er explanation of the cooling of the ardor of the local partisans
toward the British in particular may be found in the fact that the
British field commanders often found it convenient and really necessary
to send the local troops far distant from their own areas. There they
lost the urge of defending their firesides and their families. They were
in districts which they quite simply and honestly thought should
themselves be aiding the British to keep off the Bolsheviki. They could
not understand the military necessities that had perhaps called these
local partisans off to some other part of the fighting line on those
long forest fronts. He lacked the broader sense of nationality or even
of sectionalism. And as demands for military action repeatedly came to
him the justice of which he saw only darkly he became a poorer and
poorer source of dependence. He would not put his spirit into fighting,
he was quite likely to hit through the woods for home.

When the Allies early in the fall found they could not forge through to
the south, rolling up a bigger and bigger Russian force to crush the
Bolsheviki, who were apparently, as told us, fighting up to keep us from
going a thousand miles or so to hit the Germans a belt--a fly-weight
buffet as it were--and when we heard of the Armistice and began digging
in on a real defensive in the late fall and early winter, the
Provisional Government at Archangel under Tchaikowsky had already made
some progress in assembling an army. In the winter small units of this
Archangel army began co-operating in various places, and as the winter
wore on, began to take over small portions of the line, as at Toulgas,
Shred Mekrenga, Bolsheozerki, usually however with a few British
officers and some Allied soldiers to stiffen them. Although many of
these men had been drafted by the Archangel government and as we have
seen by such local county governments as Pinega, they were fairly well
trained under old Russian officers who crept out to serve when they saw
the new government meant business. And many capable young officers came
from the British-Russian officers' school at Bakaritsa.

[Illustration: Nine soldiers working an artillery piece.]
RED CROSS PHOTO
Canadian Artillery--Americans Were Strong for Them

[Illustration: A woman kneading dough on a flat rock in front of a low
pile of rocks forming the oven. Two women and a man are observing. The
oven is outdoors, near a tree, with a river or lake