Besides this fatal lack of artillery, the Allied Command was miserably supplied with other armament. In the early days we had only a few machine guns and these were Vickers, with water cooled system, that became frozen and would not function in the severe cold. We had few Trench Mortars and no rifle grenades or hand grenades. But most disheartening of all were the Russian rifles issued to the infantry. They were manufactured in our country by the million for use of the Imperial Army; long, awkward pieces, with flimsy, bolt mechanism, that frequently jammed. These weapons had never been targeted by the Americans, and their sighting systems were calculated in Russian paces instead of yards. They had a low velocity and were thoroughly unsatisfactory. The unreliability of the rifle, prime arm of the infantry, was an important factor in the lowering of Allied morale. 2. Underestimation of the enemy forces and his military capacity. The Allied military authorities looked with contempt upon the Bolshevik movement, and viewed it as simply a sporadic outburst of outlawry that would pass like all disorganized brigandry. The facts were that this war was waged against the government of the Russian people. The de facto authority was in the hands of Lenine and Trotsky at Moscow. The Omsk group was distinctly an expression of the minority and the ancient Imperialists who were obstinately impervious to the new Russia flaming in revolution against age long abuses and tyrannies of the old order that could never be returned. The Omsk group never quickened any popular response. It lacked essential authority. The spectacular success of Admiral Kolchak before Perm was not followed through, and his government waned while the Bolsheviks grew in strength every day. The Soviet army was despised as an undisciplined rabble, without equipment or officers or commissary organization. But the Bolshevik soldier was as well equipped as we were, and incomparably superior in the larger arms. He was often better rationed, and sometimes led better. During the winter of 1919, Trotsky, an outstanding military genius, raised from the Kerensky rabble an army of one million men, which William C. Bullit of our State Department saw in March of that year at Moscow, and described as thoroughly soldierly looking, thoroughly trained, well rationed, and well provided for. From Moscow to Vologda, is less than three hundred miles by the railway which continues straight to Archangel. Why the Soviets did not concentrate a division on the railway, move straight to Archangel and leave the scattered Allied battalions bottled up in the interior is one of the many mysteries of the Expedition.