Lewis A. Convis

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LEWIS N. CONVIS Lectures on Russia, Siberia and Poland in relation to vital American Problems. 


Redpath
LEWIS N. CONVIS 
LEWIS N CONVIS went to Siberia in 1918 as a Y.M.C.A. secretary. Entering the country by way of Vladivostok, he started at once for his assignment to the Polish Legion of Siberia four thousand miles inland. He was detained for a number of weeks at Harbin, in Manuchuria, and while there had an opportunity of studying the relationships between the Russians, Chinese and Japanese.

¶The Legion with which Mr. Convis served was composed of about 16,000 men who had been recruited from Poles among the old Russian armies and from Poles who had been in the armies of the Central Powers and were in Russian prison camps. It way the purpose of the Legion to go against the Central Powers if a new eastern front could be formed. The armistice making this impossible, the Allied command used some of these troops against the Bolsheviki in support of Kolchak's army.

¶After the downfall of Kolchak the Polish Legion held the rear guard for the entire Allied armies who were in retreat across Siberia. The legion was cut to pieces and Mr. Convis was one of the 870 survivors who escaped by taking to the forests. With his Polish orderly he made a 3,000 mile flight across Siberia in the winter of 1920-'21.
Lectures on Russian and Siberia
Although an America by birth and long ancestry, Mr. Convis was selected by the Y.M.C.A. as a man peculiarly fitted to serve among Slavic peoples. For more than a decade he has been a close student of Poland and Russia and has had intimate contact with Polish and Russian peasants and upper classes in America and Europe. As representative of the Federated Churches of Milwaukee in the Juvenile Court he has had abundant opportunity to study the reactions of American life on these people; he has a deep sympathy for them and a keen appreciation of their splendid qualities and the contributions they have to make the life of America and the world.

¶His years of study have made him thoroughly at home in the field of Russian and Polish literature, art, and music; and his interpretations of the soul of the Slavic race are vital, informing and challenging. As he speaks, his hearers and transported to the heart of Russia and Poland, and they live among those people, share their hopes and ambitions and feel the impact of the motives and impulses that shape their actions.


Mr. Convis in Siberian Costume
LEWIS A. CONVIS
¶Mr. Convis has lived not only among the Poles and the Russians but among the Kerghis, Mongols, and Buriats; has traveled extensively in Japan and China and during his service overseas was in Straits Settlements, India, Arabia, Egypt, Spain, England, Denmark, Germany, Czecho - Slovakia and France. He was in Poland during the Bolsheviki drive against Warsaw last year and witnessed the magnificent defence the Polish people made of their capital city.

¶Mr. Convis was made an honorary captain in the Polish Legion, and at a banquet in Warsaw was presented with a silver loving cup by the Legion officers as a tribute to his services with the army.

¶Since his return to America Mr. Convis has been telling his story to enthusiastic audiences both in the East and in the West. He has an astonishing mass of first-hand information regarding conditions in Russia, Siberia and Poland, and he presents his great array of facts in such a masterly fashion that his hearers are put in possession of a key that helps to solve this vital question that is perplexing the world today.


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