. We did not believe anybody would ever again attempt to invade Russia from the north. But the political stupidity of our mission and our methods was never suspected, and English officers continued to talk about "swine."

*XIV*

*ATROCITIES*

The men of this expedition were told many stories of Bolshevik atrocities. No care or effort was spared in printing these stories in both English and Russian and getting them into the hands of the soldiers. It was important to inspire fear and hatred of the Bolsheviki in the hearts of our men, more important than the verification of the stories. After the evacuation of Shenkursk we were told, with complete details, of the murder of the nuns and the Abbess, and of the members of several families who were well known to us, also of the forced marriage to favored Bolsheviki of some of the young ladies who in the happy days had danced with our officers. We were told of rape and of tortures, all in convincing circumstantial setting. This "information" we were told had been obtained most cleverly by us through spies and prisoners--and it did its work. In July, however, we learned the truth--at least I did. Three Russians whom I had known all winter and in whom I have the utmost confidence, went to Shenkursk, stayed there incognito a week, and came back. They told me that they had seen the nuns, and talked with the people who were supposed to have been murdered, that the Abbess was alive, that the girls were unmarried, and that there had been no forced marriages whatever. The one atrocity and the only one committed by the Bolsheviki in Shenkursk was the shooting of one priest. One priest was shot in the street by soldiers without official sanction. The only other Bolshevik atrocity about which I had any authentic information throughout the entire expedition was the mutilation of the bodies of some of our men who had been killed in the early days of Ustpadenga. I was unable to find any one who had any proof, however, that they had ever killed our men whom they had once taken prisoner. Perhaps they did it, but even so we were there not to imitate their worst practices but to wipe them off the face of the earth because of those practices.

A friend of mine was walking unarmed on a lonely road near the front one day when a Bolshevik soldier came out of the woods and made a friendly approach. He asked my friend if it was safe to go in and give himself up as a prisoner and was assured that it was. They went in together, the guard at the barricade took charge of the prisoner, taking him to headquarters. Ten days later my friend learned that this prisoner had been shot, and the only reason given was that he had refused to give certain desired information as to the enemy. I have heard an officer tell his men repeatedly to take no prisoners, to kill them even if they came in unarmed, and I have been told by the men themselves of many cases when this was done.

I saw a disarmed Bolshevik prisoner, who was making no attempt to escape and no trouble of any kind, and who was alone in charge of three armed soldiers, shot down in cold blood. The official whitewash on this case was that he was trying to escape. I have heard of many other cases of the shooting of Bolshevik prisoners. At one time this had become so common that the Officer Commanding troops issued and had posted up an order forbidding it and calling attention to the fact that there were many Bolshevik soldiers who wanted to come over and give themselves up but feared to do so because they had heard about our shooting prisoners, and warning our men that the Bolsheviki might retaliate by shooting our men whom they held as prisoners. I have seen at various times many prisoners brought in, but I have never yet seen one that was not robbed. The plunder belonged to the captor or the robber. We got as high as three thousand roubles off of some of them. Their boots and belt buckles were especially prized trophies. I have known cases where the captor was generous and left the prisoner some small thing, but it was only to have some other soldier take it away from him later.

We used gas shells on the Bolsheviki, but that I understand is no longer an atrocity. We fixed all the devil-traps we could think of for them when we evacuated villages. Once we shot more than thirty prisoners in our determination to punish three murderers. And when we caught the Commissar of Borok, a sergeant tells me we left his body in the street, stripped, with sixteen bayonet wounds. We surprised Borok, and the Commissar, a civilian, did not have time to arm himself. The sergeant was quite exultant over it. He killed Bolsheviki because they were barbarians and cruel. This was the only thing his government had ever told him as to why they should be killed. And the only safe way to fight barbarians is with their own methods.

The spoliation of scores of Russian villages and thousands of little farms, and the utter disorganization of the life and industry of a great section of the country with the attendant wanderings and sufferings of thousands of peasant-folk who had lost everything but life, are but the natural and necessary results of a military operation, and especially a weak and unsuccessful military operation such as this one was. One would hardly say, however, that it was necessary to close the school in order to use the schoolhouse for the storage of whisky, nor to put an entire Russian family into the street in order to make room for one officer, nor to loot personal property and ransack churches, nor to take so much whisky into the country that it could hardly be consumed when there was the greatest need for all kinds of merchandise, yet all these things were done, and acts of this kind are now outstanding features of the military "helpfulness" we went into so reluctantly.

We have been told about the employment by the Bolsheviki of Chinese mercenaries, and the dreadfulness of this was much stressed in April, but in July, August, and September we were importing large numbers of Chinese to Archangel, dressing them in British uniforms, and training them for fighting the Bolsheviki.

*XV*

*THE MUTINIES*

Early in the year there had been a few small defections of conscripted Russians at Shenkursk, Murmansk, and later at Toulgas, but the thing that broke loose in July when the Yankees had gone home and the new British army had come and started its big campaign was quite another matter. At Troitsa, at Onega, at Pinega, at Obozerskaya, on the Vaga and on the Murmansk railroad our Russian soldiers mutinied, killed their officers, and went over to the Bolsheviki. On six of our seven fronts these mutinies occurred. They were evidently not concerted, not uniform in method, but spontaneous, having the same nature, and springing from the same causes.

There were some distinctive features about the Troitsa affair of July seventh. The Dyer's Battalion that mutinied here was composed of ex-Bolsheviki prisoners who had been given the option of joining our army or remaining prisoners of war, and who for obvious reasons had chosen to join the army. This battalion had been feted and honored in many ways, and the privilege of wearing the British name on their shoulders was supposed to give assurance of their loyalty to our army. We did not conceal our stupidity about the Bolsheviki from these men. We did not keep them from hearing the stories on which we had fed our men. They saw the attitude of the English military toward the Russians and had learned the true state of Russian peasant feeling toward the military. They despised the name of the Slavo-British Legion that they wore. On Troitsa's fateful night they murdered five English officers and eight Russian officers and went over to the Bolsheviki. We recaptured a considerable number of them and executed them. Those that had not been in the mutiny we disarmed and put to labor. We had lost heavily and by treachery. It was enough to get the wind up of anybody. It got ours up. I heard many an Englishman say after that that he would never again trust any Russian anywhere. He would not discriminate. They were all treacherous, ungrateful swine. Every Russian was a Bolo. There was no longer possible any big cooeperative campaign.

On the other fronts the mutinies were not of ex-Bolsheviki prisoners but of the "mobilized" conscripts who had never been tainted by Bolshevist theories or ideals and whose defection is therefore of greater significance. These men were the peasant inhabitants of North Russia who had welcomed our advent at Archangel. They had been in a sense our hosts all winter. They had worked for us, driven our transport, sold us hay and potatoes, smoked our cigarettes, and hated our enemies. But also they had told me in the spring that if the Americans went home the English, would have to go home too. Now they were murdering their officers, surrendering their positions to the enemy, refusing to advance, going over to the Bolsheviki in large numbers.

The British fought wonderfully well under these trying circumstances. At every point except Onega they re-took all positions that had been lost by treachery. They caught and shot traitors. And they also shot all other Russian soldiers who were suspected of treason. They did this with a brutality the details of which I will spare you, but not one item, of which escaped the Russian people.

The British wind was up. They were soldiers, and prepared for any fight that might be in store for them. But being shot in bed by your own men is not fighting. It is not war. There was no question of courage involved. The army had courage enough. But this was next to suicide, to go to the front leading traitors.

There was evidence one day on the railroad front that a new mutiny was brewing. All the men of the suspected company were put on a train and then disarmed. A guard went through the train and counted off the men, taking every tenth man outside to be shot without trial. The men had not mutinied, but they might, and something had to be done.

I was told about another company of eighty Russians who were under suspicion at the same time. The British officer in command gave them the option of declaring who the ringleaders were or being shot _en masse_. Under the fear of this threat fifteen out of the eighty men were named and shot without trial.

*XVI*

*THE DEBACLE*

And so, there being nothing else possible, the debacle began. But it is a big job to get an expedition out of a country, much bigger than to get it in. There were great quantities of munitions and supplies to be transported or destroyed. There were fortifications to destroy, bridges to burn, railways to tear up, all fighting facilities to cripple. There were civilians to evacuate, and all the service branches of the army, with all their vast and varied stores, to be disposed of. And there was the enemy to be dealt with. The thing simply couldn't be done with any chance of success on all of those long fingers of this expedition until a smashing blow had been delivered to the Bolsheviki, both to reduce his morale and to increase your own, which had been so seriously impaired by the mutinies.

So a smashing blow was delivered successfully at one of the finger-points, costing us more men than any other fight in North Russia; and instanter the latest retreat from Moscow began. Now there was something quite peculiar about this retreat from the finger-points in North Russia. We were not pursued. The Bolsheviki knew we were going. In fact, they seemed to be remarkably well posted as to our plans. They were willing to have us go. But they did not chase us out. The Bolsheviki had little to do with causing this retreat. This retreat was forced by the conscripted soldiers and people of North Russia, who wanted the English to go, and who were so sincere in this that they were willing to face all the dangers of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" commissar, and the unrestrained spite of every personal enemy, without English protection. A school teacher who supposed himself to be on the Bolshevik black list, said to me in July, "Our duty is to Russia. The Bolsheviki may rule us or may kill us, but our duty is to Russia. The English must go." The Labor Congress, assembled at Solombola, passed resolutions urging the hasty withdrawal of the British and were at once disbanded by the army and charged with being Bolshevik propagandists.

But the retreat was on. Every embassy received orders from home to leave with all its citizens, bag and baggage, and in the early days of September they went as from a pestilence, shipload after shipload, the Americans, the French, Italian, Chinese, Serbian, Japanese embassies, consulates of all sorts, Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A., military missions, bourgeois Russians, and any number of enterprising citizens of enterprising countries got out.

The military preceded, accompanied, followed. By September twentieth, the last British soldier was out and the washout was complete. We heard wild rumors that the Labor Congress continued to meet in spite of the army, that they turned upon the Russian military leaders, who are well-known to be monarchist in sympathy, and informed them that they must make peace with the Bolsheviki, and that there was some bad rioting in Solombola. Two British soldiers had been beaten to death in the streets by Russians. More Russians had been shot because they were suspected of Bolshevist sympathies. As our ships pulled out of the harbor great fires broke out in the vast lumber yards on both sides of the river, the laborers were charged with Bolshevik sabotage, and an enormous pall of black smoke hung for days over the scene of this most unfortunate expedition, a sinister emblem of the ruin and hatred that lay behind us, and a symbol of angry protest from the sky itself over our stupid failure to understand the Russian people.

*XVII*

*MILITARY INTERVENTION FINANCE*

The financial contrivances of this Military Intervention in North Russia, while conceived with the best of intentions, perhaps, and being presumably in the interests of Russian welfare, created much suspicion and bitterness among the peasants and the soldiers. The country having been flooded with Kerensky and Bolshevik paper money, it was impossible to maintain any general European value, so a new rouble was issued called the "English rouble," with a guaranteed minimum value based on deposits of securities with the Bank of England. But the peasants were not interested. They did not give up their old roubles for the new. So it became necessary to force matters. A schedule of depreciation of all old roubles was published. While the English roubles stood as guaranteed at forty to the pound all old or "Russian" money, as the peasants called it, stepped down a ladder of fortnightly rungs from forty-eight to fifty-six, to sixty-five, to seventy-two, to eighty, to ninety, after which it was to have no value whatever. It was hoped, of course, that all people would avail themselves of the opportunity thus offered to dispose of their worthless money and the region would have a sound currency of some intra-national value as a result.

Then, finding that it had a lot of old roubles on hand, the British paid their Russian soldiers and civilian labor in these old roubles that they had proposed to put out of circulation, at the same time making it impossible for the holder to spend this money in availing himself of any of the resources of the Military Intervention.

Dozens of times I have seen Russian soldiers tear up this old money with which they had been paid and throw it on the floor in anger, because they could buy nothing with it.

Yet the old money stayed in circulation. When eighty was reached no attempt was made to press the process of depreciation any further. Old "Nicolai" paper had gone out of circulation, and in the early days of August the peasants generally were preferring old roubles at eighty to new ones at forty. And there was a very general feeling among the Russian people that the Military Intervention had taken all that value out of their old roubles and in some mysterious way put it into its own pocket.

*XVIII*

*PROPAGANDA*

The Bolsheviki are adepts at propaganda. They try to understand the point of view, the prejudices, the situations, of those to whom they appeal, and their propaganda is essentially sympathetic, tries to find a common ground, attempts to enter openings. They believe in propaganda. I have thought sometimes that they believe much more firmly in propaganda than in guns. They bombarded us constantly with leaflets in Russian and leaflets in English. We found them tacked up on trees in front of our lines every morning, and no one who went out to get them was ever shot at. We were forbidden to read this literature. All copies were to be taken unread to the "Information" office. As it came floating down the river on little rafts marked humorously "H.M.S. Thunderer," "H.M.S. Terrible," etc., we were warned that these were likely to be mine-traps. But they never were. We got them all. We read all the propaganda. It was interesting even when unconvincing. Having learned the names of some of our officers they sent personal messages across the lines. These made a great hit with our soldiers.

Throughout the campaign we often got better news information from the Bolshevik propaganda than from the British propaganda, which came daily by wireless but which published almost nothing of political value. The Bolsheviki watched the Peace Congress very closely, and while their reports lacked fairness as much as those of the British lacked frankness, we were very glad to get them for the facts they gave us.

Of course they attacked Mr. Wilson bitterly, violently, unfairly, but with enough basis of truth and fact to make their attacks effective. And their propaganda reached its goal. A limited amount was printed in English for the Allied troops. A greater amount was printed in Russian for Russian troops and Russian civilians, who as well as the troops devoured it with avidity. They were at first prejudiced against everything Bolshevist, but there was no reliable news. They knew the British were feeding them on watered milk, and this made them turn to the Bolshevik newspapers. I have been surprised to find that these newspapers were read and quoted everywhere. It was not so at first, but in July it was literally so.

In May I had only the preliminary publication of the Terms and the Covenant that had appeared in the London _Times_ of February twenty-first. I essayed to address an audience of English-speaking soldiers on the work of the Peace Congress, full of optimistic enthusiasm. After the meeting a Russian friend told me quietly that he knew I was wrong, that I was doomed to disappointment, that he had later news than I had, and finally he very secretly produced the Bolshevik papers. Of course I did not have to believe all these papers said. It wasn't all true. But I found the Russians were believing much of it. President Wilson was not having his way in the Peace Congress. He had surrendered open diplomacy and would have to surrender more, perhaps much more. He lacked the support of the American Senate, and he was hopelessly out-voted at Versailles. And there was Clemenceau. Russia knows Clemenceau. And the League of Nations would be born without teeth.

As a matter of fact these Russians through the Bolsheviki had the latest gossip on the peace parleys and their interest in the subject was very keen. They hate the Germans, but their eyes were fixed not on that hatred, but on an ideal, a hope. And now they were being disillusioned, let down. It had remained for Bolshevist propaganda to tell them that their dream was not coming true.

And British propaganda! The Bolsheviki might well have paid the bill, and it was a substantial one. The great themes about which this propaganda was built were:

The Size of the British Empire,

The Strength of the British Navy,

The Growth of the British Army since 1914,

The British Empire at War,

The Charitableness of British Royalty,

and latterly the severity of terms demanded of Germany. Great piles of sheets of old war pictures with Russian captions were scattered broadcast upon a war-bored population, and Russian editions of a transparently over-censored news communique which told who dined with the King, who got the Order of the Garter, who was responsible for the great war, how bad the Bolsheviki are, and how the great international game of cricket is getting on.

In this fashion did we undertake by our "Allied Bureau of Public Information" to bring Russia into the family of nations!

Not one word of the vital truth--the growing truth in these growing days--for which Russia is hungry. Not a spark of recognition for the intellectual heroism of these people whose fight for truth and freedom has only been begun. No belief in the manliness of these "children" who were to be taught. No faith in national ideals that were different from our own.

An educated Russian once said to me, holding a copy of "The British Empire at War" in his hand: "I believe that every Russian family knows more about war than whole cities of Englishmen." And I have seen a Russian peasant look at the same publication, shake his head and say: "English ne dobra."

A Russian Y.M.C.A. Secretary said to me once: "The English propaganda is making Bolos every day."

In August a squad of Americans came to Archangel from France with instructions to disinter the bodies of the 260 Americans buried in North Russia and take them to the military cemeteries in France or America for re-burial. Many of these bodies were in territory held by the Bolsheviki and the lieutenant in charge of this work asked permission of the British command at Archangel to enter into negotiations with the Bolshevik command for permission to get those bodies. Nobody doubted that this permission, would be granted by the Bolsheviki, but the negotiations were forbidden by the British, as it would be bad policy to let the Bolsheviki show us courtesies. They must remain outlaws. They must not be permitted to state their case to Americans who would tell the Russians. Americans must not see with their own eyes that the tales of Bolshevik atrocities in Shenkursk and Shagavari were untrue. The Bolsheviki must remain as black as they had been painted, so the American bodies must remain in their Russian graves.

In July two American Y.M.C.A. secretaries were captured by the Bolsheviki on the Onega front. Two others had been captured previously to this and had been released by way of Stockholm, and had reported good treatment. With these taken in July the Bolsheviki had taken also a number of British soldiers, some army supplies, and some Y.M.C.A. supplies. One of the secretaries had considerable money on his person belonging to the Y.M.C.A. He was given permission to go to Archangel on parole to take this money to "Y" headquarters, and he was given by the Bolshevik command two messages. One was to negotiate the purchase of the "Y" supplies captured, as the Bolsheviki did not consider these things war booty and wished to pay for them. The other was a message to the people of Archangel assuring them that when the Bolsheviki should take their city there would be no reprisals but full political amnesty. When this paroled American prisoner reached our lines he was taken to British headquarters and there told that he could not go to Archangel on any such mission. He appealed by telephone to the American Embassy and arrangements were made for him to go to Archangel, virtually under arrest. At British headquarters in Archangel he was ordered not to make known any of the Bolshevist messages and an attempt was made to induce him to break his parole. When he told of kindly treatment by the Bolsheviki he was angrily denounced as a Bolshevik propagandist. He returned to the front and re-crossed the line according to the terms of his parole. These prisoners were sent to Moscow. They were not under arrest nor restraint, nor were the British Tommies whom the Bolsheviki held there as prisoners of war. These two men left Moscow September fifth for home by way of Vologda and Archangel. They saw nothing of the atrocities we read so much about, nor of the nationalization of women, nor the separation of children from parents by state decree, nor the other barbarities the British-American news factories give us so much to read about.

*XIX*

*CONCERNING MILITARY INTERVENTION*

During the first half of 1918 there was considerable discussion in America of the proposed military intervention in Russia. Mr. Roosevelt favored it--insisted upon it. Mr. Wilson was understood to be opposed to it, this understanding resting on the general interpretation of his utterances. The debate, widespread, was before the fact. Now that the fact is accomplished we may well look into the results.

The weak fashion in which we went into the enterprise has given rise to the theory in some quarters that it will be claimed that we did not go into it at all. If an armistice had been declared in Russia on November 11, or if America had then notified the Bolsheviki that we had no military motives there, the affair could well have been charged up to the war with Germany, and we might well claim that we had had no serious intention of interfering in the affairs of Russia. But the armistice did not even think of Russia. We were fighting a separate war there. We in Russia were not even notified officially that there was an armistice. We heard about it, and wondered where we came in. It was after November 11 that most of our fighting took place and most of our casualties were suffered. Not until March were we promised that we should be taken home in the spring, and then no intimation was given us that America was to withdraw. Rumors were industriously circulated giving the impression that other Americans were on their way to take our places, and not until our men were actually away did our "information" permit us to realize that America had withdrawn from the expedition.

We intervened. We undertook to crush Bolshevism in Russia. We sent a military and naval expedition there. We organized a civil war there. It was unsuccessful. America lost a few men, England more, Russia many more. How much more Russia suffered is not yet written. America withdrew her troops. France, Serbia, Italy withdrew theirs. England reluctantly withdraws hers.

Let us consider what this expedition meant to our own men. They were only a few thousand men, to be sure, and their little event was so much smaller than the big thing in France that it was naturally even necessarily overlooked. Because I was with them, however, I know that it was a big thing their government made them do. The men in France had faith in their cause. The men in Russia had none. Over and over again our men in Russia have argued with me that while we were fighting for freedom in France we were fighting to kill it in Russia. Some said we were fighting for the capitalists of England and France, others declared that the Bolsheviki were more right than wrong, and everybody felt that our government had made a great mistake and that a life lost there was a life worse than thrown away. In this frame of mind American boys went through all the dangers and privations and sufferings of a difficult all-winter campaign and some of them went to their last battles. Statistically it is a little thing, if you must measure everything by statistics, but I have been made to feel how terribly great a thing was the death of one man who as I held his hand cursed the fate that made him die in a fight for which he had no heart.

It was a high degree of sportsmanship that enabled these men to see it through. If Mr. Wilson told his colleagues at Paris that "if" American troops were sent to Russia they would mutiny he might have based his opinion on information as to what American troops in Russia had already said on that particular subject.

It is difficult to imagine a more unmoral situation than that of an army fighting without a sense of unction and against its sense of right, but this is what military intervention in Russia imposed on a small army of Americans.

I can testify of my personal knowledge that this was equally true of Canadian and British soldiers. I have heard that it was true of the French, the Italians, and the Serbians.

These men are all home now with their grievance. Few of them are proud of the expedition, or glad they had a part in it, or grateful to their country for its support, or willing to go again. Military intervention has been a tragedy in their lives and was an injustice to them such as no government may with impunity impose on its citizens.

We may not easily estimate the harm that military intervention has done in the lowering of our standards of national rights and in devitalizing our ideals of international relations. The precedent that has been established, however, is most unfortunate and may in the future be used to strengthen the hands of some one who may be trying to lead us into a more serious error of the same sort. I must, moreover, say that this enterprise has done considerable harm to the most important friendship in the world--that of England and America--as far as so great a thing could be affected by the few thousands of men who were directly engaged in the expedition. Our governments do not know about this, of course, but the men know. No thoughtful person could hear these men of either nation talk about the other nation without seeing the awfulness of the thing that has been done. It is not at all similar to the attitude of the soldier who knew the British in France, nor to his disillusionment about the French. It is very much worse. It is enmity. And it is clear to me that it is directly due to the fact that our men had to fight in a bad cause, with unwilling minds, beclouded consciences, and rebellious hearts.