Reprinted from "THE TIMES," December 28, 1918.
THE ALLIES IN NORTH RUSSIA.
AIMS OF BRITISH INTERVENTION.
ADMIRAL KEMP'S REPLY.
We have received the following letter from Rear-Admiral T. W. Kemp, late British Senior Naval Officer in North Russia, in reply to the letter published by us on December 19 from Mr. Douglas Young:—
Mr. Young's letter in The Times of December 19 is mischievous, as tending to discourage a national enterprise. It is a mass of false suggestion and innuendo, and of obscure reference to concrete events and facts. The difficulty is to deal with it fully. To do so would occupy more space in The Times than other matters of public importance justify. Speaking roughly, it consists of:—(a) Suggestions of charges against the British Government; (b) suggestions of charges against myself.
I will take the latter first, as the least important. The suggested charge against myself is contained in the passage, emphasised by italics, that I informed the Archangel Soviet "that the action of the Allies in the White Sea was not aimed against the Soviet Government." The actual statement that I used these words or words to that effect is true. They related solely to past events. The underlying suggestion that I gave any guarantee as to the future action of the Allies is false and injurious. The future intentions of the Allied Governments were not known to me on the date in question, July 6. The question as to the occupation of Archangel was under consideration by the Versailles War Council, but its decision was not communicated to me till after my return to Murmansk some ten days later. My ignorance on the point was actual, not technical. At that time Archangel was not in free cypher communication with the outer world.
I had left Murmansk for Archangel in H.M. yacht Salvator on July 3 or 4. The objects of my visit were: (a) To tranquillise the position at Archangel, where my personal influence was great, and to ascertain the state of affairs. (b) To arrange for the unloading of two British ships containing foodstuffs, which had arrived in Archangel in March, and for the disposal of their cargoes. (c) To arrange for the repatriation of over a thousand Allied refugees, who had drifted to Archangel from the interior and who were in danger of being held as hostages. With the assistance of Mr. Young, (b) and (c) were satisfactorily arranged, (c) acting as an offset to (b).
In order to further (a), I arranged a meeting with the Presidium (Executive Committee) of the Soviet, and invited Mr. Young, who was my junior in position, age, and experience, to attend. I explained fully to the Soviet the cause and reasons of Allied intervention in Murman. In my article in The Times of December 13 I pointed out that one of the conditions of intervention was non-interference in Russian internal affairs. It dealt only with the defence of the Murman province against German-Finnish armed aggression. Up to the date in question it had taken no form which was not compatible with and necessary to that condition. It was to this condition that the words emphasised by Mr. Young in italics applied, and to nothing else. In the course of the meeting I was asked by the Soviet whether the Allies intended to intervene in Archangel. I replied that I did not know, and added a plain warning that any orders received from the Allied Governments would be carried into effect by the Allied forces. It will simplify matters if some explanation is given as to the relation which existed between the Archangel Soviet and the Central Soviet at Moscow, which was the de facto Government of Russia. Mr. Young tends to infer that the former were free agents and independent of the latter. This was not so. The local Soviet were empowered to deal
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