between itself and the triumph of any of the various causes which it
successively took in hand. Time and again it had been addressed by the
Russian Bolshevist government in the most opprobrious terms, and accused
not merely of clothing political expediency in the garb of spurious
idealism, but of giving the fore place in political life to sordid
interests, over which a cloak of humanitarianism had been deftly thrown.
One official missive from the Bolshevist government to President Wilson
is worth quoting from:[266] "We should like to learn with more precision
how you conceive the Society of Nations? When you insist on the
independence of Belgium, of Serbia, of Poland, you surely mean that the
masses of the people are everywhere to take over the administration of
the country. But it is odd that you did not also require the
emancipation of Ireland, of Egypt, of India, and of the Philippines....
"As we concluded peace with the German Kaiser, for whom you have no more
consideration than we have for you, so we are minded to make peace with
you. We propose, therefore, the discussion, in concert with our allies,
of the following questions: (1) Are the French and English governments
ready to give up exacting the blood of the Russian people if this people
consent to pay them ransom and to compensate them in that way? (2) If
the answer is in the affirmative, what ransom would the Allies want
(railway concessions, gold mines, or territories)?
"We also look forward to your telling us exactly whether the future
Society of Nations will be a joint stock enterprise for the exploitation
of Russia, and in particular--as your French allies require--for forcing
Russia to refund the milliards which their bankers furnished to the
Tsarist government, or whether the Society of Nations will be something
different...."
As soon as the Prinkipo motion was passed by the delegates I was
informed by telephone, and I lost no time in communicating the tidings
to Russia's official representatives in Paris. The plan astounded them.
They could hardly believe that, while hopefully negotiating with the
anti-Bolshevists, the Conference was desirous at the same time of
opening _pourparlers_ with the Leninists, between whom and them
antagonism was not merely political, but personal and vindictive, like
that of two Albanians in a blood feud. I suggested that the scheme
should be thwarted at its inception, and that for this purpose I should
be authorized by the representatives of the four[267] constructive
governments in Russia to make known their decision. I was accordingly
empowered to announce to the world that they would categorically refuse
to send any representatives to confer with the assassins of their
kinsmen and the destroyers of their country, and that under no
circumstances would they swerve from that attitude. Having received the
authorization, I cabled to the United States and Britain that the
projected meeting would come to naught, owing to the refusal of all
constructive elements to agree to any compromise with the Bolsheviki;
that in the opinion of Russia's representatives in Paris the advance
made by the plenipotentiaries would strengthen the Bolshevist movement,
render the civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable
difficulties to the establishment of the League of Nations.
But the plenipotentiaries did not yet give up their cause as lost. By
way of "saving their face," they unofficially approached the Russian
Ministers in Paris, whom they had not deigned to consult on the subject
before making the plunge, and exhorted them to give at least a formal
assent to the proposal, which would commit them to nothing and would
enable them to withdraw without loss of dignity. They, on their part,
undertook to smooth the road to the best of their ability. Thus it would
be unnecessary, they explained, for the Ministers of the constructive
governments or their substitutes to come into contact with the slayers
of their kindred; they would occupy different wings of the hotel at
Prinkipo, and never meet their adversaries. The delegates would see to
that. "Then why should we go there at all if discussion be superfluous?"
asked the Russians. "Because the Allied governments desire to ascertain
the condition of Russia and your conception of the measures that would
contribute to ameliorate it," was the reply. "Prince's Islands is not
the right place to study the Russian situation, nor is it reasonable to
expect us to journey thither in order to tell subordinates, who have no
knowledge of our country, what we can tell them and their principals in
Paris in greater detail and with confirmatory documents. Moreover, the
delegates you have appointed have no qualification to judge of Russia's
plight and potentialities. They know neither the country nor its
language nor its people nor its politics, yet you want us to travel all
the way to Turkey to tell them what we think, in order that they should
return from Turkey to Paris and report to your Ministers what we said
and what we could have unfolded directly to the Ministers themselves
long ago and are ready to propound to them to-day or to-morrow.
"The project is puerile and your tactics are baleful. Your Ministers
branded the Bolshevists as criminals, and the French government publicly
announced that it would enter into no relations with them. In spite of
that, all the Allied governments have now offered to enter into
relations with them. Now you admit that you made a slip, and you promise
to correct it if only we consent to save your face and go on a
wild-goose chase to Prinkipo. But for us that journey would be a
recantation of our principles. That is why we are unable to make it."
The Prinkipo incident, which began in the region of high politics, ended
in comedy. A number of more or less witty epigrams were coined at the
expense of the plenipotentiaries, the scheme, set in a stronger light
than it was meant to endure, assumed a grotesque shape, and its
promoters strove to consign it as best they could to oblivion. But the
Sphinx question of Russia's future remained, and the penalties for
failure to solve it aright waxed more and more deterrent. The supreme
arbiters had cognizance of them, had, in fact, enumerated them when
proclaiming the impossibility of establishing a durable peace or a solid
League of Nations as long as Russia continued to be a prey to anarchy.
But even with the prizes and penalties before their eyes to entice and
spur them, they proved unequal to the task of devising an intelligent
policy. Fitful and incoherent, their efforts were either incapable of
being realized or, when feasible, were mischievous. Thus, by degrees,
they hardened the great Slav nation against the Entente.
The reader will be prepared to learn that the overtures made to the
Bolsheviki kindled the anger of the patriotic Russians at home, who had
been looking to the Western nations for salvation and making veritable
holocausts in order to merit it. Every observer could perceive the
repercussion of this sentiment in Paris, and I received ample proofs of
it from Siberia. There the leaders and the population unhesitatingly
turned for assistance to Japan. For this there were excellent reasons.
The only government which throughout the war knew its own mind and
pursued a consistent and an intelligible policy toward Russia was that
of Tokio. This point is worth making at a time when Japan is regarded as
a Laodicean convert to the invigorating ideas of the Western peoples, at
heart a backslider and a potential schismatic. She is charged with
making interest the mainspring of her action in her intercourse with
other nations. The charge is true. Only a Candide would expect to see
her moved by altruism and self-denial, in a company which penalizes
these virtues. Community of interests is the link that binds Japan to
Britain. A like bond had subsisted between her and Tsarist Russia. I
helped to create it. Her statesmen, who have no taste for sonorous
phraseology, did not think it necessary to give it a more fashionable
name. This did not prevent the Japanese from being chivalrously loyal to
their allies under the strain of powerful temptations, true to the
spirit and the letter of their engagements. But although they made no
pretense to lofty purpose, their political maxims differ nowise from
those of the great European states, whose territorial, economic, and
military interests have been religiously safeguarded by the Treaty of
Versailles. True, the statesmen of Tokio shrink from the hybrid
combination of two contradictions linked together by a sentimental
fallacy. Their unpopularity among Anglo-Saxons is the result of
speculations about their future intentions; in other words, they are
being punished, as certain of the delegates at the Conference have been
eulogized, not for what they actually did, but for what it is assumed
they are desirous of achieving. Toward Russia they played the same game
that their allies were playing there and in Europe, only more frankly
and systematically. They applied the two principal maxims which lie at
the root of international politics to-day--_do ut des_, and the nation
that is capable of leading others has the right and the duty to lead
them. And they established a valuable reputation for fulfilling their
compacts conscientiously. Nippon, then, would have helped her Russian
neighbors, and she expected to be helped by them in return. Have not the
Allies, she asked, compelled Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia to
pay them in cash for their emancipation?
Russians, who have no color prejudices, hit it off with the Japanese, by
whom they are liked in return. That the two peoples should feel drawn to
each other politically is, therefore, natural, and that they will strike
up economic agreements in the future seems to many inevitable and
legitimate. One such agreement was on the point of being signed between
them and the anti-Bolshevists of Omsk immediately after, and in
consequence of, the Allies' ill-considered invitation to Lenin and
Trotzky to delegate representatives to Prinkipo. This convention, I have
reason to believe, was actually drafted, and was about to be signed. And
the adverse influence that suddenly made itself felt and hindered the
compact came not from Russia, but from western Europe. It would be
unfruitful to dwell further on this matter here, beyond recording the
belief of many Russians that the zeal of the English-speaking peoples
for the well-being of Siberia, where they intend to maintain troops
after having withdrawn them from Europe, is the counter-move to Japan's
capacity and wish to co-operate with the population of that rich
country. This assumption may be groundless, but it will surprise only
those who fail to note how often the flag of principle is unfurled over
economic interests.
The delegates were not all discouraged by their discomfiture over the
Prinkipo project. Some of them still hankered after an agreement with
the Bolshevists which would warrant them in including the Russian
problem among the tasks provisionally achieved. President Wilson
despatched secret envoys to Moscow to strike up an accord with
Lenin,[268] but although the terms which Mr. Bullitt obtained were those
which had in advance been declared satisfactory, he drew back as soon as
they were agreed to. And he assigned no reason for this change of
attitude. Whether the brightening of the prospects of Kolchak and
Denikin had modified his judgment on the question of expediency must
remain a matter of conjecture. It is hardly necessary, however, to point
out once more that this sudden improvisation of schemes which were
abandoned again at the last moment tended to lower the not particularly
high estimate set by the ethnic wards of the Anglo-Saxon peoples on the
moral guidance of their self-constituted guardians.
An ardent champion of the Allied nations in France wrote: "We have never
had a Russian policy which was all of one piece. We have never
synthetized any but contradictory conceptions. This is so true that one
may safely affirm that if Russian patriotism has been sustained by our
velleities of action, Russian destructiveness has been encouraged by our
velleities of desertion. We joined, so to say, both camps, and our
velleities of desertion occasionally getting the upper hand of our
velleities of action ... we carry out nothing."[269]
Toward Kolchak and Denikin the attitude of the Supreme Council varied
considerably. It was currently reported in Paris that the Admiral had
had the misfortune to arouse the displeasure of the two Conference
chiefs by some casual manifestation of a frame of mind which was
resented, perhaps a movement of independence, to which distance or the
medium of transmission imparted a flavor of disrespect. Anyhow, the
Russian leader was for some time under a cloud, which darkened the
prospects of his cause. And as for Denikin, he appeared to the other
great delegate as a self-advertising braggart.
These mental portraits were retouched as the fortune of war favored the
pair. And their cause benefited correspondingly. To this improvement
influences at work in London contributed materially. For the
anti-Bolshevist currents which made themselves felt in certain state
departments in that capital, where there were several irreconcilable
policies, were powerful and constant. By the month of May the Conference
had turned half-heartedly from Lenin and Trotzky to Kolchak and Denikin,
but its mode of negotiating bore the mark peculiar to the diplomacy of
the new era of "open covenants openly arrived at." The delegates in
Paris communicated with the two leaders in Russia "over the heads" and
without the knowledge of their authorized representatives in Paris, just
as they had issued peremptory orders to "the Rumanian government at
Bucharest" over the heads of its chiefs, who were actually in the French
capital.
The proximate motives that determined several important decisions of
the Secret Council, although of no political moment, are of sufficient
psychological interest to warrant mention. They shed a light on the
concreteness, directness, and simplicity of the workings of the
statesmen's minds when engaged in transacting international business.
For example, the particular moment for the recognition of new
communities as states was fixed by wholly extrinsical circumstances. A
food-distributer, for instance, or the Secretary of a Treasury, wanted a
receipt for expenditure abroad from the people that benefited by it. As
a document of this character presupposes the existence of a state and a
government, the official dispenser of food or money was loath to go to
the aid of any nation which was not a state or which lacked a properly
constituted government. Hence, in some cases the Conference had to
create both on the spur of the moment. Thus the reason why Finland's
independence received the hall-mark of the Powers when it did was
because the United States government was generously preparing to give
aid to the Finns and had to get in return proper receipts signed by
competent authorities representing the state.[270] Had it not been for
this immediate need of valid receipts, the act of recognition might have
been postponed in the same way as was the marking off of the frontiers.
And like considerations led to like results in other cases.
Czechoslovakia's independence was formally recognized for the same
reason, as one of its leading men frankly admitted.
One of the serious worries of the Conference chiefs in their dealings
with Russia was the lack of a recognized government there, qualified to
sign receipts for advances of money and munitions. And as they could not
resolve to accord recognition to any of the existing administrations,
they hit upon the middle course, that of promoting the anti-Bolshevists
to the rank of a community, not, indeed, sovereign or independent, but
deserving of every kind of assistance except the despatch of Allied
troops. Assistance was already being given liberally, but the necessity
was felt for justifying it formally. And the two delegates went to work
as though they were hatching some dark and criminal plot. Secretly
despatching a message to Admiral Kolchak, they put a number of questions
to him which he was not qualified to answer without first consulting his
official advisers in Paris. Yet these advisers were not apprised by the
Secret Council of what was being done. Nay, more, the French Foreign
Office was not notified. By the merest chance I got wind of the matter
and published the official message.[271] It summoned the Admiral to bind
himself to convene a Constituent Assembly as soon as he arrived in
Moscow; to hold free elections; to repudiate definitely the old régime
and all that it implied; to recognize the independence of Poland and
Finland, whose frontiers would be determined by the League of Nations;
to avail himself of the advice and co-operation of the League in coming
to an understanding with the border states, and to acquiesce in the
decision of the Peace Conference respecting the future status of
Bessarabia. Kolchak's answer was described as clear when "decipherable,"
and to his credit, he frankly declined to forestall the will of the
Constituent Assembly respecting those border states which owed their
separate existence to the initiative of the victorious governments. But
the Secret Council of the Conference accepted his answer, and relied
upon it as an adequate reason for continuing the assistance which they
had been giving him theretofore.
About the person of Kolchak it ought to be superfluous to say more than
that he is an upright citizen of energy and resolution, as patriotic as
Fabricius, as disinterested and unambitious as Cincinnatus. To his
credit account, which is considerable, stands his wonder-working faith
in the recuperative forces of his country when its fortunes were at
their lowest ebb. With buoyancy and confidence he set himself the task
of rescuing his fellow-countrymen when it looked as hopeless as that of
Xenophon at Cunaxa. He created an army out of nothing, induced his men
by argument, suasion, and example to shake off the virus of indiscipline
and sacrifice their individual judgment and will to the well-being of
their fellows. He enjoined nothing upon others that he himself was not
ready to undertake, and he exposed himself time and again to risks
greater far than any general should deliberately incur. Whether he
succeeds or fails in his arduous enterprise, Kolchak, by his preterhuman
patience and sustained energy and courage, has deserved exceptionally
well of his country, and could afford to ignore the current legends that
depict him in the crying colors of a reactionary, even though they were
accepted for the time by the most exalted among the Great Unversed in
Russian affairs. One may dissent from his policy and object to some of
his lieutenants and to many of his partizans, but from the
single-minded, patriotic soldier one cannot withhold a large meed of
praise. Kolchak's defects are mostly exaggerations of his qualities. His
remarkable versatility is purchased at the price of fitfulness, his
energy displays itself in spurts, and his impulsiveness impairs at times
the successful execution of a plan which requires unflagging constancy.
His judgment of men is sometimes at fault, but he would never hesitate
to confer a high post upon any man who deserved it. He is democratic in
the current sense of the word, but neither a doctrinaire nor a faddist.
A disciplinarian and a magnetic personality withal, he charms as
effectually as he commands his soldiers. He is enlightened enough, like
the great Western world-menders in their moments of theorizing, to
discountenance secrecy and hole-and-corner agreements, and, what is
still more praiseworthy, he is courageous enough to practise the
doctrine.
When the revolution broke out Kolchak was at Sebastopol. The telegram
conveying the sensational tidings of the outbreak was kept secret by all
military commanders--except himself. He unhesitatingly summoned the
soldiers and sailors, apprised them of what had taken place, gave them
an insight into the true meaning of the violent upheaval, and asked them
to join with him in a heroic endeavor to influence the course of things,
in the direction of order and consolidation. He gaged aright the
significance of the revolution and the impossibility of confining it
within any bounds, political, moral, or geographical. But he reasoned
that a band of resolute patriots might contrive to wrest something for
the country from the hands of Fate. It was with this faith and hope that
he set to work, and soon his valiant army, the reclaimed provinces, and
the improved Russian outlook were eloquent witnesses to his worth, whose
testimony no legendary reports, however well received in the West, could
weaken.
How ingrained in the plenipotentiaries was their proneness for what, for
want of a better word, may be termed conspirative and circuitous action
may be inferred from the record of their official and unofficial
conversations and acts. When holding converse with Kolchak's authorized
agents in Paris they would lay down hard conditions, which were
described as immutable; and yet when communicating with the Admiral
direct they would submit to him terms considerably less irksome, unknown
to his Paris advisers, thus mystifying both and occasioning friction
between them. In many cases the contrast between the two sets of demands
was disconcerting, and in all it tended to cause misunderstandings and
complicate the relations between Kolchak and his Paris agents. But he
continued to give his confidence to his representatives, although they
were denied that of the delegates. It would, of course, be grossly
unfair to impute anything like disingenuousness to plenipotentiaries
engaged upon issues of this magnitude, but it was an unfortunate
coincidence that they were known to regard some of the members of the
Russian Council in Paris with disfavor, and would have been glad to see
them superseded. When Nansen's project to feed the starving population
of Russia was first mooted, Kolchak's Ministers in Paris were approached
on the subject, and the Allies' plan was propounded to them so
defectively or vaguely as to give them the impression that the
co-operation of the Bolshevist government was part of the program. They
were also allowed to think that during the work of feeding the people
the despatch of munitions and other military necessaries to Kolchak and
his army would be discontinued. Naturally, the scheme, weighted with
these two accompaniments, was unacceptable to Kolchak's representatives
in Paris. But, strange to say, in the official notification which the
plenipotentiaries telegraphed at the same time to the Admiral direct,
neither of these obnoxious riders was included, so that the proposal
assumed a different aspect.