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"This war was one of the most unjust ever waged. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies."

From Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Commenting on the war with Mexico.

ARCHANGEL

THE AMERICAN WAR WITH RUSSIA

I

ARCHANGEL AND GALLIPOLI

"Theirs not to reason why; Theirs but to do and die."

Many people have asked me about the Russian campaign, why American soldiers went to Siberia, and what they did after they got there, for the general notion seems to be that Russia and Siberia are synonymous, and that the Russian Expedition, whatever its hazy purpose was, was centered about Vladivostok, and that in this far eastern port, a few American and Allied soldiers "marked time," while their comrades on the Western Front fought out, and eventually conquered, in the greatest of all wars.

One American officer was actually ordered to join his command at Archangel, "via Vladivostok," and the order was issued by the War Department of the United States. Six thousand miles of inaccessible territory separated these two Russian ports, and the average American soldier who went out from Archangel in the fall of 1918, and, during the desolate winter months that followed, fought for his life along the Vologda railway, or far up the Dvina river, or in the snows of Pinega and Onega valleys, never knew that Brigadier General William S. Graves of the United States army, with thirteen hundred eighty-eight regulars and forty-three officers, had landed at Vladivostok on 4th September, 1918, and remained there after the Archangel fiasco had terminated. There was no conscious liaison between this American company of the far East and that of the far North, each performing burlesque antics in fantastic sideshows, while in the West, the greatest drama of all time was in its denouement, and a tense world trembled as it watched.

Whether there was any political connection between the Archangel Expedition and the Vladivostok Expedition is for the statesmen to answer. Surely there never was any military connection. Obviously, there never could be any support or communication between the two forces, and the American soldier at the Arctic Circle who was not told the reasons why he faced death and unknown dangers there, and why he was weakened and broken, and made old by privation and intense cold, never knew that there was a Siberian Expedition, and does not know even to this day.

So I have thought it worth while to tell, as faithfully as I could, the story of this strange war of North Russia, an insignificant flickering in the glare of the mighty world conflict, but inspiring in its human significance, its exploits of moral strength and sheer resolution and godlike courage. I have considered the campaign as a trial by ordeal of American manhood, that tested our souls to the depths, like Gallipoli tested the British. It was like Gallipoli in the hopeless odds encountered at every turn, in the vague outline of the commitment at the outset; in its distressing losses; its hardships and privations; its tragical ending.

But it was very vitally unlike Gallipoli, because in the war with Russia the soldier never knew why. The Australians, in their effort to force the Dardanelles, were exalted by the belief that theirs was an important operation in the war, and the British soldier went to battle the Turks, convinced that if he died, it was to save some little spot in a Cheshire or Sussex village, which to him meant England. It was a holy war, and men were fired with the high, selfless devotion of the Crusaders. An arrogant, brutal power swaggered abroad, menacing liberty, and the home and all things of the spirit. If German Imperialism engulfed civilization, there would be nothing left to live for anyway.

But there were no such reflections to sustain the soldier in Russia. The Armistice came, and he remembers the day as one of sanguinary battle, when his dwindling numbers suffered further grievous losses, and he was sniped at, stormed with shrapnel and shaken by high explosive shells. He heard of the cessation of blood-letting in France and Belgium, but for many desolate, despairing months, he stood to his guns, witnessing his comrades killed and mutilated, the wounded lying in crude, dirty huts, makeshifts of dressing stations, then in sledges, dragged many excruciating miles over the snow to the rear, where often they got little better attention than at the front lines. He knew his physical strength was failing under the unrelieved monotony of the Arctic exploration ration; he saw others with scabies and disgusting diseases of malnutrition, and wondered how long before he too would be in the same way. He felt his sanity reeling in the short-lived, murky, winter days, the ever encircling menace of impending disaster and annihilation. He asked his officers why he fought, and why he was facing an enemy vastly superior to him in strength and equipment and armament, and why he was separated from his family and home and the ways of life, and when the end would come. But his officers were silent under this inquisition. They asked the same questions themselves, and got no reply. The colonel who commanded this fated regiment told his soldiers that he could give no reason for them to oppose the enemy other than that their lives and those of the whole expedition depended upon successful resistance.

So soldierlike, he "carried on," while the dreary skies above him menaced death, and death stalked the encompassing forests of the scattered front lines, and the taint of death was in the air he breathed.

In the end, and when nearly all hope had fled, he returned homeward, stricken in health and dazed in spirit, where people moved as before, and were agitated by the same concerns, as if nothing had occurred to upset the whole scheme of things and uproot forever the old standards of values and ambition and morality. They noticed a queer look in his eyes and that he was customarily silent, often introspective. They manifested a casual interest in his great adventure. They never could understand.

Both expeditions were conceived by the British High Command and both were conducted by the execution of British military orders. Perhaps therein is the underlying philosophy of North Russia and Gallipoli; this attachment of the British mind to an astricted faith in England and her imperial destiny to rule the peoples of the world, contemptuous of obstacles and difficulties and perils in unknown, alien lands that appear very real to other than British mental processes.

"We'll just rush up there and re-establish the great Russian army—reorganize the vast forces of the Tsar," said an ebullient officer in England, wearing the red tabs and hatband of the General Staff. "One good Allied soldier can outfight twenty Bolsheviks," was the usual boast of the Commanding Officer in the early days of the fighting.

And it was a boast that was made good in the furious winter combats, when, standing at bay, the scattered companies, with no place to retreat, save the open snow, stood off many times their number of the enemy. In these decisive trials, the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon ever asserted its superiority, but one to twenty is not a very comfortable ratio upon which to form an offensive campaign. And the war against Russia was conceived as an offensive campaign, whatever it turned out to be.