there, he makes me refer to some subsequent land forces which he has in his own mind.
Admiral Kemp is welcome to any kudos which he may seek to derive from the sorry business at Archangel, nor will I compete with him in irrelevant self-eulogy in the matter of experience or influence. If, however, by his senior position he implies that he was the senior British political as well as naval representative, he knows that I never allowed his ridiculous pretension, and I can assure him that he was never so regarded by the Archangel authorities under the Imperial, Kerensky, or Bolshevist régime.
While avoiding reply on points which 1 raised regarding the actual results of intervention at Archangel, Admiral Kemp persists in making incorrect statements regarding events which occurred there when he was not present, on which he calls "first-hand evidence."
He states that there was not any disposition on the part of the Archangel Soviet to repudiate the authority of the Central Soviet at Moscow. There most decidedly was, and the fact is on official record; but the brief opportunity was lost, and naturally did not recur when the real intentions of the Allied military command at Murmansk became apparent. Archangel should have been won over first, as Murmansk was ours at any time; but peaceful methods were "too slow" for the militarists, who are now little further ahead than they were five months ago; The menace from Murmansk closed the Soviet ranks at Archangel and throughout Russia, and the strengthening of the Bolshevist forces at Archangel followed this.
Again, he states that the Bolshevists at Archangel were "cowardly bandits" who "fled at the approach of a small Allied force." This is misleading and unfair to Russians, who, whatever their faults, are not a nation of cowards. The Allied military force which embarked upon this crazy adventure, and was to be the signal for the collapse of the Soviet Government throughout Russia, was, indeed, miserably inadequate to achieve anything more than a local and temporary success; and it was saved from initial disaster only by good luck in the matter of weather conditions, and by the fact that it arrived before it was expected and during the absence in Moscow of the Bolshevist leader, The Soviet troops evacuated Archangel in a momentary panic, due in the first place to the fact that their organisation was honeycombed in the upper and technical grades by Russian officers who took service with them with the intention either of deliberately betraying their cause or of jumping with the cat. In the second place it was due to the unexpected arrival of Allied bombing aeroplanes against which they had no defence. They speedily stiffened, however, and within a week of the landing held up the Allied advance at an inconsiderable distance south of Archangel, approximately where they now remain, if winter conditions have not forced them back on Archangel.
It is quite true that the retreating Soviet authorities took with them considerable sums of money from the Treasury and banks, but they could hardly have been expected to leave it for our convenience. It is equally true that the Cossack officers of the "Wild" Division, who arrested my colleagues and myself, and who, as I was subsequently informed, were prepared to dispose of us if events had gone the other way, appropriated and divided among themselves several million roubles of public money.
I do not propose to respond to Admiral Kemp's invitation to expose my whole knowledge regarding activities on the part of British representatives, which could not possibly be tolerated by "the de facto Government of Russia," as he rightly describes the Soviet Government. I am not an apologist of Bolshevism, but an advocate of fair and unprejudiced criticism; and it will be time enough when the Soviet Government themselves publish the whole sordid story, the general facts of which were common talk upon the streets of Archangel.
Fair and open discussion of past events cannot repair the harm already done, but it may at least teach a lesson for the future. Misrepresentation and the suppression of facts, on the other hand, only aggravate a difficult and dangerous situation, which all sane men view with increasing alarm.
I am, &c.,
DOUGLAS YOUNG
The Pardons, Ditchling, Sussex, Dec. 31.
11
