d utterances of partisan politicians
seeking to puff their political sails with stories of hardships of our
men in North Russia, all these and many other very well-meaning people
were doing much to aggravate the fears and sufferings of the people at
home. Many a doughboy at the front sighed wearily and shook his head
doubtfully over the mess of sob-stuff that came uncensored from the
States. He sent costly cablegrams to his loved ones at home to assure
them that he was safe and not "sleeping in water forty degrees below
zero" and so forth.

Not only did the screeching press articles and the roars of certain
congressmen keep the homefolks in perpetual agony over the soldiers in
Russia, but the reports of the same that filtered in through the mails
to our front line campfires and Archangel comfortable billets caused
trouble and heart-burnings among the men. It seems incredible how much
of it the men fell for. But seeing it in their own home paper, many of
the men actually believed tales that when told in camp were laughed off
as plain scandalous rumor.

War is not fought in a comfortable parlor or club-room, but some of the
tales which slipped through the censor from spineless cry-babies in our
ranks of high and low rank, and were published in the States and then in
clippings found their way back to North Russia, lamented the fact of the
hardship of war in such insidious manner as to furnish the most
formidable foe to morale with which the troops had to cope while in
Russia. The Americans only laughed at Bolshevik propaganda which they
clearly saw through. To the statement that the Reds would bring a
million rifles against Archangel they only replied, "Let 'em come, the
thicker grass the heavier the swath."

But when a man's own home paper printed the same story of the million
men advancing on Archangel with bloody bayonets fixed, and told of the
horrible hardships the soldier endured--and many of them were indeed
severe hardships although most of the news stories were over-drawn and
untruthful, and coupled with these stories were shrieks at the war
department to get the boys out of Russia, together with stories of
earnest and intended-to-help petitions of the best people of the land,
asking and pleading the war department to get the boys out of Russia,
then the doughboy's spirit was depressed.

[Illustration: Several soldiers standing outside burning building.]
U. S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
Pioneer Platoon Has Fire at 455