25
precise, became gradually more vague. The „sabotage“ continued, of course, but if it caused harm to everybody else, it did not appear to be killing the usurpers at least not in the period in which it had been expected. This period was later on successively deferred to a later date, whilst the Embassies, who would not admit that Bolshevism could possibly exist decided, for reasons of personal expediency, to enter into relation with Smolny. Naturally, it was inconvenient to have to remain any longer without petrol supplies for ones automobiles, without passport visas for ones fellow-countrymen, without facilities for placing ones agents!
But it remained an understood thing that politically and diplomatically Bolshevism, did not exist, and that Russia was temporarily deprived of a Government. As far as Allied diplomats were concerned, this „Government“ could be reformed only by the sword of a General, and whether that General would be Alexeyeff, or Korniloff or Kaledin, who would be the second of Rodzianko, Milyoukoff and Savinkoff was a secondary matter. The whole problem, which was, moreover, an extremely simple one reduced itself really to a mere question of persons: all that was necessary was to reestablish „order“ and „discipline“ in the army and country, which Kerensky had failed to maintain to the necessary degree „for any State worthy of that name“.
Not the slightest allusion to Bolshevism: not the least comprehension of the formidable proletarian revolution which had only just taken place,—„discipline” and „order”,—this was all that was awakened in the diplomatic mind by the
