A huge bulletin board was erected on the Bolshevik bank of the Emtsa river, which conducted daily classes in doctrines of International Revolution, and the first confirmation of the Armistice news came in a weird preternatural voice which startled the night stillness of Kodish by announcing in sonorous tones the cessation of infamous war and the restoration of peace to the afflicted peoples of earth. There on the Emtsa bridge, a Bolshevik orator, shrouded by the phantom shadow of a waning moon, delivered in excellent English, almost academic in polish, a rhetorical harangue on the glories of communism, the injustice of soldiers suffering in cold swamps while others sat back in Archangel in soft ease. Also the speaker described most persuasively the abundant, bountiful hospitality awaiting all within the Soviet lines. It was all very diverting, but nevertheless gave audible utterance to many of the disquieting reflections which rankled deep in the heart of every man in the Allied ranks and did not go towards helping Allied morale. Later that same night, when this extraordinary speech was ended, two captives, a Scot and an American, came out on the bridge to tell their comrades of benevolent treatment at the hands of the unspeakable enemy; in the darkness their voices were like those from the grave, for many soldiers were led to believe that the barbarous Bolos killed all prisoners after torturing them with frightful savagery. In the first stages of the campaign, the French on the Railway killed those that could not be carried off the field to spare them the grewsome horrors which would have been visited upon them by the enemy, yet at Ust Padenga, volunteers brought in wounded not a hundred yards in front of Bolshevik machine guns, and at Toulgas, after a disastrous ambush, the enemy mysteriously withheld his fire from a relief party that was entirely exposed. There was, in fact, only one recorded instance of atrocity. This was on the Vaga where the bodies of an officer and several Americans were found hacked and mutilated with hideous debauchery, but there was nothing to show that this barbarism was approved by the Bolshevik leaders, and it may have been only an uncontrollable manifestation of primal cruelty which underlies all war. Several months after the last troops left Archangel, a number of Americans "missing in action" were expatriated through the efforts of the Red Cross by way of Finland, and these men spoke very favorably of their considerate treatment in Moscow. THE RIVER "There ought to be an efficient American Hell Raiser from one end of the front to the base, with a rank of lieutenant colonel." DOCTOR JOHN HALL (_Major Medico 339th U.S. Infantry_). 21st October, 1918. "The Government of the United States has never recognized the Bolshevik authorities and does not consider that its effort to safeguard supplies at Archangel or to help the Czechs in Siberia have created a state of war with the Bolsheviki."