of Theodore Roosevelt, profiles his life. His portrait was painted by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947) about 1920-5, and was donated to the New York Chamber of Commerce around 1948/9 by the artist's friend, the soprano Jessica Dragonette (died 1980) who had acquired it from the artist's estate; she claimed in her autobiography 'Faith is a Song' (1951) that she offered it to Thompson's daughter who set a fee for the privilege of destroying the portrait. The portrait is now in the New York State Museum at Albany. Russia He visited Russia before the revolution and again in 1918 just after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the effects of crop failure and starvation were rampant. Thompson was a member of an American Red Cross relief mission that also hoped to encourage formation of a democratic government in Russia. He was awarded the honorary title of colonel by the American Red Cross. The mission saw firsthand the suffering of the people and the inability of the social democratic government headed by Alexander Kerensky to feed the hungry. Along with assisting the Provisional government in dealing with the famine, Thompson also endeavored to shape post-Revolutionary Russia's political landscape in a manner favorable to the Entente. Thompson, wholly sympathetic with Kerensky and his provisional government, provided $1 million of his own to a propaganda campaign intent on keeping Russia involved in the war against the Central Powers and the populace loyal to the Provisional government, in spite of growing popular sentiment against the war and Kerensky's mounting unpopularity. With the help of Thompson, the Committee of Civic Education in Free Russia was created by the Provisional government to oversee the propaganda drive, with pro-Kerensky Russian revolutionary Catherine Breshkovsky at the organization's head. According to W.B. Thompson biographer Hermann Hagedorn, the aim of the propaganda disseminated by the Committee was to "beg the Russians in terms which the simplest could comprehend to obey the government and resume the war, not to save the Allies but to save the Revolution." Despite Thompson's generous funding, the Committee was largely unsuccessful and could not compete with the anti-war propaganda of the Russian radicals, specifically that of the Bolsheviks. The million given to the Committee by Thompson was quickly exhausted and no alternative source of funding could be provided by the struggling Provisional government, prompting Breshkovsky to appeal to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for support.