e doughboy had much to justify his feeling.

V

WHY AMERICAN TROOPS WERE SENT TO RUSSIA

This Was A Much Mooted Question Among Soldiers--Partisan Politicians
Attacked With Vitriol--Partisan Explanations Did Not Explain--Red
Propaganda Helped Confuse The Case--Russians Of Archangel, Too, Were
Concerned--We Who Were There Think Of Those Pitiable Folk And Their
Hopeless Military And Political Situation That Tried Our Patience And
That Of The Directors Of The Expedition Who Undoubtedly Knew No Better
Than We Did.

To many people in America and England and France the North Russian
Expedition appears to have been an unwarrantable invasion of the land of
an ally, an ally whose land was torn by internal upheavals. It has been
charged that commercial cupidity conceived the campaign. Men declare
that certain members of the cabinet of Lloyd George and of President
Wilson were desirous of protecting their industrial holdings in North
Russia.

The editors of this work can not prove or disprove these allegations nor
prove or disprove the replies made to the allegations. We have not the
time or means to do so even if our interests, political or otherwise,
should prompt us to try it. From discussion of the partisan attacks on
and defense of the administration's course of action toward Russia in
1918-19, both of which are erratic and acrimonious, we plead to be
excused.

We shall tell the story of the genesis of the expedition as well as we
can. We do not profess to know all about it. It will be some time before
the calm historian can possess himself of all the facts. Till such time
we hope that this brief statement will stand. We offer it hesitatingly
with keen consciousness of the danger that it will probably suit neither
of the two parties in controversy over the sending of troops to North
Russia.

But we offer this straightforward story confidently to our late
comrades. They have entrusted us with the duty of writing the history of
what they did in North Russia as their bit in the Great World War. And
we know our comrades, at least, and we hope the general reader, too,
will credit us with writing in sincerity and good faith.

Early in 1918, for the Allied forces, it looked dark. The Germans were
able to neglect the crumbled-in Eastern Front and concentrate a tornado
drive on the Western Front. It was at last realized that the controlling
Bolshevik faction in Russia was bent on preventing the resumption of the
war on