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Her idea doubtless was to throw Wrangel's army into the scale on another front of war whenever opportunity should arise. Britain, in refusing to support Wrangel, actually cut herself free from an enormous amount of material responsibility in case of Wrangel's failure.
But no money can save the Russians at Constantinople, or the "little things" which Wrangel's army leaves behind them. Refugee men and women ought, perhaps, to be fruitless, but they are not. The birthrate at Gallipoli and Constantinople is high, and the lying-in hospitals are full.
General Wrangel's army numbered about eighty thousand men when it was transported from the Crimea, and about ten thousand had left him for one cause and another at the time when the French presented the ultimatum "Go to Brazil or back to Soviet Russia, or we shall cut off the rations on April the first."
Wrangel's war material, his guns and machine-guns and ammunition, were given mostly to the Georgians, who promptly lost it to the Bolsheviks or sold it to Kemal. The Greeks certainly complain that the Kemalist army, after being almost devoid of artillery, suddenly became possessed of it in a mysterious way, and shelled them with French shells.
Davidson would give him a pair out there and then. "He does not understand us Russians. He should make him come five times and then not give it him. That is the only way to get respected." Davidson took me over the whole camp to all his hospitals, and showed all there was to be seen. Wrangel's army seemingly arrived with nothing.
The barrage in the Crimea was more like that of a grand attack in France than anything previously encountered in the Russian fighting. In Treloar's opinion, Wrangel's army still remained an army, and should be granted an "honourable return to Russia," i.e., be put down somewhere on the Black Sea shore with arms and ammunition, and left to make what terms they could with their enemies.
Treloar, ex-Captain in the Coldstream Guards, a soldier of fortune, now serving in Wrangel's army from pure devotion to the Russians. Appalled at the tragedy of the Russians, here is a man who does not mind speaking out.
He was normally a peaceful tiller of the soil, stopped at the plough and put into battle-harness by the politicians of Europe. Though now one of Wrangel's army he attributed all Russia's misfortunes to the "burgui." What a bourgeois really was he had not the remotest idea, but the word served. It was the burgui who brought about the March '17 revolution in Russia.
The Commander and every one were strongly Russophile won to them by personal contact with the Russians, and that although the ship "stank like a pole-cat" before it could bring the refugees to port. The Commander very kindly gave me a passage to Gallipoli, where a large part of Wrangel's army was encamped.
'Oh, we do so want to see the Swedish prisoners! said the child to Conrad, who happened to be passing on the way to his mother's house. 'One of them has such a dreadful great beard, Dollie continued; 'I am sure he must be General Wrangel's bagpiper. Only think, if he had his pipes here, he could play to us! Just peep in there; sometimes one of them comes to the window and looks up at us.
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