The first great step in the process of making Bolsheviki was the conscription of men for the army. This was not done until ample opportunity had been given everybody to enlist voluntarily, but not everybody volunteered. The Russian point of view and ours were quite different in this matter. We had undertaken to fight the Bolsheviki for him and he was glad to have us do it. Our men and officers, on the other hand, declared it was preposterous to suppose they were going to do this fighting while the "lazy Russians stayed at home." So conscription went into force. At first a small class of young men, then a larger class, and finally practically every able-bodied man from seventeen to fifty. Here was another story. Here was war, real war, again. The new thing called Military Intervention or Allied Assistance or anything else had proved to be the old thing that Russia knew so well. And the peasant of North Russia did not want it. As early as January some of these conscripted companies at Shenkursk went over bodily to the Bolsheviki. The suppression of all expressions of interest in Russia’s "new-found freedom" was a stupid blunder. There were no public meetings, no open discussion of political questions, no real freedom of the press. The Russian soldiers were even afraid to sing the "Marseillaise," and confined themselves to the innocuous if beautiful folksongs, leaving all of the many excellent freedom songs of the revolution to the exclusive use of the Bolsheviki. The British never discovered that the Russian loves these freedom songs, because they took counsel solely of the reactionary monarchist element they had placed in power. I have known a single strain of one of these freedom songs to throw a roomful of people into panic with fear that it meant a fresh revolt. And I have seen a crowd of Russian soldiers respond with keen pleasure when their officer, a friend of mine with whom I had talked the matter over, told them to go ahead and sing the so-called Bolshevist songs. This was toward the end of the chapter of Military Intervention. The suspension of all kinds of democratic and political experiment and experience by the Military Intervention was a matter of grave consequence. After a year of Military Intervention a member of a Zemstvo Upravda said to me, "We have made no progress in government. We have lost ground. It could not have been worse under the Bolsheviki." The people under Military Intervention felt that they were robbed of the freedom they had waited for so long and enjoyed such a little time. The belief that the Bolsheviki would have robbed them equally or worse comforted them for a time, but this comfort wore away as time stretched on and Military Intervention made constantly increasing demands upon them.