VIIFIGHTING WITHOUT A FLAGThe American soldier who was sent to Northern Russia for his part in the great war had an experience which in several respects was novel in the vast field of experience which the war imposed on Americans. One of these was that he had to fight without his flag. Not only was the flag absent from the front lines in accord with the best practices of modern warfare, but the flag as a symbol and the consciousness of what it symbolizes were equally absent for the most part from his billet, his conversation, his mess kit, and the whole campaign.He was fed with foreign food, clothed in part with foreign clothes, invading a foreign country, given orders by foreign officers, and fighting a war that was foreign to all he had ever thought of America. He had gone into the army to fight Germany, and here he found himself after the armistice fighting an unknown foe with whom the United States was not at war, and quite as much out of sympathy with the officers of another nationality whom he had to obey, as with the men whom he was trying to kill.His government had not told him why he was here, what grievances it had against his enemies, what arrangements it had with its allies in this expedition, nor what it hoped to accomplish if successful in the enterprise for which he daily must offer his life. His officers could not tell him. They had never been told. They wanted to know. What they did know was that at every turn, in every position, on every piece of work, in every detail of responsibility, an English officer stood over them telling them what to do. Sometimes he was a very young English officer. Sometimes a strain was necessary to get adequate rank to him. Sometimes he was utterly inexperienced.The method of the British control of the Allied expedition to North Russia is a subject for study and an example for warning that the League of Nations may well heed. If thousands of Americans have gone home thoroughly detesting the name and memory of everything English and if other thousands of Englishmen are telling each other and being told that Americans are cowards and in the same breath that they are insolent and unmanageable, it is chiefly to be blamed on the British method of managing an allied campaign.It might be supposed that the British, being appropriately and properly in supreme command, would have given their orders, as far as they applied solely to the operations of purely American units, to the responsible American officers, leaving these officers without petty interference to get the work accomplished. But it was not so. British colonels did not give their orders to American colonels to be passed down the line. In fact, they had very little use for American colonels. They went to the captains, the lieutenants, and even the sergeants and corporals and the men themselves. They ignored American officers most noticeably. They set their own petty officers upon the Americans in a manner that was most irritating to American national self-esteem and bitterly resented. And since all necessary things are reasonable to the military mind it was the greatest tact to explain that "the Americans know nothing about military matters, you know."I do not feel that the Americans had a grievance necessarily because Old Glory did not wave above them in North Russia. I can imagine that they could have fought with excellent morale in France if they had not had their colors with them. The case consists of the aggravating circumstances. The men were made to feel most unnecessarily and quite contrary to the facts that they had been handed to England and forgotten, that their government was wholly unmindful of them, and that for the time at least they were deprived of the protection and divorced from the ideals of which the Stars and Stripes had always stood as a symbol in their minds.I did see the flag once in American headquarters at Shenkursk, but it was inside and inconspicuous, and few soldiers go in at headquarters. I saw one flying on a Y.M.C.A. building, but it was of course ordered down for perfectly good and adequate reasons. I read in a soldier's letter to his sweetheart once: "For God's sake send me a little flag in your next letter. I haven't seen one since I came to this awful country." One soldier had a barishna make him a little flag from old bunting with embroidered stars. And I have seen more than one lonely American pull a little flag out of his pocket and kiss it.At Shenkursk we were invited to hold our Christmas exercises in the monastery church. This was probably the greatest innovation ever ventured by the ecclesiastical establishment of that town. Seats were provided, the icons covered, the Abbess and nuns safely ensconced in the gallery to appease their curiosity, and the forces marched in—American soldiers and officers, a few Canadian artillerists, and British headquarters staff. Americans greatly predominated in numbers. A British chaplain read the service, concluding naturally with "God save the King." As we filed out an American private was heard to remark: "Who ever heard of the Star Spangled Banner anyhow?"I shall not hope that academicians, business men, politicians, and sensible people generally will see anything in this but a thin sentimentalism. I should not have appreciated it had I not lived with men who were daily facing death for a cause unknown, without patriotic background or personal interest, and under the insistent domination of officers of another nation who looked down upon them, and talked about them discreditably."If we had British soldiers here we should drive the Bolos out in short order. But what can be done with these miserable Americans and Russians!"The antipathy that British officers felt toward Yankees was acquired early in the campaign and increased in intensity toward the end. In some measure it was the Yankees' fault and to some extent the product of facts and forces that are beyond the control of individuals. There was disapproval and jealousy of the over-prominence America had too easily acquired in the great war. There was resentment of the favoritism of the Russians for the Americans. There was the inheritance of pride in the military achievements of the Empire. There was utter ignorance of the motives and purposes of the present English government. But there was also the independence and "insolence" of the Yankees, their free and easy attitude toward British official dignity, their insistence upon reasons why, and their assumption of knowledge and ability quite beyond anything their experience in military matters justified.And these little irritations grew and were magnified in little minds until the manner of the Yankee salute itself became a mote in the British eye.I have heard the most caustic and untrue criticism of American soldiers from the lips of English officers whose rank should in itself have been guaranty that they would not descend to this. I have heard it hinted at a score of times by petty officers who out of consideration for my presence did not pursue the subject to its commonplace ends. And repeatedly members of the new British army that had never seen the Yanks at all said to me in all friendliness: "What a pity that your men out here were not real Americans, that they were foreigners, and that they gave America such a black eye by their conduct."This was a direct echo of the campaign of vilification of the American soldier which was carried on within their own circles by certain British officers of the North Russian Expeditionary Force.I overheard some English soldiers singing a parody of "Over There," of which I can only remember "The Yanks are running, the Yanks are running everywhere," and the last line "And they didn't do a damn thing about it over there." This was in Archangel. There were no Yankee soldiers about. They were at the front. The singing which had been in a subdued tone was stopped immediately when my presence was observed and when we had finished a little conversation the Tommies sang "Over There," and they sang it straight. There was no anti-Yank feeling in these men. They had genuine admiration for the Yankee soldiers. They had picked up the little seeds of antipathy from some of their officers.As a matter of fact the American soldier in North Russia fought well. He drove the Bolsheviki 427 versts south of Archangel before winter set in, and then took up winter quarters and prepared for defense. Constant patrolling had to be done, and expeditions had to be made against the Bolshevik villages that flanked us on both sides and constantly threatened our rear. All this was for the most part true of seven fronts between which there was no connection or communication except by going back to the base.Captain Odyard of Company A was decorated by the British government, and the company was praised for its gallant work at Ustpadenga and Vistafka, and yet the British Tommies of the new army asked me in July: "Why was it that the Yanks turned tail at Ustpadenga?"The charges made by the British that the American soldiers were unreliable and mutinous were founded correctly on the mental attitude of the American soldier and upon the things he said. He hated the expedition and its management. But those charges were not fairly founded upon anything that the American soldier did. There was an instance of one company refusing at one time to go to the front. It was but a temporary refusal. They went. There were several parallel instances when British and Canadian and French soldiers resorted to similar semi-mutiny. It was always momentary. They always eventually went forward with the unequal fight despite the inhuman conditions. The dissatisfied and unhappy soldier was not yellow. He may have had some sympathy for the Bolsheviki whose country he was unwillingly invading. He certainly felt that the invasion was a crime. But he was not yellow.[#] He obeyed orders. He fought splendidly. He went to his death. He held his post. He cursed the British and did his duty. He killed Bolsheviki, plenty of them, not knowing why.[#] The report of the Judge Advocate General gives a number of cases of American soldiers who were convicted by court-martial of having been guilty of self-inflicted wounds. The number accused of this was lamentably large. Even if larger in proportion, however, than in any other army in the world war, the reflective mind is forced to ask the question: Why?VIII"AMERICA DOBRA"There was one thing in North Russia that touched every American where every normal man is sentimental. There was a passion for America. In every log house there was love for America. In the hearts of the people in every village there was moving what Benjamin Kidd calls "the emotion of the ideal."We could not understand it at first. Every peasant greeted us with "America dobra," which is not good Russian, but a sort of slang phrase meaning that America is all right. And now and then one would step up a little nearer and in a more subdued tone say that some other country was not all right.We suspected at first that he was playing a double game. We remembered the man who walks like a bear. We smiled cynically and handed him a cigarette. But we did him an injustice.[image]The church at Yemetskoye is visible for many miles up the Dvina.Shenkursk is a quiet and romantic spot on the Vaga River.One heavily whiskered old peasant of Kitsa made me see this injustice. We had crawled into Kitsa on the second night after the evacuation of Shenkursk, with the weather about twenty below zero and bringing with us ninety-seven wounded on sleds. The senior medical officer had selected the best houses in Kitsa for hospital purposes, and one could never forget how cheerfully on ten minutes' notice those peasant people got themselves and their things out of the way and helped to get the patients in and warm and fed. Two of these houses belonged to my bewhiskered friend. He was something of a magnate in Kitsa. And it turned out that we were to use his houses for hospital purposes for months after that night, sending him and his on their northward way, for safety in the company of refugees from seven other villages. His property interests in Kitsa, however, were too important in his old life to be ignored and in a few days he was back with a sled convoy as a common driver, a labor which he persisted in as long as the fortunes of war permitted for the sake of the opportunity it gave him to look things over. Knowing that the hospital was an American affair the old man was quite delighted that his houses had been chosen for this purpose."America dobra," he said to me exultantly.One day I happened to discover that in both houses the private rooms in which the precious family possessions had been stored and secured by heavy padlocks had been broken open and the contents looted and despoiled. Most of the fabrics and silverware and family gods pulled out of trunks and bureaus were of no use or interest to soldiers and had been thrown on the floor and trampled underfoot. It was wanton and heartless, and believing that our boys had at least had a hand in it I was ashamed and chagrined. It was painful to remember the gleam of faith in the old Mongolian eyes when he said "America dobra."When he came again and I saw him the gloom on his face was terrible. He had seen the wreck. Apologetically I offered my condolences: "America ne dobra." "No," he said slowly in Russian, "no, war is at fault. War is not good. America dobra."So I had to think again. I hadn't seen far enough into the soul behind this bushy face. And I didn't smile cynically as I handed him the cigarette.After a while we learned to discriminate between "Amerikanski" and "Amerika." The peasants often handed us personal compliments, but we learned that when they praised America they were not talking about us but about an idea, an ideal, a dream—would I could say a fact!These Russian peasants have not read American history. They do not know American politics. Most of them probably have not read five hundred words about America in all their lives. But they have heard and talked about America some, and thought about America more. Perhaps there are many well-read Americans who could profitably think about America more, even at a loss of time to read. And now the moujik of North Russia and his wife and children have all of them seen Americans—real live ones—and liked them.How much the Russian peasant liked the American soldier it is a little difficult for me to convey without seeming to exaggerate. I was skeptical about it for months. It might be bear love. He was always begging for cigarettes, and one could easily see through his cupidity and simple craft. But I saw American soldiers billeted in Russian homes and mixing with the Russians so much that I am sure that I know the true sentiments in this case. I have been asked by English soldiers more than once: "Why is it that the Russians like the Yankees so much better than they do us?"I asked this question, without the comparison, of an intelligent looking Russian soldier: "Why do you Russians like the Yanks so well?" "Because they shake hands like men," he answered thoughtfully. "Because they treat us as equals. Because they are good to the Russian people," and the next day when we were talking about the same subject he said: "It is because they represent America to us that we like the Yankee soldiers."Yet there was another side to this picture. When first I came to Archangel there was in all people a wonderful faith in Mr. Wilson. I marveled how all these Russians could have learned so much about him. They knew what he had said. They knew what he stood for before the world. I wondered if the people at home knew as well. Pictures of the American President soon made their appearance and were given great prominence throughout the city and in every village. I was calling on the editor of a Russian newspaper hundreds of miles up the river one day. He could use a few English words and I a few Russian. Mr. Wilson's picture hung over his desk. "The friend of the Russian people," he said, pointing to the picture, and as he looked at it tears slowly gathered. Turning toward me he said brokenly: "He is the one man in all the world who can lead Russia out of her troubles." And I gathered that one reason for this faith was because the Bolsheviki respected and feared Mr. Wilson. This man was on the Bolshevik black list. His paper was radically socialistic, however, and the editor was quite distrustful of the results of the Allied expedition. But he believed in Mr. Wilson. "He will soon speak," he said, "and then all Russia will follow him."That was in December. In June I met this editor in Archangel. His home and printing plant had long been in the hands of the Bolsheviki. There was pathetic sadness in his face as he told me of the universal hopelessness of the people. I boomed the League of Nations. It would cure the wrongs, it would become the guide and instrument of salvation. But there was no response of hope. "We have lost Mr. Wilson and there is no hope. But after we are all killed off in this mad and hopeless struggle, Russia will rise out of the ruins and show the way of real democracy."IXAMERICA EXITWhen it was openly announced that the American troops were to be withdrawn from North Russia the Bolshevik propaganda took every possible advantage of it, claiming that President Wilson was now their friend and America would soon recognize their government. A certain type of Englishman also made use of the opportunity to call the attention of the Russians to the fact that their much praised American friends were now leaving them to the mercy of the Bolsheviki except for the greater friendship of England for Russia. England would not desert Russia. We felt great uncertainty at this time. Not a man of us had one authorized word of explanation to make. Our government was silent. Our enemies were noisy. But the Russian peasant never wavered a hair's-breadth in his faith in the friendship of America. If the Americans were going home then that was the best thing to do. If the English were staying then perhaps that was not the best thing to do.And when the departure took place and the Yankees packed up their old kit-bags for home they were given the warmest good-bys and God-bless-yous in Russian, and there was no indication of resentment at being left in a bad predicament.I stood on the bank of the Emtsa River when three platoons of Company K embarked on a barge and waved their farewells to the theater of war. I was the only American left behind. On the river bank nearly the entire population of Yemetskoye were assembled, dressed in their best clothes and giving every possible evidence of their regard and esteem for these boys. As the barge swung down the river with the soldiers singing "Keep the home fires burning," I saw many a handkerchief wiping tears away on the river bank, and the head man of the Zemstvo Upravda, who stood beside me all dressed up in a white shirt, had tears in his eyes too as he grasped my hand and said again as he had said repeatedly before: "Amerikanski dobrey."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.XTHE NEW BRITISH ARMYIn 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.[image]The new British army entered Archangel in June with great pomp and ceremony.The Duma building at Archangel was decorated in honor of the new army that came to finish the Bolsheviki.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.XITHE NEW RUSSIAN ARMYThere 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.XIIMAKING BOLSHEVIKIIn 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 régimé 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.XIIITHE WHITE MAN'S BURDENThe 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.The British lack of respect for the Russian character.4. The British tactlessness in dealing with the Russians.The stupid propaganda conducted by the British.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."XIVATROCITIESThe 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.
VII
FIGHTING WITHOUT A FLAG
The American soldier who was sent to Northern Russia for his part in the great war had an experience which in several respects was novel in the vast field of experience which the war imposed on Americans. One of these was that he had to fight without his flag. Not only was the flag absent from the front lines in accord with the best practices of modern warfare, but the flag as a symbol and the consciousness of what it symbolizes were equally absent for the most part from his billet, his conversation, his mess kit, and the whole campaign.
He was fed with foreign food, clothed in part with foreign clothes, invading a foreign country, given orders by foreign officers, and fighting a war that was foreign to all he had ever thought of America. He had gone into the army to fight Germany, and here he found himself after the armistice fighting an unknown foe with whom the United States was not at war, and quite as much out of sympathy with the officers of another nationality whom he had to obey, as with the men whom he was trying to kill.
His government had not told him why he was here, what grievances it had against his enemies, what arrangements it had with its allies in this expedition, nor what it hoped to accomplish if successful in the enterprise for which he daily must offer his life. His officers could not tell him. They had never been told. They wanted to know. What they did know was that at every turn, in every position, on every piece of work, in every detail of responsibility, an English officer stood over them telling them what to do. Sometimes he was a very young English officer. Sometimes a strain was necessary to get adequate rank to him. Sometimes he was utterly inexperienced.
The method of the British control of the Allied expedition to North Russia is a subject for study and an example for warning that the League of Nations may well heed. If thousands of Americans have gone home thoroughly detesting the name and memory of everything English and if other thousands of Englishmen are telling each other and being told that Americans are cowards and in the same breath that they are insolent and unmanageable, it is chiefly to be blamed on the British method of managing an allied campaign.
It might be supposed that the British, being appropriately and properly in supreme command, would have given their orders, as far as they applied solely to the operations of purely American units, to the responsible American officers, leaving these officers without petty interference to get the work accomplished. But it was not so. British colonels did not give their orders to American colonels to be passed down the line. In fact, they had very little use for American colonels. They went to the captains, the lieutenants, and even the sergeants and corporals and the men themselves. They ignored American officers most noticeably. They set their own petty officers upon the Americans in a manner that was most irritating to American national self-esteem and bitterly resented. And since all necessary things are reasonable to the military mind it was the greatest tact to explain that "the Americans know nothing about military matters, you know."
I do not feel that the Americans had a grievance necessarily because Old Glory did not wave above them in North Russia. I can imagine that they could have fought with excellent morale in France if they had not had their colors with them. The case consists of the aggravating circumstances. The men were made to feel most unnecessarily and quite contrary to the facts that they had been handed to England and forgotten, that their government was wholly unmindful of them, and that for the time at least they were deprived of the protection and divorced from the ideals of which the Stars and Stripes had always stood as a symbol in their minds.
I did see the flag once in American headquarters at Shenkursk, but it was inside and inconspicuous, and few soldiers go in at headquarters. I saw one flying on a Y.M.C.A. building, but it was of course ordered down for perfectly good and adequate reasons. I read in a soldier's letter to his sweetheart once: "For God's sake send me a little flag in your next letter. I haven't seen one since I came to this awful country." One soldier had a barishna make him a little flag from old bunting with embroidered stars. And I have seen more than one lonely American pull a little flag out of his pocket and kiss it.
At Shenkursk we were invited to hold our Christmas exercises in the monastery church. This was probably the greatest innovation ever ventured by the ecclesiastical establishment of that town. Seats were provided, the icons covered, the Abbess and nuns safely ensconced in the gallery to appease their curiosity, and the forces marched in—American soldiers and officers, a few Canadian artillerists, and British headquarters staff. Americans greatly predominated in numbers. A British chaplain read the service, concluding naturally with "God save the King." As we filed out an American private was heard to remark: "Who ever heard of the Star Spangled Banner anyhow?"
I shall not hope that academicians, business men, politicians, and sensible people generally will see anything in this but a thin sentimentalism. I should not have appreciated it had I not lived with men who were daily facing death for a cause unknown, without patriotic background or personal interest, and under the insistent domination of officers of another nation who looked down upon them, and talked about them discreditably.
"If we had British soldiers here we should drive the Bolos out in short order. But what can be done with these miserable Americans and Russians!"
The antipathy that British officers felt toward Yankees was acquired early in the campaign and increased in intensity toward the end. In some measure it was the Yankees' fault and to some extent the product of facts and forces that are beyond the control of individuals. There was disapproval and jealousy of the over-prominence America had too easily acquired in the great war. There was resentment of the favoritism of the Russians for the Americans. There was the inheritance of pride in the military achievements of the Empire. There was utter ignorance of the motives and purposes of the present English government. But there was also the independence and "insolence" of the Yankees, their free and easy attitude toward British official dignity, their insistence upon reasons why, and their assumption of knowledge and ability quite beyond anything their experience in military matters justified.
And these little irritations grew and were magnified in little minds until the manner of the Yankee salute itself became a mote in the British eye.
I have heard the most caustic and untrue criticism of American soldiers from the lips of English officers whose rank should in itself have been guaranty that they would not descend to this. I have heard it hinted at a score of times by petty officers who out of consideration for my presence did not pursue the subject to its commonplace ends. And repeatedly members of the new British army that had never seen the Yanks at all said to me in all friendliness: "What a pity that your men out here were not real Americans, that they were foreigners, and that they gave America such a black eye by their conduct."
This was a direct echo of the campaign of vilification of the American soldier which was carried on within their own circles by certain British officers of the North Russian Expeditionary Force.
I overheard some English soldiers singing a parody of "Over There," of which I can only remember "The Yanks are running, the Yanks are running everywhere," and the last line "And they didn't do a damn thing about it over there." This was in Archangel. There were no Yankee soldiers about. They were at the front. The singing which had been in a subdued tone was stopped immediately when my presence was observed and when we had finished a little conversation the Tommies sang "Over There," and they sang it straight. There was no anti-Yank feeling in these men. They had genuine admiration for the Yankee soldiers. They had picked up the little seeds of antipathy from some of their officers.
As a matter of fact the American soldier in North Russia fought well. He drove the Bolsheviki 427 versts south of Archangel before winter set in, and then took up winter quarters and prepared for defense. Constant patrolling had to be done, and expeditions had to be made against the Bolshevik villages that flanked us on both sides and constantly threatened our rear. All this was for the most part true of seven fronts between which there was no connection or communication except by going back to the base.
Captain Odyard of Company A was decorated by the British government, and the company was praised for its gallant work at Ustpadenga and Vistafka, and yet the British Tommies of the new army asked me in July: "Why was it that the Yanks turned tail at Ustpadenga?"
The charges made by the British that the American soldiers were unreliable and mutinous were founded correctly on the mental attitude of the American soldier and upon the things he said. He hated the expedition and its management. But those charges were not fairly founded upon anything that the American soldier did. There was an instance of one company refusing at one time to go to the front. It was but a temporary refusal. They went. There were several parallel instances when British and Canadian and French soldiers resorted to similar semi-mutiny. It was always momentary. They always eventually went forward with the unequal fight despite the inhuman conditions. The dissatisfied and unhappy soldier was not yellow. He may have had some sympathy for the Bolsheviki whose country he was unwillingly invading. He certainly felt that the invasion was a crime. But he was not yellow.[#] He obeyed orders. He fought splendidly. He went to his death. He held his post. He cursed the British and did his duty. He killed Bolsheviki, plenty of them, not knowing why.
[#] The report of the Judge Advocate General gives a number of cases of American soldiers who were convicted by court-martial of having been guilty of self-inflicted wounds. The number accused of this was lamentably large. Even if larger in proportion, however, than in any other army in the world war, the reflective mind is forced to ask the question: Why?
VIII
"AMERICA DOBRA"
There was one thing in North Russia that touched every American where every normal man is sentimental. There was a passion for America. In every log house there was love for America. In the hearts of the people in every village there was moving what Benjamin Kidd calls "the emotion of the ideal."
We could not understand it at first. Every peasant greeted us with "America dobra," which is not good Russian, but a sort of slang phrase meaning that America is all right. And now and then one would step up a little nearer and in a more subdued tone say that some other country was not all right.
We suspected at first that he was playing a double game. We remembered the man who walks like a bear. We smiled cynically and handed him a cigarette. But we did him an injustice.
[image]The church at Yemetskoye is visible for many miles up the Dvina.Shenkursk is a quiet and romantic spot on the Vaga River.
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The church at Yemetskoye is visible for many miles up the Dvina.Shenkursk is a quiet and romantic spot on the Vaga River.
One heavily whiskered old peasant of Kitsa made me see this injustice. We had crawled into Kitsa on the second night after the evacuation of Shenkursk, with the weather about twenty below zero and bringing with us ninety-seven wounded on sleds. The senior medical officer had selected the best houses in Kitsa for hospital purposes, and one could never forget how cheerfully on ten minutes' notice those peasant people got themselves and their things out of the way and helped to get the patients in and warm and fed. Two of these houses belonged to my bewhiskered friend. He was something of a magnate in Kitsa. And it turned out that we were to use his houses for hospital purposes for months after that night, sending him and his on their northward way, for safety in the company of refugees from seven other villages. His property interests in Kitsa, however, were too important in his old life to be ignored and in a few days he was back with a sled convoy as a common driver, a labor which he persisted in as long as the fortunes of war permitted for the sake of the opportunity it gave him to look things over. Knowing that the hospital was an American affair the old man was quite delighted that his houses had been chosen for this purpose.
"America dobra," he said to me exultantly.
One day I happened to discover that in both houses the private rooms in which the precious family possessions had been stored and secured by heavy padlocks had been broken open and the contents looted and despoiled. Most of the fabrics and silverware and family gods pulled out of trunks and bureaus were of no use or interest to soldiers and had been thrown on the floor and trampled underfoot. It was wanton and heartless, and believing that our boys had at least had a hand in it I was ashamed and chagrined. It was painful to remember the gleam of faith in the old Mongolian eyes when he said "America dobra."
When he came again and I saw him the gloom on his face was terrible. He had seen the wreck. Apologetically I offered my condolences: "America ne dobra." "No," he said slowly in Russian, "no, war is at fault. War is not good. America dobra."
So I had to think again. I hadn't seen far enough into the soul behind this bushy face. And I didn't smile cynically as I handed him the cigarette.
After a while we learned to discriminate between "Amerikanski" and "Amerika." The peasants often handed us personal compliments, but we learned that when they praised America they were not talking about us but about an idea, an ideal, a dream—would I could say a fact!
These Russian peasants have not read American history. They do not know American politics. Most of them probably have not read five hundred words about America in all their lives. But they have heard and talked about America some, and thought about America more. Perhaps there are many well-read Americans who could profitably think about America more, even at a loss of time to read. And now the moujik of North Russia and his wife and children have all of them seen Americans—real live ones—and liked them.
How much the Russian peasant liked the American soldier it is a little difficult for me to convey without seeming to exaggerate. I was skeptical about it for months. It might be bear love. He was always begging for cigarettes, and one could easily see through his cupidity and simple craft. But I saw American soldiers billeted in Russian homes and mixing with the Russians so much that I am sure that I know the true sentiments in this case. I have been asked by English soldiers more than once: "Why is it that the Russians like the Yankees so much better than they do us?"
I asked this question, without the comparison, of an intelligent looking Russian soldier: "Why do you Russians like the Yanks so well?" "Because they shake hands like men," he answered thoughtfully. "Because they treat us as equals. Because they are good to the Russian people," and the next day when we were talking about the same subject he said: "It is because they represent America to us that we like the Yankee soldiers."
Yet there was another side to this picture. When first I came to Archangel there was in all people a wonderful faith in Mr. Wilson. I marveled how all these Russians could have learned so much about him. They knew what he had said. They knew what he stood for before the world. I wondered if the people at home knew as well. Pictures of the American President soon made their appearance and were given great prominence throughout the city and in every village. I was calling on the editor of a Russian newspaper hundreds of miles up the river one day. He could use a few English words and I a few Russian. Mr. Wilson's picture hung over his desk. "The friend of the Russian people," he said, pointing to the picture, and as he looked at it tears slowly gathered. Turning toward me he said brokenly: "He is the one man in all the world who can lead Russia out of her troubles." And I gathered that one reason for this faith was because the Bolsheviki respected and feared Mr. Wilson. This man was on the Bolshevik black list. His paper was radically socialistic, however, and the editor was quite distrustful of the results of the Allied expedition. But he believed in Mr. Wilson. "He will soon speak," he said, "and then all Russia will follow him."
That was in December. In June I met this editor in Archangel. His home and printing plant had long been in the hands of the Bolsheviki. There was pathetic sadness in his face as he told me of the universal hopelessness of the people. I boomed the League of Nations. It would cure the wrongs, it would become the guide and instrument of salvation. But there was no response of hope. "We have lost Mr. Wilson and there is no hope. But after we are all killed off in this mad and hopeless struggle, Russia will rise out of the ruins and show the way of real democracy."
IX
AMERICA EXIT
When it was openly announced that the American troops were to be withdrawn from North Russia the Bolshevik propaganda took every possible advantage of it, claiming that President Wilson was now their friend and America would soon recognize their government. A certain type of Englishman also made use of the opportunity to call the attention of the Russians to the fact that their much praised American friends were now leaving them to the mercy of the Bolsheviki except for the greater friendship of England for Russia. England would not desert Russia. We felt great uncertainty at this time. Not a man of us had one authorized word of explanation to make. Our government was silent. Our enemies were noisy. But the Russian peasant never wavered a hair's-breadth in his faith in the friendship of America. If the Americans were going home then that was the best thing to do. If the English were staying then perhaps that was not the best thing to do.
And when the departure took place and the Yankees packed up their old kit-bags for home they were given the warmest good-bys and God-bless-yous in Russian, and there was no indication of resentment at being left in a bad predicament.
I stood on the bank of the Emtsa River when three platoons of Company K embarked on a barge and waved their farewells to the theater of war. I was the only American left behind. On the river bank nearly the entire population of Yemetskoye were assembled, dressed in their best clothes and giving every possible evidence of their regard and esteem for these boys. As the barge swung down the river with the soldiers singing "Keep the home fires burning," I saw many a handkerchief wiping tears away on the river bank, and the head man of the Zemstvo Upravda, who stood beside me all dressed up in a white shirt, had tears in his eyes too as he grasped my hand and said again as he had said repeatedly before: "Amerikanski dobrey."
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.
[image]The new British army entered Archangel in June with great pomp and ceremony.The Duma building at Archangel was decorated in honor of the new army that came to finish the Bolsheviki.
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The new British army entered Archangel in June with great pomp and ceremony.The Duma building at Archangel was decorated in honor of the new army that came to finish the Bolsheviki.
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 régimé 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.
The British lack of respect for the Russian character.
4. The British tactlessness in dealing with the Russians.
The stupid propaganda conducted by the British.
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.