Industrious man! But he wasn't to be taken in by silly stories of social unrest. Oh, no!
Certain classes of Russians, we are told, tried to interest the Allied delegates in these matters. They thought that they had some bearing on the situation.
"But," says the "Morning Post" man, "Viscount Milner dealt decisively with these efforts in his first public speech at Petrograd, brushing them lightly aside."
"If we believed only one-fourth of all we have been told here," said this far-seeing, damn-the-consequences statesman, "I think we should very soon be candidates for a lunatic asylum."
It was no use mentioning such a vulgar word as "Revolution" to Viscount Milner. He came back to Britain and told us that all was well with Russia. The Tsar had been "very gracious." Everybody in Russia was in favour of getting on with the war. The only controversy in Russia was
"merely a question of administration, in fact, much the same kind of controversy as we have here in England."
"A great advantage," he added, "is getting personally to know the people with whom one is dealing." It is indeed. All this appeared in the "Times" on March 6, 1917.
A week later the Tsar was off his throne, and the Revolution had begun.
Blunder Upon Blunder.
Yes, the Revolution had begun. What is more, it went on. So did the Allies—they went on blundering. They made every mistake they could make. They made a new one every day, sometimes twice a day. Mr. Bonar Law paid compliments to the ex-Tsar. The Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates was described in the London Press as a band of cranks, fanatics, and extremists. Its appeal to the workers all over the world to oppose the annexationist policy of the ruling classes and to take into their own hands the great question of war and peace was denounced as a "pro-German" utterance. Mr. O'Grady (then in Russia) wrote home that the Russian workers would be glad of advice from the General Federation of Trade Unions. The egregious Mr. Appleton cabled back "Tell our Russian friends that our boys are dying in France while theirs are talking in Russia." Very conciliatory! Very persuasive! Very friendly! The Russian Provisional Government asked that an Allied Conference should be held, at which the Secret Treaties should be replaced by a joint declaration of War Aims in accordance with the principle of "no annexations and no indemnities." The Allies first agreed to hold a Conference; then they cancelled it; then they agreed again; then they postponed it. In fact, they kept on putting it off. Finally, they began to treat Russia in a somewhat offensive way as "a poor relation." Ambassadors lectured the Government on the lack of discipline in the Army, this drawing a protest from the Russian Foreign Minister, which protest was not generally recorded in the Press. Although the Russian Armies were quite unfit for further fighting, the Allies pressed Kerensky to undertake the fatal July offensive, and when this ended in complete military disaster, as it was bound to do, the British Reactionary Press began to encourage every movement in Russia which was likely to weaken the Central Government, and every disgruntled general or knot of capitalists and aristocrats who ventured to talk of counter-revolution and to express the opinion that "times were better when we had the Tsar."
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