Reprinted from "THE TIMES," January 6, 1919.
THE ALLIES IN NORTH RUSSIA.
MR. YOUNG'S REPLY.
Sir,—Rear-Admiral Kemp's further letter, published in your issue of December 28, compels me once again, and, I hope, for the last time, to ask the courtesy of your columns.
It is a pity that, in dealing with my previous letter, published on December 19, Admiral Kemp should have allowed himself to use expressions suggestive of bitterness rather than of calm judgment, and to adopt a didactic tone, more appropriate to the quarter-deck or schoolroom than to the free world of fair discussion and open-minded criticism.
After characterising my letter as "mischievous" and my statements as "false suggestion," he calmly admits that on the one point in which British interests were clearly and indisputably concerned—namely, the safety of British subjects—he was wrong in stating that British subjects had been "murdered" and maltreated before the Allied descent upon Archangel! I leave it to your readers to decide whether the epithets which he employs are more properly applicable to an attempt to present both sides of a question, or to a direct mis-statement, made on the eve of an election with the expressed object of influencing the electors on a matter peculiarly calculated to appeal to public sentiment.
Admiral Kemp further admits that he made the statement regarding Allied intervention as not being aimed against the Soviet Government, but now seeks to give it a different meaning. The point is not so much what he meant as what he said, and what meaning his words conveyed to those to whom they were addressed. As to this, there can be no shadow of doubt, for the Soviet authorities immediately responded by allowing the Allied refugees to proceed. The departure of these refugees, by the way, was chiefly due to the energy of my French colleague, whose nationals outnumbered the British by four or five to one.
As regards British residents at Archangel, I can state with authority that, so far from being at any time molested, they were accorded many privileges and exemptions to which they had no right; and I am certain that if they could speak their minds they would complain bitterly, not of the Bolshevists, but of the Allied diplomatic representatives, who themselves fled for safety to the cover of the Allied guns, leaving British men, women, and children to take their chance of emerging from the oncoming wave of intervention. We all lived for months under the dread of mob violence at German instigation, but I never at any time feared outrage by or with the sanction of the responsible Soviet authorities, so long as neutrality was observed; and I am glad of an opportunity of stating that I found the Soviet representatives at all times far more accessible and responsive to reasonable demands than the discourteous and overbearing officials who so often represented the Imperial Russian Government.
If Admiral Kemp will again refresh his memory, he will doubtless recall having told the representatives of the Archangel Soviet at one of our joint meetings between July 6 and 11 that he personally "thought the British Government ought to have recognised the Soviet Government"—a length to which I was unable to follow him, except in so far as one must recognise a storm or any other unpleasant fact of nature.
I will not be led away into a fruitless discussion of the indexed list of absurdities and imaginary accusations into which the Admiral distorts my remarks in order, presumably, to give himself the easy pleasure of refuting them. As an example, when I state the obvious fact that the creation of a military front a little south of Archangel deprives that town of the supplies which from time immemorial she has drawn from the interior of Russia, he puts into my mouth the evident absurdity that Russia is starving owing to Allied intervention. Again, when I obviously speak of the superior naval force which we throughout maintained at Murmansk in contrast to Archangel, where we withdrew the one ship that we had
10
