published a series of four articles by Hugo Koehler describing his observations during the Russian Civil War in 1920 and the defeat of the anti-Bolshevists. Koehler's belief that the Russian people would soon work through and cast off Bolshevism for a prosperous, free-market economy, while in line with the pro-business theme of the host publication, proved to be overly optimistic. Naval Attaché to Poland Koehler was promoted to permanent lieutenant commander on June 3, 1921, and appointed naval attaché to the American Legation at Warsaw, Poland, in August of that year, to aid the State Department in monitoring the beginning of international relations between divided-Russia and Poland. Koehler described the practical aspect of his job, as spending a year "combing Europe from one end to the other with no purpose more definite than to see what's really happening on the theory that might give us some idea of what's going to happen." His passport, signed by Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes contained over sixty visas stamped during his assignment. From 1795 to 1918 and the collapse of its neighboring nations, Poland had been variously controlled by Imperial Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary. The new republic of Poland that was outlined by President Wilson in the thirteenth of his Fourteen Points in January 1918, and agreed at Versailles the following year, included parts of the former Russia, the Congress Kingdom and Kresy. The diverse ethnic groups of White Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Ukrainians, along with small concentrations of Jews made up the new country. The area of the new state ceded from Germany included the agrarian regions of Pomerania and Posen, plus the industrial regions of Prussian Upper Silesia. From Austria-Hungary areas of West Galicia and Austrian Silesia were designated for the new Polish state. The goal of establishing a unified nation from these diverse regions, with differing taxes, varying public education (to the extent it existed) and transportation infrastructure, was compounded by the destruction of six years of war on both cities and farmlands. In a letter to Capt. William Galbraith of the Office of Naval Intelligence in early November, 1921, Koehler wrote of driving from Warsaw to Danzig, where he "passed in and out of Germany and Poland so often that we soon lost count of the number of frontier stations." Motoring from battle-scarred, Brest-Litovsk he wrote that, "The most interesting thing there was the scrawl on the wall