Bolsheozerki, standing shoulder to shoulder with "M" Company out of "I"
Company's own battalion. But these American soldiers at that moment with
their feelings growing warmer with expression of them, thought only of
the drilling Russian soldiers in Archangel and of the S. B. A. L.
soldiers who had mutinied earlier in the winter and been subdued by
American soldiers in Archangel. And so if the truth be told, those
soldiers spoke boldly enough to their captain to alarm him. He thought
that he really had a serious condition before him.

From remarks by the men he judged that for the sake of the men and the
chief commanding officer, Colonel Stewart, it would be well to have a
meeting in the Y. M. C. A. where they could be properly informed, where
they could see ALL that was going on and not be deluded by the rumors
that other groups of the company were doing something else, and where
the common sense of the great, great majority of the men would show them
the foolishness of the whole thing. And he invited the colonel to
appear.

Meanwhile the senior first lieutenant of the company, Lieut. Albert E.
May, one of the levelest-headed officers in the regiment, had put the
first and only man who showed signs of insubordination to an officer
under arrest. It developed afterward that the lieutenant was a little
severe with the man as he really had not understood the command, he
being a man who spoke little English and in the excitement was puzzled
by the order and showed the "hesitation" of which so much was made in
the wild accounts that were published. This arrest was afterward
corrected when three sergeants of the platoon assured the officer that
the man had not really intended insubordination.

It is regrettable that the War Department was so nervous about this
affair that it would be fooled into making the explanation of this
"hesitation" on the ground of the man's Slavic genesis and the pamphlet
propaganda of the Reds. The first three men who died in action were
Slavs. The Slavs who went from Hamtramck and Detroit to Europe made
themselves proud records as fighters. Hundreds of them who had not been
naturalized were citizens before they took off the O. D. uniform in
which they had fought. It was a cruel slur upon the manhood of the
American soldier to make such explanations upon such slight evidences.
It would seem as though the War Department could have borne the outcry
of the people till the Commanding Officer of those