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withdrawn from North Russia the Bolshevik propaganda took every possible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.
[Illustration: 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 regime that
they went far to dispel all illusions about the Military Intervention
that might have remained in the peasant mind.
When night after night the firing squad took out its batches of victims
it mattered not that no civilians were permitted on the streets. There
were thousands of listening ears to hear the rat-tat-tat of the machine
guns, and no morning paper could have given all the gruesome details
more complete circulation than they received in the regular process of
universal news gossip by which Archangel keeps itself in
up-to-the-minute touch with all local affairs.
The details were well known. Some one had seen it all. Some one also
thought he knew who were to be included in the new batch tonight. These
little gossip groups discussed freely the merits of the shooting and the
charges. The Military Intervention tried to prevent this but it
couldn't. Every victim had friends. These friends and their friends
rapidly were made enemies of the Military Intervention. And this enmity
naturally spelled Bolshevism, as far as the Military Intervention was
concerned.
I witnessed the anguish of one woman whose husband and father were both
in prison as suspects. They had both won honor in the war against
Germany. The husband had been wounded. The charges of Bolshevist
sympathy on which they were arrested were based on slight evidence. She
could not visit them. Only through the underground methods of the native
Russians could she learn anything about them. She, too, listened every
night for the rat-tat-tat until she could bear it no longer. So she was
arrested a few days before I left Archangel for having said something
for which the Military Intervention could not stand. Another Bolshevik.
If the Russian soldiers whom we organized, equipped, and paid to fight
the Bolsheviki went over as they did in whole companies to the
Bolsheviki it was not because of any lure or reward that our enemies
held out to them. It was because we in our stupidity thought of them as
"swine" and employed such methods of administration and control in our
Military Intervention as they had been only too familiar with in the old
days of Tsarism. We failed to win their hearts or their confidence. We
destroyed all their illusions about us. And they turned "Bolshevik."
Of course English and American soldiers did not turn Bolshevik, but it
was startling sometimes to hear their exclamations of sympathy with the
Bolsheviki and their protests against the whole fact and practice of the
Military Intervention. This was not unusual among the Americans and
Canadians of the winter army and was so common among the new army that I
felt at one time they were more likely to make trouble for the Military
Intervention than the Russians were.
A gentleman who was very much in sympathy with the Military Intervention
was lecturing to an audience of these men one night in Archangel on "Why
are we here?" His lecture had been O.K.'d carefully by the Intelligence
Department and was considered safe, in fact, most excellent. After the
lecture the men were given an opportunity to ask questions, and some of
the questions they asked were, "Is England going to take the port of
Murmansk?" "Did a British syndicate get control of the lumber industry
of Archangel?" "Who cashed in on the new rouble deal?" "Are we trying to
set up a monarchy here in Russia?" This from British Tommies was too
much. The Intelligence Department sent around word the next morning
that this lecture had better not be given any more. What the troops
needed was entertainment and amusement.
*XIII*
*THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN*
The relations between the English and the Russians were not on the whole
pleasant or friendly. The English themselves do not know this. So long
as they were not shooting each other there was nothing missing in the
estimation of the average English soldier in his relations with the
Russians. Feeling at heart the pressure of the white man's burden he
had great scorn for the white Russians who now had added to its weight.
I have heard English officers curse Russian soldiers so violently that I
knew they were giving themselves boldness under cover of their foreign
tongue, and I knew too that the soldiers were refraining from protest
under the pretense of not understanding. I once heard an English
captain call three Russian captains "filthy swine" in their hearing and
one of the Russians afterward told me in perfectly good English that he
had frequently been so abused by Englishmen who thought he did not
understand their words. This word "swine," in fact, was the favorite
appellation of the English for the Russians.
Since it is necessary in this writing to generalize about the Englishmen
and British officers somewhat I must say here that there were among them
some splendid men. I had the privilege of knowing a few who are among
the finest men to be met anywhere--tactful, human, sympathetic, and
strong. But these were too small a minority.
The expedition called for military skill and it called for leadership,
sympathy, social skill. There was a sad failure to realize that an
expedition of this sort is bound to run into social and political
problems that are quite as important, perhaps more so, than mere
military practice. The management of this campaign has ignored all
social and political considerations that might have contributed to its
success or failure and has blundered stupidly whenever these matters
have forced themselves to the front. And the military blunders have
been so obvious that they have been openly acknowledged in part and are
on record presumably in the war office today.
The failure of the North Russian Expedition was the failure of the
British to make friends of the Russian people. There was no purpose of
conquest here. The purpose of his government was to be helpful to the
Russian people. But the British soldier does not think in these terms.
He had been a pupil in the school of imperialism too long to become a
conscious knight-errant of the League of Nations so suddenly. He took
his imperialism to Russia with him, and Russia would not stand for it.
He failed in Russia and the causes of his failure were:
1. The Russian distrust and dislike of the British.
2. The British inability to understand the Russian mind.
3. The British lack of respect for the Russian character.
4. The British tactlessness in dealing with the Russians.
5. The stupid propaganda conducted by the British.
6. The British war-weariness.
Probably the last of these reasons is the one that will seem most
important to those who have been hearing the noise made by English
politicians, but I believe it to be the least. It did not prevent the
sending out of that fine new army with its marvelous supplies of stores
and equipment. It did not spoil those precious plans for getting to
Petrograd before winter. For it was neither British Labor nor the
Bolsheviki that drove the British army from North Russia. It was the
peasant population of North Russia that did this.
In April, May, and June I was told dozens of times by Russians that if
the Americans left Russia, the English would be compelled to go. They
did not believe the British would withdraw voluntarily. They expected
to have to fight to drive them out. Some of them said they would ask
the Bolsheviki to help them. Constantly new causes of irritation arose
between the military and the peasants and violent expressions of
military disgust with "swine" were increasingly heard. When things went
wrong all blame was laid on the Russians. And it was laid on them in
such a way as to increase the malady. Each day bitterness, distrust,
and resentment increased on both sides. In August a British colonel
said to me that he feared nothing from our enemies the Bolsheviki but
everything from our friends the Russians, and he doubted if they would
let us get out without another great tragedy of treachery. In August
also a Russian officer told a friend of mine that the quicker the
English got away the surer they were of getting away safely.
No Russian believed in the disinterestedness of England's motives. All
kinds of stories were invented and believed as to the concessions and
ports she was to receive, as to the debt Russia would owe her after the
war, and as to King George's interest in the restoration of the Czar to
his throne. Bolshevik propaganda was not idle and was all too easily
believed.
The Russians knew, too, that the English liked the monarchists, took
them into their confidence, had them to dinner, danced with them, and
they came to believe that with England in North Russia the revolution
was lost.