There was evidence one day on the railroad front that a new mutiny was brewing. All the men of the suspected company were put on a train and then disarmed. A guard went through the train and counted off the men, taking every tenth man outside to be shot without trial. The men had not mutinied, but they might, and something had to be done. I was told about another company of eighty Russians who were under suspicion at the same time. The British officer in command gave them the option of declaring who the ringleaders were or being shot _en masse_. Under the fear of this threat fifteen out of the eighty men were named and shot without trial. *XVI* *THE DÉBÂCLE* And so, there being nothing else possible, the débâcle began. But it is a big job to get an expedition out of a country, much bigger than to get it in. There were great quantities of munitions and supplies to be transported or destroyed. There were fortifications to destroy, bridges to burn, railways to tear up, all fighting facilities to cripple. There were civilians to evacuate, and all the service branches of the army, with all their vast and varied stores, to be disposed of. And there was the enemy to be dealt with. The thing simply couldn’t be done with any chance of success on all of those long fingers of this expedition until a smashing blow had been delivered to the Bolsheviki, both to reduce his morale and to increase your own, which had been so seriously impaired by the mutinies. So a smashing blow was delivered successfully at one of the finger-points, costing us more men than any other fight in North Russia; and instanter the latest retreat from Moscow began. Now there was something quite peculiar about this retreat from the finger-points in North Russia. We were not pursued. The Bolsheviki knew we were going. In fact, they seemed to be remarkably well posted as to our plans. They were willing to have us go. But they did not chase us out. The Bolsheviki had little to do with causing this retreat. This retreat was forced by the conscripted soldiers and people of North Russia, who wanted the English to go, and who were so sincere in this that they were willing to face all the dangers of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" commissar, and the unrestrained spite of every personal enemy, without English protection. A school teacher who supposed himself to be on the Bolshevik black list, said to me in July, "Our duty is to Russia. The Bolsheviki may rule us or may kill us, but our duty is to Russia. The English must go." The Labor Congress, assembled at Solombola, passed resolutions urging the hasty withdrawal of the British and were at once disbanded by the army and charged with being Bolshevik propagandists.