So it came that the Americans were free to take their leave for more pressing fronts and were given "Farewell and come again" from the hearts of the Pinega people, with generous, overflowing good will, abounding grateful acknowledgment of their genuine, upbuilding service. Perhaps this was more the conceived purpose of the Expedition to sustain the foundling democracy of Russia, to strengthen and instill solidarity and faith in the hearts and counsels of the Russian people, and to achieve such end by unsanguinary means. Perhaps the means might have been different and the melodrama never enacted if a college professor, with methods of applied humanity, had directed from the outset. But it is to offend the military to consider thus, and to be guilty of shameful heterodoxy. RETREAT "There is no use people raising prejudice against this expedition. Every one knows why it was sent. It was sent as part of our operations against Germany. It was vitally necessary to take every measure in regard to Russia during the war which would keep as many German troops as possible on the Russian front, and reduce that formidable movement of the German armies which carried more than a million men to the Western Front, and which culminated in that immense series of battles which began on the 21st March last year (1918)." WINSTON CHURCHILL, _Secretary of State for War_, in the House of Commons, 3rd March, 1919. XI RETREAT When the appeal to patriotism failed, Archangel Province, under British direction, invoked conscription, and by the middle of June, twenty-two thousand Russian soldiers had been assembled by coercive means. They thronged the backward villages through which the Americans passed on their way to disembarkation, and looked very fresh, like college youths, as they sauntered up and down to an eternal serenade of wheezing accordions, or with sacerdotal, marching chants, went swinging by in platoons and companies, these young conscripts, who knew so little of war and its harrowing disillusionment. For the moment all breasts were filled with that contagious ardor that springs from every massed effort, no matter its end, but not one in a hundred knew or felt the call of patriotism for the coming conflict of Russian against Russian. There was cause enough for the fight had it only been revealed to these pliant, guileless, peasant folk. For their country, weakened, helpless and faint from many war wounds, was being debased by vile and vicious poltroons who had stamped out the holy fires of the Revolution, nullified the Constituent Assembly, and stifled every voice of liberty with hands more remorseless than the cruel manacles of the Tsars.