There are racial differences, racial prejudices, racial disparities, and racial asperities that cannot be gainsaid even under the influence of impersonal military discipline, and experience has shown that soldiers yield a more ready obedience to leaders who speak their own language; understand the philosophy of their daily lives, and at no other time did General Pershing so demonstrate his greatness, his complete understanding of the perplexities in Allied military organization as by his courageous insistence upon the solidarity of the American army on the battlefields of France. But in Russia the American regiment was at once merged with the British Command, and from first action until the end of the campaign, British Headquarters directed and controlled the dispositions and conduct of the Americans. At Archangel there is a modern, spacious white building, and here from steam-heated headquarters Colonel George W. Stewart commanded the United States 339th Infantry, here were quartered his staff officers, the unemployed "brains" of our Northern American army. He never saw any part of his regiment in action. For a long time I believe he had not even a vague notion regarding the location of his British dissipated troops. Embassies of France and Serbia, Poland, and Italy were in Archangel, and the American Ambassador, David R. Francis, came from Vologda there early in August, and stayed until sickness compelled him to leave for England during the winter. And there was an American Military Attache who developed into a Military Mission with Colonel James A. Ruggles as chief, and a staff of officers to assist him. Also there was an American Consulate, with an American Consul General, Dewitt C. Poole, who at times appeared to take over a supervision of the American share in this strange, strange war with Russia. And over across the harbor at Bakaritza, a well-fed Supply Company watched over mountains of rations and supplies that had been brought all the way from far off America; supplies and little good things and comforts that would have heartened and brought new life and hope to the lonely, abandoned men on the far fighting lines in the snow. These supplies never reached the front, but the Supply Company, with American business shrewdness and American aptitude for trading, acquired great bundles of rubles, and at the market place converted these into stable sterling, and came out of Russia in the springtime with pleasant memories of a tourist winter; likewise a small fortune securely hid in their olive drab breeches. But there were others who ate their hearts away, fretting and chafing, in Archangel, whose petitions to go to the front to play the man's game were denied by those in command.