In February, Omberovitch, the Commander of the Bolshevik Northern army, announced that he would hurl the foreign invader into the White Sea and concentrated over seven thousand men in an attack on Shenkurst, the Allied position on the Vaga river. This force was ten times the strength of the defenders, who were driven back verst by verst over the deep snows to Kitsa, sixty miles down the river, and the Allied Staff prepared rearward positions in anticipation of withdrawal about Archangel and a last stand there a few weeks later. The enemy struck again with overpowering numbers at Bolshie Ozerki near the Railway. But he never consolidated his success. For some inscrutable reason withheld the knockout blow, and, before he could reorganize for another advance, spring came with the _nasta_ or thaw, and he had to pull back his artillery or abandon it in the bog. He also brought great forces in November to the assault of the River position, and attacked the Railway in spring with large numbers and with great vigor; but despite his vast superiority in guns, and his great advantage in strength, he could not, or _did not_, break through to complete victory and destroy our scattered, weakened battalions. Perhaps one reason the Bolsheviks did not massacre the puny Allied forces was because the nature of conditions in North Russia did not permit the concentration of great masses for the attack. The little villages, even with greatest crowding, could only house a few hundred men. Except at Shenkurst, where the most ambitious thrust was made, there was shelter for only a few thousand soldiers, and shelter was as essential as rations in this war of the Arctic. Another reason may have been that Lenine had sagacity and imagination enough to know that a complete massacre would have fired the people of Great Britain and France and America with burning indignation and a demand for revenge which their governments could not deny. Better to whittle away the little Allied company by methods of attrition. There was no prize in Archangel. The Bolsheviks had stripped that city of everything valuable long before the Allies came to Russia. 3. Ignorance of the military commitment. The difficulties of conducting an offensive campaign in Archangel province were at the outset not understood or realized by Allied Headquarters. Military men have asked me why the Commanding General did not, if determined upon an aggressive warfare, concentrate his small numbers for an advance on the Vologda railway, leaving a cordon of well fortified outposts about Archangel, sufficiently distant to protect the city from artillery bombardment. By such a method, he could have held his little force well in hand, would have safeguarded Archangel and fulfilled the real mission of the expedition (if guarding Archangel was the mission), with small cost and few casualties.