Part 3

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.

[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 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.