The spoliation of scores of Russian villages and thousands of little farms, and the utter disorganization of the life and industry of a great section of the country with the attendant wanderings and sufferings of thousands of peasant-folk who had lost everything but life, are but the natural and necessary results of a military operation, and especially a weak and unsuccessful military operation such as this one was. One would hardly say, however, that it was necessary to close the school in order to use the schoolhouse for the storage of whisky, nor to put an entire Russian family into the street in order to make room for one officer, nor to loot personal property and ransack churches, nor to take so much whisky into the country that it could hardly be consumed when there was the greatest need for all kinds of merchandise, yet all these things were done, and acts of this kind are now outstanding features of the military "helpfulness" we went into so reluctantly. We have been told about the employment by the Bolsheviki of Chinese mercenaries, and the dreadfulness of this was much stressed in April, but in July, August, and September we were importing large numbers of Chinese to Archangel, dressing them in British uniforms, and training them for fighting the Bolsheviki. *XV* *THE MUTINIES* Early in the year there had been a few small defections of conscripted Russians at Shenkursk, Murmansk, and later at Toulgas, but the thing that broke loose in July when the Yankees had gone home and the new British army had come and started its big campaign was quite another matter. At Troitsa, at Onega, at Pinega, at Obozerskaya, on the Vaga and on the Murmansk railroad our Russian soldiers mutinied, killed their officers, and went over to the Bolsheviki. On six of our seven fronts these mutinies occurred. They were evidently not concerted, not uniform in method, but spontaneous, having the same nature, and springing from the same causes.