knowledge and sanction of the British Government, gave the Soviet Government good grounds for suspecting us of deceiving them and of playing a deliberate double game? Does he not remember the, to me, memorable afternoon of July 6, when some time between 4 and 6 p.m., in the Presidium Chamber of the Archangel Soviet, he informed them in my presence that, "speaking for himself, and he was sure he could say the same for General Poole, he could assure them that Allied action in the White Sea was not aimed against the Soviet Government"? And has he forgotten another similar meeting a few days later, when with scowling faces the Soviet representatives communicated reports of high-handed action by the Allied military and naval forces on the western shores of the White Sea, including the shooting of three members of the Kem Soviet? Does he deny that these reports, which were subsequently confirmed, swept away like a house of cards my attempts to reach a modus vivendi with the local Soviet authorities? They at any rate were ready until the last to come to an arrangement with us on the basis of the exchange of goods, but they would not sell their birthright—their right to resist our landing except it were done "upon their invitation"—for an Allied mess of pottage, the food of which they were in sore need.
I entirely agree with Admiral Kemp that honour forbids the unconditional withdrawal of our forces from Archangel, leaving the civil population to savage reprisals. He might have added that such withdrawal is, moreover, a practical impossibility before next June or July at the earliest, owing to ice conditions in the White Sea.
Admiral Kemp's article confines itself almost entirely to a defence of past and a plea for future intervention. What of the present? Has intervention in Archangel so far proved a success? We may thank God that there were no Germans there, if the Soviet troops alone have thrown us back upon Archangel. We have cut off Archangel completely from her natural source of food supply, the interior of Russia, and have thereby committed ourselves to feeding her population. We have made the lot of 150,000 out of the 180,000,000 population of Russia a little easier, on condition that they do exactly what we wish. If our aim was to benefit the upper classes in Russia, or even the nation as a whole, our methods suggest rather those of the bear in the Russian fable, who loved a peasant so much that he took him to live with him and watched over him night and day. Once, as the peasant slept, a fly lighted on his forehead, and the bear, seizing a stone, smashed the fly—and killed his friend.
What are the alternatives to continued intervention? To make a ring round Russia and abandon her to her fate? This is unthinkable if we remember, as so many fail to do, the gigantic achievements of Russia in the first years of the war, when by her deliberate sacrifices she helped to save Paris and the Channel ports.
Can we not negotiate and endeavour to remove suspicion and misunderstandings which have arisen, in part at any rate, through our failure to fit our actions towards Russia to the "acid test" enunciated by President Wilson? If and when negotiation fails, and the Soviet Government formally proclaims itself to the world as the champion of pan d and of the extermination of the upper classes, then will it be time enough to consider whether the civilised Powers, Allied and neutral alike, shall proclaim a holy war against this evil thing and call for volunteers to stamp it out, even if it takes 10 years.
I am, &c.,
DOUGLAS YOUNG,
The Pardons, Ditchling Sussex, Dec. 14.
