f fourteen languages it was said of
him, holder of an Iron Cross bestowed on him by the Kaiser in an African
war when he acted as an ox driver but in fact was observing for the
British artillery, on whose staff he had been a captain though he was
only a youth, he was a giant intellectually as well as physically.

When British fighting troops could not be spared from the Western Front
in the fall of 1918 and the British War Office gambled on sending
category B men to Archangel--men not considered fit to undergo active
warfare, a good healthy general had to be found. Ironside, lover of
forlorn hopes, master of the Russian language, a good mixer, and
experienced in dealing with amalgamated forces, was the obvious man. Of
course, there were some British officers who bemoaned the fact, in range
of American ears too, that some titled high ranking officers were passed
over to reach out to this Major of Artillery to act as Major-General.
And he was on the youthful side of forty, too.

Edmund Ironside ought to have been born in the days of Drake, Raleigh,
and Cromwell. He would have a bust in Westminster and his picture in the
history books. But in his twenty years of army life he has done some big
things and it can be imagined with what gusto he received his orders to
relieve Poole and undertook to redeem the expedition, to make something
of the perilous, forlorn hope under the Arctic winter skies.

In The American Sentinel issue of December 10th, which was the first
issue of our soldier paper, we read:

"It is a great honor for me to be able to address the first words in
the first Archangel paper for American soldiers. I have now served in
close contact with the U. S. Army for eighteen months and I am proud
to have a regiment of the U. S. Army under my command in Russia.

"I wish all the American soldiers the best wishes for the coming
Christmas and New Year and I want them to understand that the Allied
High Command takes the very greatest interest in their welfare at all
times."
EDMUND IRONSIDE, Major-General.

Without doubt the General was sincere in his efforts to bring about
harmony and put punch and strength into the high command sections as
well as into the line troops. But what a bag Poole left him to hold.
Vexed to death must that big man's heart have been to spend so much time
setting Allies to rights who had come to cross purposes with one another
and were