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While the troops from Europe trickled into Baku, the six Armenian Rifle battalions, which had superseded the volunteers units in 1916, remained along the front lines. In North Persia, the only theatre of combat during the summer, the VII Caucasus Corps, to which the 4th and 6th Armenian battalions were attached, penetrated deeper to the south-west of Lake Urmia in an attempt to link up with the British Mesopotamian forces. Again, messages of felicitation, congratulation, and praise were showered upon the Armenian participants. 73 The value of these soldiers grew in direct proportion to the increasing unreliability of the Russian troops. General Przhevalsky, commending the national units, authorised the conversion of the Armenian battalions into regiments in July, 1917. 74 The order brought a step closer to realisation the Armenian aspiration to have a distinct division and ultimately an entire corps. 75
F. Willoughby Smith, the American consul in Tiflis, was an ardent proponent of reinforcing the front with national units. To Ambassador David Francis in Petrograd, Smith often repeated his conviction that only a native Transcaucasian Christian force could successfully rebuff a Turkish offensive. On October 2 he pleaded for Armenian material assistance, 76 and later in the month objected to Francis' position that advising the Provisional Government to send more Armenian and Georgian troops to the Caucasus was interference in the affairs of Russia. 77 On another occasion Smith warned, "No time should be wanted in carrying out these plans, particularly in regard to the Armenian troops on whom full reliance can be placed. Delay will allow the Turks to concentrate on the Mesopotamian and Syrian fronts." Hoping to prod his superior into action, the Tiflis consul enclosed a letter from the Russian Deputy Minister of War, Boris Savinkov, who, in reference to the threatening military disintegration, had written, "Only the Armenian units are not touched and maintain combative capacity and a firm attitude." Savinkov proposed augmenting the Armenian strength to eight regiments, each with three battalions. 78 Ernest Yarrow of an American relief committee reported subsequently that in August, 1917, Smith, General Offley Shore of the British Military Mission, and G. F. Gracey, later a captain in British intelligence, conferred with Andranik, who assured them that he could raise a national force of ten to twenty thousand men. The experienced guerrilla fighter was certain that, in the event of Russian abandonment, a joint Armenian-Georgian army could defend the territory from Van to Trabizond. All four men were agreed that success of the plan was contingent on receipt of financial assistance and trained officers from the British Mission. 79 Though the project did not materialise, Smith's support for such quixotic schemes evoked the undisguised irritation of the American ambassador to Russia.
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73) W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, "Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921" (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 442-453, discuss Russian attempts in the first half of 1917 to unite with the British forces in Mesopotamia.
74) Archives of the Republic of Armenia Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference [now integrated into the archives of Dashnaktsoutyoun, Boston, Massachusetts], File 1/1.
75) General G. Korganoff, "La participation des Arméniens à la guerre mondiale sur le front du Caucase, 1914-1918" (Paris, 1927), pp. 63-69.
76) United States, The National Archives, "Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State", Class 861.00, Document 621.
77) United States, The National Archives, "Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State", 861.00/734.
78) United States, The National Archives, "Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State", 861.00/796.
79) United States, The National Archives, "Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State", 861.00/2319. See also "Record Group 84: Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State", C64(C8).1, Correspondence, American Consulate, Tbilisi, 1917, 1918, 1919, Class 711.
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