THE RAILWAY
"We are not declaring war, nor making war on the Lenine and Trotsky government, because it is not our affair."
SENATOR HITCHCOCK, Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate of the United States.
13th February, 1919.
V
THE RAILWAY
When the troops of Poole's first expedition divided at Archangel, and one group was sent up the Dvina; another which was a part of the French Colonial battalion was told off for pursuit of the Bolsheviks down the Archangel-Vologda railway.
Hot and eager for first blood, the French hurried forward until the Kayama River was reached, where the enemy made an unexpected stand. There was a sharp engagement, the Bolsheviks were severely punished, and one hundred and fifty prisoners fell to the Allies.
But a little further, at Obozerskaya, some hundred miles south of Archangel, the despised fugitives turned again and displayed an amazing disposition for combat, entirely at variance with the cowed spirit of the feeble rear guard that had surrendered Archangel.
They came back in force and greatly outnumbered the Allies, and there was in the defiant attitude of the Red troops reason to believe that the Soviet chieftains had taken stock of the military situation, had verified the preposterous intelligence that the Three Great Powers—Great Britain, France, and the United States—were definitely bent upon war and seriously intended to invade the great domain of Russia with scarcely two infantry combat regiments!