February 10, 1919

I have neglected serious Russian affairs hitherto, as far as my diary is concerned at least, and yet the fact is they have been with us from the start of the Conference and I was immersed in their affairs even before the talk fest began. President Wilson never said a truer word than when he announced his belief that the treatment of Russia presented the acid test to the peacemakers. Up to the present the result of the acid test has been negative and the outlook for the future is far from reassuring.

At the first meeting (January 16), when the Russian problem was broached, Lloyd George threw a bombshell by announcing that while he was helping Kolchak [leader of the White Russian Armies in Siberia who was captured and shot in 1920] with money and munitions, he was convinced that the Admiral was a monarchist. According to some accounts he called him a Tsarist. Many plans were then proposed, and according to the announcement of my cheerful Colonel, the four powers present divided into six groups. But at least three definite and distinct plans were immediately advanced to deal with the spreading “plague spot.”

The first plan was military intervention, sponsored by Winston Churchill, the dispatch of an army of one hundred thousand men to Moscow, not of course “with hostile intent or imperialistic purpose,” merely to open a political kindergarten in which the “Ruskies” might be taught the difficult task of governing themselves. Second, the cordon sanitaire, to make it impossible for the crazy moujiks to infect Europe with their weird but most infectious malady. The third plan, sponsored by the British, was to summon the leaders of all the Russian fractions and factions to Paris in the hope of bringing them into agreement among themselves and, if possible, to concerted action with the Allies.

Many thought well of this third plan; at least it committed no one to a line of policy and it would postpone decision and action, but M. Clemenceau smashed it with: “I cannot permit the Soviet agents to enter France, much less come to Paris, where we have already so many Bolsheviki of varied nationalities.”

Disappointed but not discouraged, the President after this setback decided to go it alone, at least temporarily. He sent out invitations to all the Russian groups to assemble at Prinkipo, the pleasant summer resort on the Bosphorus, for the purpose of having a “good talk.” He hoped it would lead to disarmament and the holding of a “free and fair” election. The plan did not prosper. Unfortunately, almost before it was sent out (the invitation, I mean) Miliukoff, the leader of the Cadet party, the most progressive and responsible in Russia, who like most of his adherents is living in exile, issued a statement deploring the call and declining it for himself and his adherents.

This action was immediately followed by refusals from the so-called governments of Omsk, Ekaterindor, Archangel, and the Crimea. The Soviets now joined in the chorus and made the rejection of the project unanimous, or nearly so. [They accepted, indeed, but with reservations and limitations on the scope of the Conference that robbed the meeting of any chance of a successful issue.]

It is true that the Baltic republics, Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were willing to put in an appearance, but they wanted transportation and assurances of protection from enemies on sea and land. As the President saw no advantage in a rump congress, he let the matter slide and turned to other equally thorny problems. I regaled the Colonel with a Homeric sentence of Bismarck to me in Friedrichsruh thirty years ago, “Diese verdamte Russen geben uns viel zu shaffen” (“These Russians give us a lot of trouble.”)

“And it is true today and will be true tomorrow, I fear,” said the Colonel.