blinded to their own best interests. British thought he was too
lenient with the willful Americans. Americans thought he was pampering
the French. British, French and Americans thought he was letting the
Russkis slip something over on the whole Allied expedition. Green-eyed
jealousy, provincial jealousy, just plain foolish jealousy tormented the
man who was soon disillusioned as to the glories to be won in that
forlorn expedition but who never exhibited anything but an undaunted
optimistic spirit. He was human. When he was among the soldiers and
talking to them it was not hard for them to believe the tale that after
all he was an American himself, a Western Canadian who had started his
career as a military man with the Northwest Mounted Police.

An American corporal for several weeks had been in the field hospital
near the famous Kodish Front. One day General Ironside leaned over his
bunk and said: "What's the trouble, corporal?" The reply was,
"Rheumatism, sir." At which the British hospital surgeon asserted that
he thought the rheumatism was a matter of the American soldier's
imagination. But he regretted the remark, for the general, looking
sternly at the officer, said: "Don't talk to me that way about a
soldier. I know, if you do not, that many a young man, with less
exposure than these men have had in these swamps, contracts rheumatism.
Do not confuse the aged man's gout with the young man's muscular
rheumatism." Then he turned his back on the surgeon and said heartily to
the corporal: "You look like a man with lots of grit. Cheer up, maybe
the worst is over and you will be up and around soon. I hope so."

And there was many a British officer who went out there to Russia who
won the warm friendship of Americans. Of course, those were short
friendships. But men live a lot in a small space in war. One day a young
second lieutenant--and those were rare in the British uniforms, for the
British War Office had given the commanding general generous leeway in
adding local rank to the under officers--had come out to a distant
sector to estimate the actual needs in signal equipment. He rode a
Russian horse to visit the outpost line of the city. He rode in a
reindeer sled to the lines which the Russian partisan forces were
holding. He sat down in the evening to that old Russian merchant
trader's piano, in our headquarters, and rambled from chords and airs to
humoresque and rhapsodies. And the American and Russian officers an