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- 17 July, 1918
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- <l:h1>U.S. Participation in the Archangel Expedition<l:/h1><br>
-
- This aide-memoire of July 17, 1918 states the terms upon which the United States would
- participate with the Allied Powers in the Russian 'Interventions'.
- Three battalions of infantry and three companies of engineers were sent to
- Archangel to protect supplies and to support British and Imperial troops
- already on the scene, and a small American force was also sent to
- Vladivostok, where, under command of the Canadian General Elmsley, along with
- Japanese, British, and Canadian troops, they formed part of the Vladivostok
- phase of the Interventions of 1918-1920.<p>
- <i>Foreign Relations of the United States</i>, 1918, Russia, Vol. II, p. 287
- ff.<!:hr><P>
-
- <i>The Secretary of State to the Allied Ambassador's Aide-Memoire</i>
- <P>
- . . . It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of the United
- States, arrived at after repeated and very searching reconsiderations ...
- feel obliged to withdraw those forces, in order to add them to the forces
- at the western front, if the plans in whose execution it is now intended
- that they should cooperate should develop into others, inconsistent with
- the policy to which the Government of the United States feels constrained
- to restrict itself. <P>
- At the same time the Government of the United States wishes to say with the
- utmost cordiality and good will that none of the conclusions here stated is
- meant to wear the least color of criticism of what the other governments
- associated against Germany may think it wise to undertake. It wishes in no
- way to embarrass their choices of policy. All that is intended here is
- a perfectly frank and definite statement of the policy which the United
- States feels obliged to adopt for herself and in the use of her own
- military forces. The Government of the United States does not wish it to
- be understood that in so restricting its own activities it is seeking, even
- by implication to set limits to the action or to define the policies of its
- associates. <P>
- It hopes to carry out the plans for safeguarding the rear of the
- Czecho-Slovaks operating from Vladivostok in a way that will place it and
- keep it in close cooperation with a small military force like its own from
- Japan, and if necessary from the other Allies, and that will assure it of
- the cordial accord of all the Allied powers; and it proposes to ask all
- associated in this course of action to unite in assuring the people of
- Russia in the most public and solemn manner that none of the governments
- uniting in action either in Siberia or in northern Russia contemplates
- any interference of any kind with the political sovereignty of Russia, any
- intervention in her internal affairs, or any impairment of her territorial
- integrity either now or hereafter, but that each of the associated powers
- has the single object of affording such aid as shall be acceptable, and
- only such aid as shall be acceptable, to the Russian people in their
- endeavor to regain control of their own affairs, their own territory,
- and their own destiny.<P>
- It is the hope and purpose of the Government of the United States to take
- advantage of the earliest opportunity to send to Siberia a commission of
- merchants, agricultural experts labor advisers, Red Cross representatives;
- and agents of the Young Men's Christian Association accustomed to organizing
- the best methods of spreading useful information and rendering educational
- help of a modest sort, in order in some systematic manner to relieve the
- immediate economic necessities of the people there in every way for which
- opportunity may open. The execution of this plan will follow and will not
- be permitted to embarrass the military assistance rendered in the rear of
- the westward-moving forces of the Czecho-Slovaks.<P>
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