When the last battalion set sail from Archangel, not a soldier knew, no, not even vaguely, why he had fought or why he was going now, and why his comrades were left behind--so many of them beneath the wooden crosses. The little churchyards and the white churches and the whiter snow! Life will always be a crazy thing to the soldier of North Russia; the color and the taste of living have gone from the soldier of North Russia; and the glory of youth has forever gone from him. It is a fearful thing to contemplate the deliberate taking of a life. All consciousness recoils at the dreadful, irretrievable consequences of murder; yet when nations engage in extensive killing, there is no malice in the act on the part of individuals. Killing then has an impersonal character and becomes an heroic contemplation. In Western trenches, the enemy was called "Jerry" in a spirit of grotesque comradery and sportsmanship, and the finest soldiers had little hatred in their hearts for those across the twisted, shell gashed acres, who sought to maim and kill them, but with no malice aforethought. The mildest men, and men of highest culture and intelligence, recently made a profession of killing, and could practice their newly found profession with keen, cold, ghoulish precision and the comprehensive analysis of trained minds. War is not murder, and the business of killing loses its infamy and much of its obscenity by the united impulse of millions striving with selfless purpose, pure devotion and heroic sacrifice for a nation's goal. War shears from a people much that is gross in nature, as the merciless test of war exposes naked, virtues and weaknesses alike. But the American war with Russia had no idealism. It was not a war at all. It was a free-booter's excursion, depraved and lawless. A felonious undertaking, for it had not the sanction of the American people. During the winter of 1919, American soldiers, in the uniform of their country, killed Russians and were killed by Russians, yet the Congress of the United States never declared war upon Russia. Our war was with Germany, but no German prisoners were ever taken in this lawless conflict of North Russia, nor, among the bodies of the enemy killed, was there ever found any evidence that Germans fought in their ranks or sat in the councils of their Command. And in the conduct of the whole campaign there was no visible sign of connection between the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers. The war was with the Bolsheviki, the existing Government of Russia, and a few weeks after the arrival of American troops in Archangel, Tchitcherine, Soviet Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, handed a note to Mr. Christiansen, Norwegian diplomatic attache, which was delivered to President Wilson, in which the Bolsheviks offered to conclude an armistice upon the removal of American troops from Murmansk, Archangel and Siberia.