Lewis E. Jahns

“ Inform our troops that all America resounds with praise of the splendid record that the American Expeditionary Forces have made. The reputation of the American soldier for valor and for splendid discipline under the most trying conditions has endeared every member of the Expeditionary Forces not only to his relatives and friends but to all Americans. Their comrades in France have not forgotten that the Americans in Northern Russia are part of the American Expeditionary Forces, and we are proud to transmit to you the generous praise of the American people. ”

“ They cannot be blamed for coming out of Moscow convinced that the heart of the Slavic people is not in this Bolshevik class hatred and class dictatorship stuff of Lenin and Trotsky; equally convinced that the heart of the Russian people is not unfearful of the attempted return of the old royalist bureaucrats to their baleful power, and convinced that the heart of this great, courteous, patient, longsuffering Slavic people is groping for expression of self-government, and that America is their ideal—a hazy ideal and one that they aspire toward only in general outlines. ”

“ This road ends in a half mile of drifts before a town on the bank of a tributary to the Dvina. We descend to the river.
So there you are, steamboat, till the spring break-up frees you and then you will steam up and down the river with logs and lumber and hemp and iron and glass and soldiers perhaps—but no Americans, I hope. What is this train that has come through our point? Bolshevik? Those uniforms of the Russki M. P.’s are alarmingly like those we have been shooting at. Go on with your prisoners. Now it is noon. The sun is only a hand high in the sky. The day has grown grey and colder. ”

“ Hold up your chins and push out your chests and bear your arms proudly when passing among the Russian people. You represent the nation that was slow to wrath but irresistible in might when its soldiers hit the Hindenburg Line. Make Russians respect your military bearing. The loyal will breathe more freely because you have come. The treacherous Bolo sympathizers will be compelled to wipe off their scowls and will fear to try any dirty work. ”

“ Comrade, don’t do it!
“You are kidding yourself that you are fighting for your country. The capitalist class places arms in your hands. Let the workers cease using these weapons against each other, and turn them on their sweaters. The capitalists themselves have given you the means to overthrow them, if you had but the sense and the courage to use them. There is only one thing that you can do: arrest your officers. Send a commission of your common soldiers to meet our own workingmen, and find out yourselves what we stand for.” ”

“ On Sundays and holidays, even in these times of hardship, the native dress of the northern people is seen in much of its former interesting beauty. The women and girls in full skirts, white, red or yellow waists with laced bodices of darker color, fancy head-cloths and startling shawls, tempt the stares of the foreigner as they pass him on their way to church or to a dance. The men usually content themselves with their cleanest breeches, a pair of high boots of beautiful leather, an embroidered blouse buttoning over the heart, a broad belt, and a woolly angora cap without a visor. ”

“ Borne tenderly in the arms of his own men to a sleigh which was gently drawn to Chanova and thence to Chekuevo, he rallied from his great loss of blood. Apparently his chances for recovery were good. He sat up in bed, ate with relish and exchanged greetings with his devoted “H” company men who to a man would gladly have changed places with him—what a fine comradeship there was between citizen-officer and citizen-soldier. Contrary to expectations Phillips was soon moved from Chekuevo to Onega for safety and for better care. But very soon after reaching Onega hemmorhage began again. ”

“ That rude comfort would last till some British officer decided to “put on a bit of a show,” or till the Reds in overwhelming numbers or with tremendous artillery pounding or both combined, compelled the Yanks to fight themselves into a new position and go through the Arctic rigors of trench work again in zero weather for a few days. The cartoonist knows the unconquerable spirit of humor with which the American meets his desperate situations; for he puts into the soldier’s mouth words that show that although he may have more of a job than he bargained for, he can joke with his buddie about it. ”

“ And Alabernarde, sad-faced old Major du Battalion, often we see you passing among the French and American soldiers along with Major Nichols. Your eyes are crow-tracked with experiences on a hundred fields and your bronzed cheek hollowed from consuming service in the World War. We see the affectionate glances of poilus that leap out at sight of you. You hastened the equipment of American soldiers with the automatics they so much needed and helped them to French ordnance stores generously. ”

“ He swung his sacred censer pot over each body and though we understood no word we knew he was doing reverence to the spirit of sacrifice shown by our fallen comrades. There in the darkness by the edge of the forest, the priest and his ceremony, the firing squad’s volley, and the bugler’s last call, all united to make that an allied funeral. The American soldier and the priest and his pitiful people had really begun to spin out threads of sympathy which were to be woven later into a fabric of friendliness. The doughboy always respected the honest peasant’s religious customs. ”

“ Here the trail is bareswept by the wind from across the river. Again it is snow blown and men and ponies slacken speed in the drifts. Early sets the sun, but the white snow affords us light enough. The point out of sight in front, the rear party is lost behind the curve. Tiny specks on the ice below and distant are interpreted to be sledges bound for some river port. Nets are exposed to the air and wait now for June suns to move out the fetters of ice. Decent looking houses and people face the strange cavalcade as it passes village after village. ”

“ Americans, as a rule, are more popular in Russia than any other nationality. The American soldier in North Russia by his sympathetic treatment of the villagers, his ability to mix and mingle in a homey fashion with the Russian peasants in their family life and daily toil, and particularly the American soldier’s love of the little Russian children, and the astonishing affection displayed by Russian children toward the Americans furnishes one of the most illuminating examples of what was and may be accomplished through measures of peaceful intercourse. ”

“ The British War Office methods of stimulating enthusiasm in the campaign against the Bolsheviki was a miserable failure. Distortion and deception will fail in the end. You can’t fool all the soldiers all the while. Truth will always win in the end. The soldier has right to it. He fights for truth; he should have its help.
Our own military and government authorities missed the main chance to help the soldiers in North Russia and gain their most loyal service in the expedition. Truth, not silence with its suspected acquiescence with British propaganda and methods of dealing with Russians ”

“ It is the free institutions of the country that brought us victory, not the so called ‘education’ gotten in the barracks.
“I admired the national army man in fight, because I loved him as a citizen. And unless he changes as a citizen, he will not change as a fighter. To me the citizen and soldier are synonymous. A good citizen makes a good soldier, and vice versa. Let the American citizen remain as free-loving and self-reliant as he is now, and he will make one of the best soldiers in the world. ”

“ Even if we knew nothing about the bayonets and machine guns and firing squads and prisons, we would not agree to the reasoning that the Bolshevik government is right just because it is in power. We prefer the reasoning of the greatest man whom America has produced, Abraham Lincoln, whose words, which we quote, seem to us to exactly fit the present Russian situation:
“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only free sovereign of a free people. ”

“ These amazing features of the constitution and laws enacted under the constitution speak more eloquently than any words that could be used to amplify them in portraying the hideousness of a system of government that, if permitted to continue, must inevitably crush out the home in large part by the flippancy with which marriage and divorce are regarded, by the refusal of permitting the land to be held in private ownership, and by refusing the parent the right at death to pass on to his wife or to his children the fruits of years of toil. ”

“ In a government that has been heralded so widely as being the most profound experiment in democracy that has ever been undertaken, we would naturally expect that the franchise would be along lines that would recognize all mankind embraced within the citizenship of the nation as standing upon an equal footing. The United States has for many years adhered to that principle. It was that principle largely for which our fathers died when they established our government, and yet that principle seems foreign to the way of thinking of Lenin and Trotsky as they shaped the Russian constitution. ”

“ During this maneuver one of their bravest and ablest commanders, by the name of Foukes, was killed, which was an irreparable loss to the enemy. Foukes was without question one of the most competent and aggressive of the Bolo leaders. He was a very powerful man physically and had long years of service as a private in the old Russian Army, and was without question a most able leader of men. During this four days’ attack and counter attack he had led his men by a circuitous route through the forests, wading in swamps waist deep, carrying machine guns and rations. ”

“ War is not fought in a comfortable parlor or club-room, but some of the tales which slipped through the censor from spineless cry-babies in our ranks of high and low rank, and were published in the States and then in clippings found their way back to North Russia, lamented the fact of the hardship of war in such insidious manner as to furnish the most formidable foe to morale with which the troops had to cope while in Russia. The Americans only laughed at Bolshevik propaganda which they clearly saw through. ”

“ Chantrill, the pleasant British intelligence officer who acted as interpreter, volunteered to go as guide although he had no familiarity with the swamp-infested forest area. It was dark long before we reached the broad cutting. No one will forget the ordeal of that night march. Could not see the man ahead of you. Ears told you he was tripping over fallen timber or sloshing in knee-deep bog hole. Hard breathing told the story of exertion. Only above and forward was there a faint streak of starlight that uncertainly led us on and on south toward the vicinity of the Bolo positions. ”

“ To the soldiers of the great war—inspired from the outset by a dim foresight of this stupendous result—we now pay honor; and in particular, to the dead whose graves are before us.
“‘These men, like their comrades elsewhere in the most endless line of battle, have struck their blow against the common enemy. They have had the added privilege of assisting in the most tragic, and at the same time the most hopeful, upheaval for which the war has been the occasion. Autocracy in Russia is gone. A new democracy is in the struggle of its birth. ”

“ To call the roll of one of those heroic fighting companies of doughboys or engineers or medical or hospital companies in the olive drab would evidence by the names of the men and officers that the best bloods of Europe and of Asia were all pulsing in the American ranks.
The presence of British, French and American war vessels and the first small bodies of troops encouraged the Murmansk Russian authorities to declare their independence of the Red Moscow crowd and to throw in their lot with the Allies in the work of combatting the agents of the German War Office in the North. ”