CONCERNING MILITARY INTERVENTION
During the first half of 1918 there was considerable discussion in America of the proposed military intervention in Russia. Mr. Roosevelt favored it—insisted upon it. Mr. Wilson was understood to be opposed to it, this understanding resting on the general interpretation of his utterances. The debate, widespread, was before the fact. Now that the fact is accomplished we may well look into the results.
The weak fashion in which we went into the enterprise has given rise to the theory in some quarters that it will be claimed that we did not go into it at all. If an armistice had been declared in Russia on November 11, or if America had then notified the Bolsheviki that we had no military motives there, the affair could well have been charged up to the war with Germany, and we might well claim that we had had no serious intention of interfering in the affairs of Russia. But the armistice did not even think of Russia. We were fighting a separate war there. We in Russia were not even notified officially that there was an armistice. We heard about it, and wondered where we came in. It was after November 11 that most of our fighting took place and most of our casualties were suffered. Not until March were we promised that we should be taken home in the spring, and then no intimation was given us that America was to withdraw. Rumors were industriously circulated giving the impression that other Americans were on their way to take our places, and not until our men were actually away did our "information" permit us to realize that America had withdrawn from the expedition.
We intervened. We undertook to crush Bolshevism in Russia. We sent a military and naval expedition there. We organized a civil war there. It was unsuccessful. America lost a few men, England more, Russia many more. How much more Russia suffered is not yet written. America withdrew her troops. France, Serbia, Italy withdrew theirs. England reluctantly withdraws hers.
Let us consider what this expedition meant to our own men. They were only a few thousand men, to be sure, and their little event was so much smaller than the big thing in France that it was naturally even necessarily overlooked. Because I was with them, however, I know that it was a big thing their government made them do. The men in France had faith in their cause. The men in Russia had none. Over and over again our men in Russia have argued with me that while we were fighting for freedom in France we were fighting to kill it in Russia. Some said we were fighting for the capitalists of England and France, others declared that the Bolsheviki were more right than wrong, and everybody felt that our government had made a great mistake and that a life lost there was a life worse than thrown away. In this frame of mind American boys went through all the dangers and privations and sufferings of a difficult all-winter campaign and some of them went to their last battles. Statistically it is a little thing, if you must measure everything by statistics, but I have been made to feel how terribly great a thing was the death of one man who as I held his hand cursed the fate that made him die in a fight for which he had no heart.
It was a high degree of sportsmanship that enabled these men to see it through. If Mr. Wilson told his colleagues at Paris that "if" American troops were sent to Russia they would mutiny he might have based his opinion on information as to what American troops in Russia had already said on that particular subject.
It is difficult to imagine a more unmoral situation than that of an army fighting without a sense of unction and against its sense of right, but this is what military intervention in Russia imposed on a small army of Americans.
I can testify of my personal knowledge that this was equally true of Canadian and British soldiers. I have heard that it was true of the French, the Italians, and the Serbians.
These men are all home now with their grievance. Few of them are proud of the expedition, or glad they had a part in it, or grateful to their country for its support, or willing to go again. Military intervention has been a tragedy in their lives and was an injustice to them such as no government may with impunity impose on its citizens.
We may not easily estimate the harm that military intervention has done in the lowering of our standards of national rights and in devitalizing our ideals of international relations. The precedent that has been established, however, is most unfortunate and may in the future be used to strengthen the hands of some one who may be trying to lead us into a more serious error of the same sort. I must, moreover, say that this enterprise has done considerable harm to the most important friendship in the world—that of England and America—as far as so great a thing could be affected by the few thousands of men who were directly engaged in the expedition. Our governments do not know about this, of course, but the men know. No thoughtful person could hear these men of either nation talk about the other nation without seeing the awfulness of the thing that has been done. It is not at all similar to the attitude of the soldier who knew the British in France, nor to his disillusionment about the French. It is very much worse. It is enmity. And it is clear to me that it is directly due to the fact that our men had to fight in a bad cause, with unwilling minds, beclouded consciences, and rebellious hearts.