The cause was there, but if their mentors sensed it, they manifested almost incredible obtuseness in failure to impart these moving eloquent reasons for the fight. They were silent about the odious exploitation of the masses under the crafty, artful guise of proletarianism; they said nothing of the wicked violation of sacred property rights, the unprincipled plundering, the trampling down by power maddened feet on all revolutionary enlightenment, the desecration of all things spiritual, the wanton derision of the church which had been the faith of the people and of their venerated, sainted fathers. Here was reason enough for any Russian with exalted, holy devotion to lay down his life for his stricken country. But instead of such scathing and unequivocal indictment, the British dwelt upon the conduct of the Bolsheviks, shameful and faithless towards the Czecho-Slovaks, and gave out, with venomous vituperation, highly colored stories of enemy atrocities and cruel treatment of prisoners so patently over-extended that they failed to make a convincing impression even on the moujik mind. So soon as navigation opened, there commenced an exodus of Russian officers to Archangel, sent by the British Command to lead the newly formed native legions. These officers came from the old Imperial Army, many were titled, proud of their high birth, and by every thought and training, and by every instinct, irreconcilably opposed to every notion of social equality; in short, irredentists of that heartless, arrogant, military class which a worn afflicted world had cast off in a travail of four years' agony and afflicting grief, and long suffering Russia had driven forever from her temples. So the fresh formed conscript ranks were made conveniently vulnerable for Bolshevik propaganda, this new weapon of warfare, invisible and treacherous, that on the Eastern Front had scored such havoc with the boasted discipline of the Germans. Soviet agents were everywhere, mingling with the people on the streets of Archangel, wearing the khaki of the newly organized soldiers, living with them, going through their drills, and fatigue and exercises, and ever with the passionate zeal of fanatics, feeding them the poisonous doctrines of Reddest Moscow, ceaselessly, night and day.