dent, calls
"good, healthy grousing." The men had the night before given a fine
minstrel entertainment in the Central Y. M. C. A.

Group psychology and atmospheric conditions have to be taken into
consideration at this point. By atmospheric conditions we mean the
half-truths and rumors and expressions of feeling that were in the air.
A sergeant of the company questioned carefully by the writer states
positively that the expressions of ugliness were confined to
comparatively few members of the company. The feeling seemed to spread
through the company that morning that some of the men were going to
speak their minds.

Here another fact must be introduced. A few nights before this there had
been a fire in camp that spread to their barracks and burned the company
out, resulting in the splitting of the company into two separated parts,
and in giving the little first sergeant and commanding officer
inconvenience in conveying orders and directions to the men. And it was
rumored in the morning in one barracks that the men of the other
barracks were starting something. The platoon officer in command there
had gone to the front to make arrangements for the billeting and
transportation of troops, who were to start that day for the front some
several miles south of Obozerskaya. Now the psychology began to work.
Why hurry the loading, let's see what the men of that platoon now will
do.

The captain notices the delay in proceedings. He has heard a little
something of what is in the air. It is nothing serious, yet he is
nervous about it. His first sergeant, a nervous and a nervy little man
too, for Detroit has seen the Croix de Guerre he won, showed anxiety
over the dilatoriness of the men in loading the sleighs. And the men
were only just human in wanting to see what the captain was going to do
about that other platoon that was rumored to be starting something. Of
course in the psychology of the thing it was not in their minds that
they would be called upon to express themselves. The others were going
to do that.

But when the captain went directly to the men and asked them what they
were thinking and feeling they found themselves talking to him. Here and
there a man spoke bitterly about the Russian regiments in Archangel not
doing anything but drill in Archangel. Of course he had only half-truth.
That is the way misunderstandings and bad feelings feed. At that moment
a company of the Archangel Regiment was at a desperate front,