AFFAIRS IN RUSSIA
Johnson, Hiram
Affairs In Russia California Senator Asks For Recall of American Troops--Wants World Peace. By Hiram Johnson. (Speech In United States Senate.) La Follette's has from the beginning of the Russian...
...Bullard and his force transferred to Vladivostok from which point he began working back into the European Russia with the allies...
...During this critical time in Russia the Germans were advancing through Finland...
...These troops are now under English command, and the Americans who are in the vicinity of Archangel, like good soldiers, are obeying their English commanders...
...And the heaviest responsibility, the wrong which can never be atoned, is the shedding of American blood in Russia...
...I am stating now something of the truth which we have carefully concealed during these months...
...You may say that the exigency and the emergency justified the government in using every means in its power to continue Russia's resistance to Germany...
...The Central empires, in the language of the President, are in process of liquidation...
...It will be the intellectuals and the bourgeoise...
...that the allies were correct in their position in utterly refusing to deal, or to talk, or to communicate with this awful soviet government...
...She has been so thoroughly disabled that she could not, a few days ago, resist a small advancing Polish army...
...Red Cross received effective, and invaluable assistance from Soviet authorities at Murmansk as well as everywhere else in protection and transportation of supplies...
...On the 4th day of December we were asked to declare war against Austria, and, in the course of the address demanding a declaration of war against Austria, the president adopted the formula of the Bolsheviki of Russia, the formula under which they were making peace with Germany...
...If it had not been for this criminal policy of intervention, and this ring of steel that prevented food getting into internal Russia, Lenine and Trotsky, in my opinion, long ago would have fallen and the Bolsheviki would have been at an end...
...AND what has been the result of it all...
...Shenkursk," replied Gen...
...her towns occupied...
...The action of the peace conference thus far leaves these American boys where we discovered them a month and a half ago, and, so far as they are concerned, unless we take it for granted that they are to be withdrawn immediately after the 15th of February, their situation is no different than when this subject first was broached...
...Our advance constantly into the interior, of course, makes it obvious that the guarding of supplies for Russians themselves was the veriest kind of pretense...
...do not care to speculate upon what might have transpired if the appeals of the Englishmen and Americans who were then in Petrograd to their governments had been successful...
...The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy...
...This committee subject, however, control Murmansk Soviet...
...her ordnance has been relinquished...
...Of necessity it must respond in definite and general terms...
...Two months and a half have passed...
...What steps could the Government of Great Britain undertake in order to assure this aid and thereby to undermine the foundation of the rumors of the hostile plans against Russia on the part of Great Britain in the nearest future...
...If you believe in war with Russia, why not introduce an appropriate resolution and permit congress to vote upon it in accordance with the constitution, and permit our people to discuss it...
...The messages were sent not only with the approval of the Government, but through the Government's agencies and at the Government's expense...
...The distinguished chairman of the Foreign Relations committee endeavors to make explanations of our policy with Russia, but hastens to assert that he does not speak officially, or authoritatively...
...On Feb...
...We were landing troops for the sole purpose of guarding military stores which subsequently we would die-liver to the Russians themselves...
...but is it because of the fact that no answer can be made as to the position of these troops or their military activities...
...Raymond Robins concerning the closing paragraph in the story of George Creel recently published, The closing paragraph of Mr...
...Rescue our own democracy...
...We were marching down from Archangel—and the facts will demonstrate it—that we might make conjunction with the Omsk government and might perfect the ring of steel which was thrown around interior of Russia, and which was starving innocent women and children...
...March was asked whether any recommendation had been received concerning the withdrawal of the American forces from the Archangel front...
...In all of the months prior to our intervention daily the subject of intervention was hotly discussed...
...They were whipped only when their opponents called in German troops...
...And the very act of intervention has enabled this grotesque government to last far beyond its allotted time, and to exercise its despotic sway in the name of public safety...
...Task Is Difficult I HEARD it said recently upon the floor of the Senate that the president had a most difficult task abroad...
...Our government cannot answer concerning our troops, although the great preponderance of the forces at Archangel are American...
...I read the headlines of one of the papers at that time...
...The document was handed to Raymond Robins and a companion in what was known as the office of the council of the people's commissaries, Smolney Institute, Petrograd, by Com-missaire of Foreign Affairs Trotsky, after a conference between Lenine, Trotsky and Robins...
...They will not yield either in principle or in action...
...We could not touch it, with the document before us by which war might have been renewed, and under which the Brest-Litovsk treaty might have been repudiated in the all-Russian soviet congress in the week of March 12, 1918...
...Intervention was suggested early in the year, and throughout the early months of 1918 it was a matter of common rumor and frequent discussion...
...her ordnance has been relinquished...
...Five hundred Czecho-Slovak troops in Murmansk, assisted by Soviet authorities returned to France...
...They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity...
...In its virtuous indignation it could permit no communication of ny sort, you assert, with cruelty, rapine, murder and anarchy...
...Want Socialist Aid DHE socialists and extreme radicals in New York City were importuned for messages, and most of them responded...
...From the time of the Russian revolution until long after the control of Russia by the Soviets and the cruel administration of Lenine and Trotsky, the president often spoke to Russia and the Russian people, and always in gentle, kindly, and friendly fashion...
...Germany is whipped and thoroughly whipped...
...The central empires are incapable of aggressive action now...
...We have been very tender of Finland, and a part of the hundred million dollars recently appropriated to fed Europe is to be devoted to propriated to feed Europe is to be devoted to the only soldiers who fought the advance of the Germans were the Red Guard of the Bolsheviki They whipped the White Guard, representing the so-called government of Finland, and they were forced back only when that government and the White Guard called the Germans to their aid...
...It is a historical fact as well that whenever the Red Guard fought those of their own country opposed to their revolution they won...
...and they have refused to compound their ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe...
...Early in March the soviet government officially presented to the allies certain questions, favorabl answers to which every man then in Russia agreed would prevent a ratification of the Brest-Litovsk treaty by the renewal of the war by Russia against Germany...
...But America wants peace...
...The towns mentioned in the report are so small that we can not find them on our largest maps...
...In the name of protecting military supplies which were offered to us again and again, and again, and which we could have had for the asking, we shot down Russian peasants, and our boys are shot down by them...
...I received yesterday a letter from Col...
...The Keren-sky government fell November 7, 1917, and the Soviets, with Lenine and Trotsky in command, came into power...
...2. What kind of support could be furnished in the nearest future, and on what conditions—military equipment, transportation supplies, living necessities...
...A mutual arrangement was made between the French and British and the Russian Soviets for the defence of the district of Murmansk...
...3. What kind of support would be furnished particularly and especially by the United States...
...I may think that you are entirely right in what I thus see passing through your minds...
...I decline to be frightened now by the "German menace...
...The most recent of the propaganda which has come to me is from a certain Col...
...Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace...
...We had at Shenkursk a force which, at last reports, consisted of a detachment of British, two American companies, and two Russian companies...
...If you favor armed intervention it is obvious that the scale upon which it has been undertaken is too small to accomplish lasting results...
...These troops are now under English command, and the Americans who are in the vicinity of Archangel like good soldiers, are obeying their English commanders...
...her means of transportation delivered...
...Or, perhaps, self-determi nation may have been used with the same delicate shades of meaning which have distinguished the use of "open covenants...
...Sisson...
...of the mothers and fathers and the wives of men who were drafted to fight Germany, and then, when the war with Germany was ended...
...Our only advance at Archangel was to protect military bases...
...Woodrow Wilson...
...They are for intervention, and they believe they are intervening upon a small scale, too small, as they put it now...
...It is staggering to speculate upon the number of armies and the hundreds and thousands of American boys that would be required in these 16 nations...
...The various Russians who have showered us with pamphlets of late understand the situation full well...
...The facts are: "The president's speeche were printed on the Bolsheviki government presses by special permission of that government...
...It is such a little war...
...No sooner had we landed at Archangel than we shot the soviet government there existing out of town and set up a government of our own...
...It is true, perhaps, that it is such a little war it involves ony a few hundred lives, a few hundred maimed, a few hundred American graves on Russian soil, but to me, sir, one of those lies in Russia and one of those hearts bowed in anguish in America are more precious than all of the pretense of diplomacy or the protection of any government from the just wrath of a righteous public opinion...
...We regret that space forbids its publication in full— Editor's Note...
...How the iron must enter the souls of those who have relatives there...
...A translation of the official document thus transmitted to the allies from the soviet government is as follows: In case (a) the all-Russian congress of Soviets will refuse to ratify the peace treaty with Germany, or (b) if the German government, breaking the peace treaty, will renew the offensive in order to continue its robbers' raid, or (c) if the Soviet government will be forced by the actions of Germany to renounce the peace treaty—before or after its ratification— and to renew hostilities— In all these cases it is very important for the military and political plans of the Soviet power for replies to be given to the following questions: 1. Can the Soviet government rely on the support of the United States of North America, Great Britain, and France in its struggle against Germany...
...The first of these— "Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view...
...The court organ, the New York World, says we are in Russia for the purpose of maintaining order...
...Shegovari is 20 miles north of Tania and to the right of Shenkursk...
...La Follette—"I will ask the Senator if he is not aware of the fact that Col...
...The troops at a place called Ust-Pe-denga, which I can not find on the map, were also compelled to evacuate under attacks by strong Bolshevist forces...
...Do we plan," was asked, "to reinforce the American unit in Russia in view of the fact that it seems to be retiring...
...Mr...
...Sisson had fled in terror with his panic from reading some propaganda pamphlets and papers which were the amusement and contempt of honest and informed men...
...of the mothers and fathers and the wives of the men HIRAM JOHNSON who were drafted to fight Germany, and then, when the war with Germany was ended, were forced to fight a war with Russia...
...It will not be your Lenines and your Trotskys...
...How the iron must enter the souls of those who have relatives there...
...The censored dispatches from Paris are conveying to us now the news that it is hoped the conference may conclude its labors in June and we are being prepared, apparently, for a second trip some time in the summer by our chief executive to Europe...
...This was said after two months of government by the Bolsheviki and after they had publicly proclaimed to the world their mode of government and what it was their purpose to do...
...of course, that this was a very different thing from communicating with the soviet government itself, and thus, in a measure recognizing it...
...We have had adequately demonstrated to us...
...They with Russians killed and another government set up...
...Marching and fighting with them were the Finnish White Guards...
...The chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs gravely gives his views, but prefaces them with the statement that he speaks neither officially nor authoritatively...
...The army of the Bolsheviki were called the "Red Guard...
...The German Army has been practically demobilized...
...Of necessity it must respond in indefinite and general terms...
...United States lets 'Red' send messages to Bolsheviki...
...The language of this covenant by bitter experience we have now learned is perfectly plain...
...The distinguished chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee scoffs at the idea that any war exists in Russia now, or that we are there participating in war with the Russians...
...She is suffering just retribution for her offenses...
...No answer has been made, of course, to the questions that I asked because the implication in every question is known by the department to be true...
...It was the underlying principle which stimulated our judgments and aroused our enthusiasm...
...If you favor intervention, why do you not upon this floor, by resolution or otherwise, say so...
...Mr...
...We, in the rigidity of our virtue, though asking the aid of the anarchists in our midst with the Bolsheviki over there, and though publicly proclaiming our friendship and our love, would not accept the proffer...
...Advise Favorable Response THE men who were then in Russia familiar with the situation, including the representative of England and the representative of the United States, advised their governments to respond favorably...
...Both these gentlemen say we are simply protecting supplies...
...and, more than a welcome assistance also every kind that she may need and may herself desire...
...Bring home American soldiers...
...La Follette—"And he had with him all the documents and waited here in the hope that he might have an audience with the president...
...The President's speech of Jan...
...It is of American boys and American blood I am thinking...
...The senior Senator from Idaho has been insistent in his advocacy of peace point No, 1. For it, and for the other 13 peace points, we have been told that our soldiers gladly and cheerfully fought and died in France, but the senior Senator from Idaho, and others who thought as he did, with a singular obtuseness, have insisted "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at' mean what the words import We should have known when we distinctly announced this particular point, for which our soldiers suffered and bled and died, we meant it in a Pickwickian sense only, and spoke the usual language of diplomacy...
...Apparently his argument seems to be that if the Russians had not resisted when we advanced into their territory there would not have been a conflict and no killing...
...This was so not only in Finland, but in Ukrainia, too...
...I am relating to you only the facts...
...They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind...
...All of the messages were sent by the United States government to the Bolsheviki at Petrograd...
...They telegraphed the American ambassador to get them the permission of the British high commissioner, still in Petrograd, to get on the English ice breaker, which permission I secured for them, and they were on this ice breaker dressed in English uniforms for several weeks, while the American Red Cross was doing business as usual in Moscow, and English, French, and Japanese were still working for their governments under the protection of the Bolsheviki government...
...We solemnly promised we would not intervene, and then, prating of our love for the Russian people, we did intervene...
...When last I addressed the Senate upon this subject I asked certain questions of the government...
...11, 1918, when the proceedings of the peace conference between the Germans and the Bolsheviki were fully known and understood, the president thus spoke to us: "Peoples are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference or an understanding between rivals and antagonists...
...President...
...Robins remained in Washington after his arrival from Russia, for several weeks...
...These messages were gathered by a person designated by the authorities and were sent to Washington to be forwarded through the State Department to Petrograd...
...Johnson, of California—"Yes...
...I takes it what he means is that it is just a little war, and because it is such a little war, it ought to be disregarded...
...Restore its free expression...
...If an army landed in New York, marched to Buffalo, and the people in central New York resisted and fought them, by that fact, then, New York was making war upon the invading army and the invading army was innocent of wrong...
...All these questions are conditioned with the self-understood assumption that the internal and foreign policies of the Soviet government will continue to be directed in accord with the principles of international socialism and that the Soviet government retains its complete independence of all nonsocialist governments...
...Our brave boys had a retreat many miles through the ice and the snow and the rigors of an Arctic winter...
...They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs: and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond with utter simplicity and frankness...
...The American Red Cross mission did not leave Moscow until the 6th of October and Petrograd on the 16th of October in the full protection of the Bolsheviki government, some seven months after Mr...
...I would not give an American life in Russia for all the Bolsheviki spawned by centuries of tyranny and mad with the lust of ruthless ephemeral power...
...That it would have been in derogation of our dignity and would have been an affront to civilization to have responded, or to have united with this soviet government in fighting Germany...
...that of their opponents in Finland, the "White Guard...
...They had to fight during this period in weather that few are accustomed to and none understood...
...used it, that we may, perhaps, have misunderstood it, and that self-determination really means determination by ourselves of the kind of government others should have and then impressing that kind of government upon an unwilling and a rebellious people...
...Intervention Is Protested INTERVENTION was never predicated upon the score of guarding supplies until the disingenuous August announcement of our government...
...Sisson fled from Petrograd on the 4th of March, 1918, shouting that the Germans would take the city within a few days in collusion with the Bolsheviki The American Red Cross was feeding starving children and evacuating war supplies from Petrograd under the Bolsheviki protection in quantity until the 1st of May, 1918...
...What German menace since Nov...
...With this possible explanation, we may see with greater clarity the reason for our activities in Russia...
...This soviet government to which our president for us spoke so kindly, begged us for economic aid and wished to make us the most-favored nation...
...and whatever is done concerning reinforcing the unit will be done by him...
...It involves the lives of something over 5,000 American boys only...
...It is to this phase I desire to arouse the congress and to which, if I had the power and my voice would carry I would arouse the people of the nation...
...Under attacks of 1,000 of enemy troops we retreated from Tania to a point 10 miles away therefrom...
...Near Ust-Pedenga, and later at Shegovari an enemy attack on the west was repulsed...
...They grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men everywhere...
...What a sorry spectacle we present...
...Is Marvelous Country RUSSIA, Mr...
...I take it that he is no more opposed to the league of nations than I am...
...The money for this work was drawn from the Petrograd State Bank by special O.K...
...It will be those whom we are pleased to term the very best people in Russia...
...Mr...
...The French are under no illusions in this matter...
...that Russia is making war upon us...
...Their power apparently is shattered...
...It is not the fault of those who coined the phrase, and those who have IN THE declaration published by the State Department of our intervention it was stated, "whether from Vladivostok or from Murmansk and Archangel, the only pres-ent object for which American troops will be employed will be to guard military stores which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defence...
...but we are becoming accustomed to the open diplomacy which in daily communiques with few words telling nothing soothe the perturbed spirits of the democratic peoples of the world...
...Creel is as follows: "Russia was a hard fight to lose...
...National aspirations must be respected...
...It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.' Fallen by Wayside SELF-DETERMINATION has fallen by the wayside with "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at...
...Should Japan—in consequence of an open or tacit understanding with Germany or without such an understanding—attempt to seize Vladivostock and the Eastern-Siberian Railway, which would threaten to cut off Russia from the Pacific Ocean and would greatly impede the concentration of Soviet troops toward the East about the Urals—in such case what steps would be taken by the other allies, particularly and especially by the United States, to prevent a Japanese landing on our Far East, and to insure uninterrupted communications with Russia through the Siberian route...
...I may wholly agree with you that the civilized nations of the world could not without defilement touch this awful thing in Russia...
...But our dealing with Russia and the dealings of the allies with Russia have been not only an exhibition of the crassest stupidity, but have contributed to the awful tragedy there...
...But the political control of Lenine and Trotsky abolished the freedom of the press and turned the power of the Government against us...
...It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula:" No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities.' Just because this crude formula, the instinctive judgment as to right of plain men everywhere it has been made diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia astray and the people of every other country their agents could reach, in order that a premature peace might be brought about before autocrac has been taught its final and convincing lesson and the people of the world put in control of their own destinies...
...Peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent...
...THE peace conference recently has issued a formal statement concerning Russia, which, apart from its expression of esteem and love for the Russian people, asks all of the factions to meet in the Sea of Marmora on the 15th day of February...
...Their conception of what is right, of what is humane and honorable, for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of man kind...
...Perhaps so...
...I may agree with you...
...Seventeen guns fired by the British ship Glory as salute to Russian flag...
...Our Government cannot answer concerning our troops although the great preponderance of the forces at Archangel are American...
...I do not care how you view the situation, whether you favor armed intervention or whether you do not...
...What I ask by this resolution is that our government, which shrouds itself in mystery and which will not tell us or the people its intentions or its policies, may know our opinion that our troops should be withdrawn from Russia...
...But the pitiless logic of events, the ironclad prior understandings of our allies, have lessened his labors and reduced to a minimum the subjects with which he must deal...
...Weak and vacillating, stupid, and ignorant has been our policy with Russia...
...Let us have peace and get out of Europe...
...She has been so thoroughly disabled that she could not, a few days ago, resist a small advancing Polish army...
...They were distributed under Government frank and posted on the dead walls of Petrograd by Bolsheviki posting service...
...Although the Government of the United States is unhappily not now in a position to render the direct and effective aid it would wish to render, I beg to assure the people of Russia through the Congress that it will avail itself of every opportunity to secure for Russia once more complete sovereignty and independence in her own affairs, and full restoration to her great role in the life of Europe and the Modern world...
...I would not minimize, of course, the magnitude of his task, but I have a very distinct recollection that much of it has already been agreed upon...
...It will not be first that horrible Bolsheviki...
...From this time until my departure March 22, French, British, and American military authorities in daily cooperation and complete harmony with local Soviet...
...Anyone not affected with a mental strabismus ought readily to understand that when we say "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at," we mean "secret covenants of peace, secretly arrived at," and, after their arrival doled out in homeopathic doses to an ignorant and ill-informed populace...
...Our help, therefore, to the 16 nations which would be created "in establishing themselves with ordered governments" must be the aid which our arms would give to one faction or another in these new states and I am not ready to shed American blood for any faction of any foreign State or in maintaining the government in any Baltic province...
...Prating about guarding stores at Archangel, we advanced from 100 to 300 miles from that port, took and burned little Russian towns and upset little soviet governments...
...Col...
...What hypocrisy upon our part to say to our people, and to the Russians, in our pro-nunciamento last year when we commenced to intervene, that we contemplated "no interference with the political sovereignty of Russia, no intervention in her internal affairs, not even in the local affairs of the limited areas which her military force may be obliged to occupy, and no impairment of her territorial integrity, either now or hereafter...
...The Senator from Nebraska insists our only purpose in landing at Archangel was to protect the stores...
...The allies agreed upon a British commander-in-chief, and at the last reports he was in the front lines inspecting his troops, and I assume that the military part of it is in hand...
...It is never for an instant indicated nor is the language susceptible of any such meaning that these stores were to be protected from any kind of Russians who were not acting with the Germans...
...At this time the Russian armies had practically disintegrated and the Russian Bolsheviki were negotiating with Germany...
...It is true that we are starving women and children today in Russia, and that hands are lifted in supplication to God and in cursing this country for its activities...
...The charming naivete of this must have appealed to the Bolsheviki...
...We could not be contaminated by touching such a thing, even for so good an end...
...It has become painfully clear in the last few days that by the present intervention we merely hazard the lives of our men...
...La Follette's has from the beginning of the Russian invasion been apprehensive that we were embarking on an uncharted sea with no company and no one at the helm...
...March, "as scaled on the map is apparently 190 miles from Archangel, and the allied forces representing four governments, and the Russians, five governments, have up there a force large enough to reenforce those men or have them fall back on them and hold the situation...
...A very different proposition, you insist, between the government itself communicating with the soviet government, and the anarchists of New York communicating with their comrades in Petrograd...
...The central empires are incapable of aggressive action now...
...I will not be put in the attitude of defending in any degree the soviet power of Lenine and Trotsky...
...They make no pretense that they wish supplies guarded...
...Let American life, social and economic, be American again...
...8, was sent over the private wire of the Bolsheviki government to Brest-Litovsk by order of Lenine end I secured the order for its transmission in the presence of Mr...
...My prime interest and concern yet are these American boys...
...Mr...
...It has achieved its great primal idealistic purpose and crushed a ruthless militarism...
...that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong...
...tions...
...It is true we have a ring of steel that prevents food getting into Russia...
...And yet just before the meet-ing of the soviet congress which was fixed for the week of Tuesday, March 12, the President of the United States himself cabled the soviet congress...
...Tania is 18 miles west of Shenkursk...
...What Are Results...
...It touches the heart of perhaps three times that number of anxious relatives in the United States...
...Get American business into its normal channels...
...We are wholly in the dark as to what is contemplated when all parties meet upon an almost uncharted island in a distant sea...
...President, is a marvelous country...
...Mr...
...I ask for nothing more than I ask for all American troops on foreign soil...
...One real result was achieved...
...Creel is unable to relate facts...
...Before landing supreme military command Alexandro-vsk and entire Murman railway granted by Soviets to committee composed of Bol-sheviki sailors, French military officer, and British military officer...
...The enemy has strong patrols from Shegovari to Tania...
...Only flag visible red flag...
...And if this had been the attitude of our government and other governments, we might pass the incident as one of those unavoidable historical occurrences where idealism and civilization's champions must of necessity hold aloof from civilization's assailants...
...Sis-son had fled in terror from Petrograd...
...24, and have been decoded...
...He said: "You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air...
...But, beyond this, what did we do...
...It could not, you say, have any dealings with these men who had set at defiance, in the language of one of the Senators, upon this floor, the laws of God and man alike...
...Subject of Peace Point BUT Russia was the subject of the sixth definite peace point enunciated by the president...
...I can hear the voices in this chamber, saying that this was right, that there should be no compromise with crime...
...An occasional belated story is given to us, the last of which we read on January 25, as follows: "We have reports from Archangel," said Gen...
...11 ? Are our people children to be lulled into repose by such stuff as this ? The very learned and logical Senator from Colorado tells us that we are not making war on Russia...
...Let American life, social and economic, be American again...
...All through our idealistic statements in this war runs the theme of self-determination and the rights of people for themselves to determine their own forms of government...
...I re-echo the words of the great commander of the Union forces in the Civil War immediately upon the surrender of his adversary, "Let us have peace...
...How much have we contributed to the terror, to the rapine, plunder, slaughter and massacre...
...Manifestly this force has had out in that vicinity small patrols at times...
...Oh, we could not touch this awful thing in Russia...
...Following message from the President of the United States to the people of Russia through the Soviet congress has been telegraphed to the American consul general at Moscow for delivery: "May I not take advantage of the Congress of the Soviets to express the sincere sympathy which the people of the United States feel for the Russian people at this moment, when the German power has been thrust in to interrupt and turn back the whole struggle for freedom and substitute the wishes of Germany for the purposes of the people of Russia...
...Intensive work was carried on in the prison camps of Russia, and thousands of Czechoslovaks and Jugo-Slavoks learned of the purposes and power of America receiving thereby the courage and inspiration that had its climax in the march of the Czechoslovak legion from the Ukraine to Vladivostok...
...I present it because it is the truth and because upon us rests a heavy responsibility for what has since transpired in Russia...
...I recognize this, and wish that some real aid could be extended to him in the one possible accomplishment which may be his...
...The whole heart of the people of the United States is with the people of Russia in the attempt to free themselves forever from the autocratic government and become the masters of their own life...
...Although this policy, apparently, has been forgotten in our dealings with Russia, whether it will ultimately be carried out may, perhaps, be determined by the fate of the other definite terms of peace prescribed by the president...
...The force now at Archangel, he said: was put in there by the allied Governments on the recommendation of Marshal Foch and the military handling of that unit was thereupon turned over to the supreme commander...
...But on March 12, the Official Bulletin of the United States government tells us this: President assures Russia that United States will aid in restoring its sovereignty...
...What a strange and fantastic doctrine is this...
...And during this month of March, notwithstanding with an horrible doctrine of the Bolsheviki, notwithstanding with an iron hand they were suppressing opposition, there was co-operation between them and the representatives of the allied governments in Petrograd...
...Sis-son stayed until the ultimate danger to secure the documents that proved Lenine and Trotsky to be German agents and then slipped out through the far reaches of Finland...
...This, of course, is common knowledge, and has been common knowledge since its occurrence...
...During February, the peace terms at Brest-Litovsk had been concluded and there remained but the ratification of those terms by the allRussian congress of the Soviets...
...her fleets surrendered...
...I am not criticizing it...
...Rescue our own democracy...
...Their fantastic theories no sane man, in my opinion, can indorse...
...He is wrong...
...He announced in January, 1918, and subsequently, fourteen peace points...
...And yet their soul is not subservient...
...I reiterate that England is under no illusion respecting our purpose in Russia, and that France frankly proclaims it...
...You may say to me...
...in the interpretation it has been distorted and misunderstood...
...On the 11th day of November the armistice was signed...
...State Department cables their appeals to Russians to stand firm...
...Mr...
...her towns occupied...
...During March the men who were most familiar with the Russian situation on the ground vigorously protested against this intervention, and no one protested more vigorously then, and at subsequent times, too, than did the ambassador of the United States government...
...I ask for an American policy...
...of the Bolsheviki government...
...were forced to fight a war with Russia...
...I neglected to add a statement of allied authorities in the protection of supplies at Kandalazia as well as at Murmansk...
...The German army has been practically demobilized...
...But is it not obvious to you that when we compel people in Russia to starve, who will starve...
...Therefore, even if you favor intervention you should, for the protection of the lives of our soldiers, insist that those there, few in number, and their position courting disaster, be immediately withdrawn...
...But, if the emergency and the crisis justified the United States government in using the anarchists of New York to communicate with the anarchists of Petrograd, it would have justified the United States government answering the communication of the Soviet government, without recognition of that government at all, and in encouraging it, by its answer, to renew the war with Germany...
...I trust that this will give you the necessary information...
...and I am frank to say that if the president can return to the United States with a league of nations which does not relinquish our sovereignty, and which in reality will be a preventive of future wars I shall welcome most gladly and enthusiastically this great accomplishment...
...It is time for an American policy...
...I listened with rapt attention to the scholarly and statesmanlike address of the junior Senator from Pennsylvania recently, the point of which, as I understood it, was that we should at once conclude our peace with our foes and bring our boys home, leaving to subsequent determination the formation of a league of naWHAT a commentary it is upon the power of this body and upon the power of our people that the State Department and the Goverment can not and will not answer concerning our troops in Russia...
...During this period repeatedly it was stated that the allies would intervene...
...Bullard and all the American members of the committee on public information in Russia fled from Moscow on the 5th day of May, reaching Archangel and suffering from the worst case of "buck fever" in my observation...
...Because of prior agreement among our cobelligerents the idealism of the president is likely to be taxed severely, and his difficulties will be manifold...
...And lest ye forget, I quote again the sixth of the celebrated peace points, uttered January 12, 1918: "The evacuation of all Russian territory and such settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freeest cooperation of the other nations of the World in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing...
...As you contract this ring now, and as you prevent the natural flow of food from the granary of Russia and you blockade her ports with gan-boats, you are first starving the best people you do not want to starve, and you are starving those you ought not to starve...
...But the communication was received, apparently, in indignant and contemptuous silence...
...Our troops took up a position midway between Shenkursk to Ust-Pedenga...
...It is the voice of the Russian people...
...No sooner did we go into the interior than everywhere we found the local soviet we shot it to death and set up our own mode of government...
...The Senator from Virginia gravely speaks of the German menace...
...Our men were the last to leave Petrograd and Moscow...
...I venture the assertion that in Washington, in the departments here, they know no more about what military action is contemplated or what our troops are about to do than the veriest novice upon the floor of the senate...
...Germany is whipped and thoroughly whipped...
...her fleets surrendered...
...And in the body of the article appear these things: "The United States Government yesterday aided radical socialist and pacifist organizations in New York in sending to the Russian revolutionists cable messages urgbag them to resist the German invasion...
...In all these discussions there never was a question about protecting supplies except in the instance where the soviet government, in conjunction with the English and the French, at the very moment of the German advance in February and March protected supplies at Murmansk...
...Gen...
...Vladimir I. Lebedeff, who says: "Just at this time, the allied armies being at Vologda, the allies advised the officer's organization to revolt simultaneously against the Bolsheviki in Ribinsk, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, and Murom, so as to encircle Moscow as with an iron ring...
...The central empires in the language of the president, are in process of liquidation...
...Get American business into its normal channels...
...With an authoritative and an official communication before us, which we were advised meant if we replied favorably that the soviet government would make war upon Germany, we refused to respond at all...
...I I DECLINE to be frightened now by the "German menace...
...The force at Shenkursk was attacked on three sides and the report which was received at Archangel that day stated that they were forced to evacuate...
...His policy, which by our acceptance, became the policy of this nation, was distinctly enunciated in the memorial address of January, 1917...
...Under an attack from 200 of the enemy forces we retreated from Kodema, which is 25 miles from Shenkursk, to a point within 13 miles of that town...
...In the opinion of the Government of the United States, to what extent—under the above-mentioned circumstances—would aid be assured from Great Britain through Murmansk and Archangel...
...At Murmansk, early in March, because of the advancing Germans, the situation was acute, and then what happened...
...But during this period what was the government of the United States doing...
...Our help, therefore, to the 16 nations which would be created "in establishing themselves with ordered governments" must be the aid which our arms would give to one faction or another in these new states and I am not ready to shed American blood for any faction of any foreign state in maintaining the government in any Baltic province...
...Salute answered some number of guns, Russian cruiser Chesmar...
...Johnson of California—"I think that is absolutely accurate, Mr...
...her means of transportation delivered...
...It contains one-sixth of the earth's surface, with fertility of soil and wealth in mineral resources surpassing those of any other part of the earth...
...But by this foreign interferece every base passion has been appealed to, every prejudice aroused, and even patriotism invoked...
...Restore its free expression...
...On January 8th, while Russia was in collapse, and it was obvious that those in control of her government were about to make a shameful peace, the president, with full knowledge of the situation presumably, had this to say: "There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle and of purpose, which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled...
...It seemed for a while that we should surely win, and to this very day I believe that the people were with us then and are with us now...
...From this, apparently, all the roseate stories of the campaign in Russia may be discounted...
...Then we tell our people that we intend no interference with, the internal or local affairs of Russia...
...So far as I am aware, what I now present has not been published in this country...
...Perhaps Justly so, and I have no doubt well commanded...
...March, "which were received here on Jan...
...Sailed on my ship...
...The American troops are under English command...
...The Americans lost 10 enlisted men killed in action, 17 wounded, and 11 missing in the retirement...
...Senator Johnson's speech is a masterful exposition of the situation...
...Robins writes me: "The inclosed clipping from the last page of George Creel's eight pages of seif-laudation in February's Everybody's Magazine suggests that Mr...
...Self determination' is not a mere phrase...
...Men are in this country today who can establish every single fact suggested, and If this body, or the foreign relations committee, really desire information, if they wish to tell the mothers and fathers and the wives of the men who are freezing in Russia today just what the facts are, they have at their disposal the evidence, and it can be brought before them upon the briefest notice...
...But just before the Brest-Litovsk treaty was to be presented to the all-Russian soviety congress the United States government went to the city of New York, interviewed the soviet congress the United States government who preached lawlessness and destruction, and begged them for telegrams to be sent to Lenine and to Trotsky, and to the Bolshevik government asking that the Bolsheviki continue the war...
...It is equally clear that the people of England, and our own people, will not tolerate intervention upon a larger scale...
...Bring home American soldiers...
...It is time for an American policy...
...It is staggering to speculate upon the number of armies and the hundreds and thousands of American boys that would be required in these 16 nations...
...She is involved in such civil strife that it is doubtful if there will be a stable government with which a peace may be made...
...Meeting Is Postponed DURING that week the meeting of the soviet congress was postponed for several days in the hope that from the allied governments would come a response to the proposition submitted, upon which a repudiation of the Brest-Litovsk treaty could be obtained from the congress...
...My interest has been in America's policy and in the soldier boys of the republic, who, seemingly, for months were forgotten by their government...
...It was transmitted to Washington and delivered to the ambassador of the United States...
...I received in re-sponse this telegram from him: "One company British marines about 130, landed Murmansk March 5 and 6, pursuant invitation Murmansk Soviet, acting under telegraphic instructions Trotsky to accept all necessary aid from allies...
...I have copies of the telegrams which were sent at that time to different governments...
...I now deal with the historical events of the fateful month succeeding the president's address...
...The supplies at Kandalazia were, of course, more exposed to the attack of Finnish white guards, who were then cooperating with the Germans...
...There is a heavy reckoning some day for those who have been responsible for this wicked and this useless course in Russia...
...I wish it were possible so as to amend our system that upon this floor the appropriate official could be asked legitimate questions and compelled to respond...
...Upon what theory can you justify war, without affirmative action by congress...
...I learned, incidentally, that Major Thomas D. Thatcher, of the law firm of Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett, New York, who was a member of the Red Cross mission to Russia, had been at Murmansk and had seen the cooperation there existing between the French and British and the Bolsheviki, and on the 20th of January I wired him, asking him succinctly to advise me of the facts...
...She is suffering just retribution for her offenses...
...Will Not Answer WHAT a commentary it is upon the power of this body and upon the power of our people that the State Department and the government can not and will not answer concerning our troops in Russia...
...And that we are in an actual state of war at present in Russia the recent ominous news from there demonstrates only too plainly...
...Of course, the intention of this utterance was to fool the people of the United States into believing American bayonets were necessary to protect Archangel stores from the Germans...
...The allied military missions were helping to train the Bolsheviki Red Army on the 1st of April and the American ambassador was seeking with the consent of the allied embassies the cooperation of the American Railway Mission with the Bol-sheviki government, weeks after Mr...
...She is involved in such civil strife that it is doubtful if there will be a stable government with which a peace may be made...
...It is unfortunate that there is no method by which our government may be interrogated and no means, except that of a majority vote here, by which information may be obtained for our people...
Vol. 11 • February 1919 • No. 2
