"It has always been a cardinal axiom of the Allied and Associated Powers to avoid interference in the internal affairs of Russia. Their original intervention was made for the sole purpose of assisting those elements in Russia which wanted to continue the struggle against German autocracy, and to free their country from German rule, and in order to rescue the Czecho-slovaks from the danger of annihilation at the hand of the Bolshevik forces." G. CLEMENCEAU. D. LLOYD GEORGE. WOODROW WILSON. V. E. ORLANDO. SAIONJI. From note, dated 26th May, 1919, Allied and Associated Powers to Admiral Kolchak. [Illustration: Patrols were often clad in white smocks] X PINEGA The Orthodox Church of Russia is hated by the Soviets with an intense and vehement hatred, for the institution of kings was sustained by religion even more effectively than by the Imperial Guards. Therefore, no opportunity to deride reverend personages and sacred objects is ever neglected by the Bolsheviks, or to violate with leering and uncouth pleasure, the hallowed worship places. Under the nimbose influence of Red Moscow, the religious precepts of the people will be snatched ruthlessly from them. Harsh and unyielding though these precepts be, they are the only note of spirituality in the life of the moujik, and without them he wallows in a mire of crass animalism. There was in Holy Russia many a homily in patience and honesty and humility; but will these homely virtues endure in the arid waste and the spiritless air of agnosticism? At Pinega, some ninety miles east of Archangel (and nearly one hundred fifty on the devious road), the cleric party was well fortified, and the outstanding civic feature of the city was the ancient monastery, standing commandingly at the edge of Lake Soyla. The Pinega monks were quite naturally opposed to the Bolsheviks, but the mayor was a Soviet, and the city was divided in allegiance between White Archangel and Red Moscow when the detachment of Americans came in October. The Americans' presence shepherded the wavering ones to the fold. A company of Home Guards was organized, and from outward signs the cause of the Allies had ascended to triumph. But the surrounding Bolsheviks were far from disbanded. They gathered in much strength under the leadership of Kulikoff, a competent horsethief, and commenced to plunder the slender, household larders of the peasants in the lower Pinega valley, to whose succor a police force of thirty-five Americans and two hundred White Russians were dispatched in mid-November. This police party penetrated eighty miles southeast and took Karpagora, after an engagement, but early in December was overpowered by the returning Bolsheviks. A few of the Americans were killed, more wounded, and the rest went back to Pinega, posting the White Russians in outlying villages as they retired.