“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.”
All of which sounds like the peroration of an eloquent address at a meeting of America’s own I. W. W. in solemn conclave assembled. Needless to say this was not taken seriously. Soldiers were quick to punch holes in any propaganda, or at any rate if they could not discern its falsities, could clench their fists at those whom they believed to be seeking to “work them.” Fair words and explosive bullets did not match any more than “guard duty” and “offensive movements” matched.
Lt. Costello, in his volume, “Why Did We Go To Russia.”, says: “The preponderant reason why Americans would never be swayed by this propaganda drive, lay in their hatred of laziness and their love of industry. If the Bolsheviki were wasting their time, however, in their propaganda efforts directed at effects in the field, it must be a source of great comfort to Lenin and Trotsky, Tchitcherin and Peters and others of their ilk, to know that their able, and in some case, unwitting allies in America, who condone Bolshevist atrocities, apologize for Soviet shortcomings, appear before Congressional committees and other agencies and contribute weak attempts at defense of this Red curse are all serving them so well.”
“Seeing red,” we see Red in many things that are really harmless. In Russia, as in America, many false accusations and false assumptions are made. We now know that of certainty the Bolshevik, or Communistic party of Russia was aided by like-minded people in America and vice versa, but we became rather hysterical in 1919 over those I.W.W.-Red outbursts, and very nearly let the conflict between Red propaganda and anti-Red propaganda upset our best traditions of toleration, of free speech, and of free press. Now we are seeing more clearly. Justice and toleration and real information are desired. Propaganda to the American people is becoming as detested as it was to the soldiers. Experience of the veterans of the North Russian campaign has taught them the foolishness of propaganda and the wisdom of truth-telling. The Germans, the Bolsheviks, the British War Office, Our War Department and self-seeking individuals who passed out propaganda, failed miserably in the end.
XXX
REAL FACTS ABOUT ALLEGED MUTINY
Mail Bags And Morale—Imaginative Scoop Reporters And Alarmists—Few Men Lost Heads Or Hearts—Colonel Stewart Cables To Allay Needless Fears—But War Department Had Lost Confidence Of People—Too Bad Mutiny Allegations Got Started—Maliciously Utilized—Officially Investigated And Denied—Secretary Baker’s Letter Here Included—Facts Which Afforded Flimsy Foundation Here Related—Alleged Mutinous Company Next Day Gallantly Fighting—Harsh Term Mutiny Not Applied By Unbiased Judges.
Four weeks to nine or twelve weeks elapsed between mailing and receiving. It is known that both ignorance and indifference were contributing causes. We know there is in existence a file of courteous correspondence between American and British G. H. Q. over some bags of American mail that was left lying for a time at Murmansk when it might just as well have been forwarded to Archangel for there were no Americans at that time on the Murmansk.
Many slips between the arrival of mail at Archangel and its distribution to the troops. How indignant a line officer at the front was one day to hear a visitor from the American G. H. Q. say that he had forgotten to bring the mail bags down on his train. Sometimes delivery by airplane resulted in dropping the sacks in the deep woods to be object of curiosity only to foxes and wolves and white-breasted crows, but of no comfort to the lonesome, disappointed soldiers.
Ships foundered off the coast of Norway with tons of mail. Sleds in the winter were captured by the Bolos on the lines of communication. These troubles in getting mail into Russia led the soldiers to think that there might be equal difficulty in their letters reaching home. And it certainly looked that way when cablegrams began insistently inquiring for many and many a soldier whose letters had either not been written, or destroyed by the censor, or lost in transit.
And that leads to the discussion of what were to the soldier rather terrifying rules of censorship. Intended to contribute to his safety and to the comfort and peace of mind of his home folks the way in which the rules were administered worked on the minds of the soldiers. Let it be said right here that the American soldier heartily complied in most cases with the rules. He did not try to break the rules about giving information that might be of value to the enemy. And when during the winter there began to come into North Russia clippings from American and British newspapers which bore more or less very accurate and descriptive accounts of the locations and operations, even down to the strategy, of the various scattered units, they wondered why they were not permitted after the Armistice especially, to write such things home.