Then there was no diversion, no break in the gloomy, monotonous, despairing hours; no relaxation from the ceaseless vigilance in the guard against surprise attack; no respite from the constant threat of annihilation. The drear, sorrow freighted clouds menaced death. There was the message of Death across the bleak, endless, desolate snows. Death haunted the shrouded, hopeless days, and in the shadow of the encircling forests, Death waited. It was the most severe strain to which human intelligence could be subjected. Many lessons were learned in the war, and none so clearly as the one that human endurance cannot be taxed beyond capacity without a resultant of diminishing military returns. In France it soon became a corollary, universally accepted by all the Staffs, that men could not be subjected to the strain of continuing horrors and uninterrupted drain of physical resources without a pronounced lowering of fighting morale. It was calculated to a nicety how long a soldier could endure mental shocks and suffer hardships until his nervous system snapped and his distraught brain could tolerate no more. These things were all weighed in the precise scales at the laboratories of the war establishment and provision was made for human limitations, so that there grew up three units in every combat army. One of them attacking, or standing the brunt of enemy assault; another in the supporting trenches, to be used in great emergency, but most important of all to become accustomed to the terrifying effect of the big guns; and a third that was far back, where there was a warm bath and clean clothes, peace in the sky and the soft grass still grew green, where men drank deep their little day of life, and found oblivion from the animal filth and unspeakable griefs, the awful hideousness of modern warfare. It came to be recognized that reliefs of troops on the combat first lines were as necessary as ammunition and ration supply. But there were few and in some cases there were no reliefs for fighting men in North Russia, because there was no support unit from which to draw reliefs, and no reserve unit to call forth from the rear for those at the front. The Russian Expedition, if its object was to drive the Bolsheviks clear of Archangel Province and south of the Siberian railway, required for execution of this object an army corps with entire component of artillery, and in this war with Russia, Great Britain and France and the United States failed because of: 1. Inadequate forces in the Allied Command. This was not only true with respect to numbers, but also with respect to armament and equipment. We had no artillery support. We were outgunned from the outset and continued to have marked artillery inferiority throughout the campaign. Time after time, the infantry, after gallant success, was shelled out of position, while our own guns were silent because outranged. The effect on the morale was most disastrous.