enough to deal with the Bolshevists of Moscow and Petrograd. And were we to run the risk of seeing the Germans and the Austrians defend them against us? Of the impossibility of regular transport, on outworn railways beset by the enemy, I need not speak. The fate of the Polish Legions as early as 1917 and their subsequent disarmament under Pilsudski, Musnicki and Haller, warned us not to try conclusions prematurely with the Germans and the Austrians; and, in the fighting near Kieff and Bachmatch, we had already found that, in comparison with the Germans, we were weak. Besides—and this was a weighty consideration—the Russian people would not have understood us. They, who were strongly opposed to war, would have looked upon us as foreign intruders and would have cut off supplies. The reactionary “Black Hundreds” would have attached themselves to us and would thus have given a large proportion of the people reason to turn against us. Finally, the Russian people then wanted one thing and one thing only besides peace—land, and this we could not give them.
Therefore the revolutionary conditions in Russia dictated categorically the principle of non-interference—conditions the more complicated because districts and towns as well as races made themselves more or less independent. It was no longer merely a question of dealing with Central Russia and her Government, or even with the Ukraine, but with other autonomous groups, like the Cossacks, for example. Nor was it possible to occupy and hold the immense territory of European Russia with 50,000 men. We should have had to occupy Kieff and a number of towns and villages in the direction of Moscow, leaving garrisons everywhere—an enterprise entirely beyond our strength. In Russia, though not yet in Siberia, the Bolshevists were beginning to organize an army. To the East and in Siberia there were fewer troops, and therefore the Siberian route was the surest way to France.
It must unfortunately be recognized that the Allies had no Russian policy and that their action against the Bolshevists was not united. Immediately after the Bolshevist Revolution the Allies had no objection to recognizing or, at least to negotiating with them. I knew that the French Ambassador, M. Noulens, had negotiated with Trotsky in December 1917. A little later, at the beginning of January 1918, the American Ambassador promised them help and formal recognition if they would take action against Germany. The French General Tabouis joined me in negotiating with them at Kieff. But the
