The debacle in Russia profoundly disturbed America. It was due primarily to the failure of communication and transportation. Russia was shut off at the Dardanelles by the Turks and at the Danish Sound in the Baltic by the Germans. When the Kerensky government was organized there was hope by the oldest republic in the New World for the success of the newest republic in the Old World. The coup d'etat of the Bolshevists, who soon made the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans, gave pause to the Allied forces, who felt it necessary to take steps on what had been the "Eastern front" to prevent the use of Russian man-power against them. Fifty million dollars of their supplies were piled up at Archangel, which the Bolshevists were undertaking to confiscate and move into the interior. The Germans were seeking a submarine base on the Murman coast in order to gain access to the sea which they had been so long denied. These dangers drew Allied forces into Northern Russia. In May, 1918, the _U. S. S. Olympia_, which won fame as Dewey's flagship at Manila Bay, arrived at Murmansk with Lieutenant General Poole, of the British army, and a small detachment of troops. They drove off an attack at Pechenga. A small group of Russian naval officers, who could not reconcile themselves to Bolshevik rule, spent the winter on a sealing trip. They believed themselves safe when in sight of the Murman coast with their cargo of skins worth $35,000. Without warning a German submarine came up alongside and sank their vessel, few of the crew escaping. The Murmansk Soviet could not retaliate because, by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Russian navy could take no further part in the war. So they turned over their navy, consisting of three destroyers, one to the British, one to the French, and one to the _Olympia_ when she arrived. I dare say few people, even in the Navy, knew that we possessed a destroyer named the _Karitan Yurasovsky_. Its crew was half Russian and half American. It was a queer sort of arrangement, but Admiral McCully, in command of Naval Forces in Northern Russian Waters, said "It worked remarkably well, there never being the least sign of friction, and the destroyer always ready for duty." Not much has been heard of the U. S. flotilla on Lake Onega. When the Allied forces, including a small detachment from the _Yankton_, were on the line of march within 300 miles of Petrograd, there was need of water transportation. Our small naval contingent was equal to the emergency. Two motor boats, each with a short one-pounder in the bow and a machine-gun on the beam, were transported by rail down to near Lake Onega, then hauled miles through the woods, and launched in the lake on May 27, 1919. Three times they were engaged with Bolshevik gunboats at long ranges.