Reprinted from "THE TIMES," December 13, 1918.
THE ALLIES IN NORTH RUSSIA.
A DEFENCE OF INTERVENTION.
In the following article Rear-Admiral Kemp, R.N. (retired), lately British senior naval officer in North Russia, describes the operations of the Allied forces there.
The coming elections make it desirable that some of the more prominent facts governing Allied intervention in North Russia should be explained and emphasised. In view of the fact that a considerable section of the Labour Party are demanding non-intervention and the withdrawal from North Russia of Allied troops, the whole question is one which will largely depend on the result of the elections.
Allied active intervention first took the form of a naval landing at Murmansk and Pechenga in February and March of the present year. Murmansk, at the head of the Kola inlet, is the Arctic terminus of the Murmansk-Petrograd railway and of the Peterhead submarine cable to the United Kingdom, and thus formed at that time the sole means of direct telegraphic communication available to the Allies, and the only means of exit for the many thousands of Allied subjects who were flying for their lives from the anarchy prevailing in the interior. Pechenga, about 100 miles to the west of Kola inlet, is the nearest Russian port and settlement to the Norwegian and Finnish frontiers. Both places were menaced by a German-Finnish attack.
The landing at Murmansk was effected without opposition from the Bolshevist armed forces of the place, consisting of some 1,500 naval sailors and a few Red and Railway Guards. Pechenga was occupied by a landing party from a British cruiser, which defeated and drove off an invading party of Finns, who had crossed the frontier with the intention of occupying the settlement and harbour. The landing party were afterwards reinforced by the arrival at Murmansk of a French and an American cruiser. These operations were regularised by a definite arrangement between the senior representatives of the Allied Powers (including the United States) and the Murman Provincial Council.
By the arrangement in question the Allied Governments agreed to assist in the defence of Russian territory against German-Finnish invasion With all the forces they could spare for the purpose, to assist to feed the population of the Murman Province—then threatened with famine—and gave assurances that they had no annexationist aims or intention to interfere in the domestic affairs of Russia. This agreement was communicated to the Central Government at Moscow, and a reply was received from M. Trotsky, then Minister for Foreign Affairs and the head of the Soviet Government, ordering the Provincial Council to co-operate in all ways with the Allied forces for the defence of Russian territory on the lines laid down. It will thus be seen that the initial act of Allied intervention was known to and approved by the de facto Government of the Russian Republic.
German-Finnish Designs.
German-Finnish designs on Russia may be shortly described as follows:—Finland had been proclaimed a Republic, and was in a state of civil war, roughly, between the North and South, known respectively as White and Red Finland. The Germans had landed in the south, dispersed the Red Finns, and practically annexed the country, with the active co-operation of the Whites. Finland's share in the transaction was to be annexation of the Murman Peninsula and all Karelia, roughly the territory between the Finnish border and the western shore of the White Sea.
The threat of German-Finnish invasion becoming more pronounced as
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