Mr. Wilson's War

by John Dos Passos

  Various emissaries from Clemenceau, including the eminent philosopher Henri Bergson, sang to the same tune.

  To add to these perplexities was a long dicker with the Japanese, whom the State Department felt were being encouraged by their British friends to invade Siberia on their own. The President’s advisers agreed that the Japanese must be kept from taking advantage of the disintegration of Russia to build up their own empire, but there was difference of opinion as to how that should be done. Newton D. Baker was dead set against intervention of any kind. House pointed out that an invasion by the Japanese alone would throw the Russians into the arms of the Germans. In his opinion, if the Japanese insisted on going in it would be better to have an American force go along with them. In any case intervention should be preceded by largescale economic aid, administered by Herbert Hoover along the lines of Belgian Relief.

  From Americans in Russia came conflicting reports. Some saw in the Bolshevik government merely a final phase of the revolutionary upheaval destined to pass away in a few months like the Jacobin terror that ended the French Revolution. Others saw in it the foundation of a new social order.

  Woodrow Wilson was a tired man. His desk was stacked with more materials than he could cope with. House was already noting with alarm that he wasn’t getting through as much work as he used to. Dr. Grayson remarked that his memory for names was failing. Ever since the Bolshevik seizure of power had shattered his dream of a democratic Russia he had been allowing the news from that revolutiontorn empire to pile up against some closed door in his mind.

  He was becoming more and more reluctant to hear arguments about what action the United States should take in Russia. He balked at listening to the impressions of returned travellers. It was as if he felt that the data he had already absorbed were too difficult to resolve into the only terms his mind knew how to deal with. In early July he described to House, who had taken refuge from the extreme heat at Magnolia on the North Shore, in an intimate and affectionate letter, the desperation of his struggle to find the right words: “I have been sweating blood over the question of what is right and feasible”—“possible” he explained in parenthesis—“to do in Russia. It goes to pieces like quicksilver under my touch …”

  The Closed Door

  When people arrived fresh from the scene he refused to see them. He had listened distractedly to a few reports from Elihu Root’s mission at the end of the preceding summer, but to the chagrin of that eminent and elderly Republican statesman, had paid no attention to his recommendations.

  Returning members of the Red Cross Commission that followed fared no better.

  Hard on the heels of the Root mission, transported by the same old worn imperial train rolling up the weary versts from Vladivostok, a fresh aggregation of Americans appeared in Petrograd. The engineers of the Railroad Mission, still loafing in uncomfortable hotels without being given any work to do, immediately dubbed the Red Cross people the Haitian army. Red Cross workers sent abroad were given assimilated military rank. There were colonels, majors, lieutenants, but not a single private.

  This particular Red Cross mission differed from all others in that it was financed by a single individual. W. B. Thompson, who went along as business manager with the rank of colonel, paid all the bills.

  W.B. was a legendary figure among Baruch’s crowd on Wall Street. Born in Virginia City and raised in Butte, Montana, he struck it rich in copper. Coming east a millionaire, he applied an aptitude for poker and faro acquired in the mining camps of his boyhood, to such good account on the stock exchange that he became one of the country’s wealthiest men.

  With a war on, W.B., a big stout boisterous fellow in his late forties, was rearing to perform some patriotic service. His old friend Henry P. Davison of the Morgan bank, who headed the Red Cross, suggested that he go relieve the Russians. An expedition of about forty was collected. Though medical supplies and some doctors were taken along, the real purpose, as Edward N. Hurley of the Shipping Board hastened to explain to W.B. in behalf of the Administration, was to convince the Russians they should keep on fighting for the Allied cause. Copies of Woodrow Wilson’s speeches took up more baggage space than gauze bandages.

  W.B. arrived in Russia convinced he was the President’s personal representative. In Petrograd he hired the largest suite in the famous Evropskaya Hotel, bought a wolfhound, had himself driven about in a glittering limousine by a French chauffeur, and with his lavish dinners and his skull cap and his big cigars appeared to the astonished inhabitants as almost a cartoon version of the American capitalist.

  He developed a passion for icons and other Russian antiques. Taken to see Catharine Breshkovskaya, an old lady revered for her sufferings in the Czar’s prisons as the “little grandmother of the Revolution,” he became convinced that her friends, the Right Social Revolutionaries, were the people to back. When he found he could get no funds from the State Department he promptly drew a check of his own on the Morgan bank for a million dollars to spend in their behalf. This sudden financing of the Social Revolutionaries by the most flamboyant of Wall Street magnates gave the Bolsheviks an added talking point in their attacks on them. If anything more were needed to put the skids under Kerensky, W.B.’s million turned the trick.

  After Kerensky’s flight and the collapse of Kornilov’s rebellion, W.B. made a sudden switch and decided that the Bolsheviks were the faction that had the organization and the ruthlessness to come out on top. In this decision he was much influenced by his second in command, Raymond Robins, who, travelling back and forth across the country buying wheat for relief purposes, had discovered in empirical American fashion that the Bolsheviks were the only people he could trust to get anything done. Leaving Robins in charge of Red Cross activities, which by now included a considerable and highly unreliable secret service, W.B. set out to carry the word to Washington.

  On the way home he stopped in London to chum with his old school friend Tom Lamont, who as one of their leading sources of funds, was much listened to by British officials. He convinced Lamont that the Bolsheviks would fight the Germans if properly handled. Lamont took him to see various cabinet members. “Don’t let Germany make ’em their Bolsheviks, made ’em our Bolsheviks,” W.B. told them.

  Lloyd George was so impressed he immediately instructed a Russian-speaking Scottish diplomat named Bruce Lockhart, who was acting British Consul General in Moscow, to establish contact with Lenin and Trotsky. The bait held out by Lloyd George was that if the Bolsheviks recognized Lockhart as unofficial representative, the British would similarly recognize their agent Litvinov, who was already in London.

  Much encouraged, Thompson took the first boat and arrived in Washington in January 1918. Though Lamont went with him, eager to describe Lloyd George’s reactions to W.B.’s tale, neither one of them got in to see the President. Wilson had just delivered himself of the Fourteen Points speech and felt that had settled the Bolsheviks for a while.

  The Petrograd Intrigue

  With Thompson gone the mantle of unofficial American representative in Russia fell on the shoulders of another mining prospector. Raymond Robins was an intensely emotional man, very much the thespian. He had large smouldering black eyes and straight black hair. People noticed that he looked like an Indian. Born in the Florida back country, he worked in Appalachian coal mines as a boy, went west prospecting, and came back rich from the Alaska gold rush. He was selfeducated, a devout Christian and a practicing evangelist. After studying for the ministry, he picked up some law and dedicated himself to settlementhouse work in Chicago. In 1912 he joined the Bull Moose movement and ran for the Senate on the Progressive-Republican ticket. A Progressive of the “Onward Christian Soldiers” variety he was picked for the Red Cross Mission on Theodore Roosevelt’s recommendation.

  Arriving in Petrograd with a vast desire to do good and no knowledge of the language he picked up a young New York Jew for an interpreter. Alexander Gumberg was born in Russia and remained a Russian citizen but he grew up in t
he speculative intellectual life of the Jewish East Side. As business manager of the Russian language paper Novi Mir he struck up an acquaintance with Trotsky. Like so many others he returned to Russia after the revolution hoping for the promised land. A brother was a member of the Bolshevik party. Though a moderate socialist and of a somewhat sceptical turn of mind Gumberg was trusted by the Bolshevik leaders.

  Through his intelligent interpreting Robins was able to make closer contact with Lenin and Trotsky than any other American. Though Robins never pretended to share their dogmatic beliefs or to approve their methods, he respected them for their dedication and their transparent ability. There was a fervor about Robins that impressed even Lenin.

  Robins became convinced that he could singlehandedly change the course of history. Through Creel’s representative, Edgar Sisson, and through the Red Cross he sent home reports which he was confident would be understood and appreciated by Woodrow Wilson, whom he greatly admired.

  The Bolsheviks were going to win in Russia, and they ought to win because they were the only people capable of getting anything done. During the Brest-Litovsk negotiations he reported that they were stringing the Germans along. When Trotsky refused to sign the German peace terms and came back to Petrograd to broadcast his “Neither war nor peace” statement, Robins’ faith was confirmed. If he could get a promise of immediate assistance from the Allies he believed he could induce the Bolshevik leadership to turn on the Germans.

  Their partners in the “dictatorship of the proletariat” the Left Social Revolutionaries, whose support came from the peasantry and especially from the prosperous peasants of the Ukraine, were all for waging guerrilla war. Lenin was saying that peace was a necessity but Trotsky, through Gumberg, was giving Robins intimations that if American recognition arrived soon enough and were followed by Allied aid, he would be for continuing the war. Robins had fallen under Trotsky’s spell. He felt kinship with Trotsky’s dramatic oratory. He claimed that in his experience Trotsky had never failed to keep his word.

  Trotsky, Robins told the sympathetic Lockhart, who was working against odds with his own government as Robins was with his, for Bolshevik recognition, “was a four kind son of a bitch, but the greatest Jew since Christ.” The Bolsheviks were using the Germans more than the Germans were using them. By spending their money to back old regime elements against the Bolsheviks the Allies were doing the Germans’ work for them. “If the German General Staff bought Trotsky they bought a lemon.”

  During the earlier part of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk Sisson and Robins worked together in friendly fashion. They lived together and ate their meals together. It was through Gumberg’s influence at Smolny that Robins helped Sisson get distribution of Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech among the German troops.

  Furthermore Robins, through connections which Thompson had set up, had contacts with the underworld of penniless and disinherited people who lived by catering to the various intelligence services. One group claimed to have tapped the telegraph wires into Smolny and was making hay selling the private communications of the Bolshevik command to the highest bidder.

  Robins was using his connection with some of these connivers to get news of shipments of scarce war materials such as copper and nickel destined for the Germans. Then, through Gumberg, he would tip off the Bolsheviks at Smolny, who were only too glad to have them intercepted for their own purposes.

  All through the Brest-Litovsk negotiations Petrograd teemed with undercover activities. Though the dictatorship of the proletariat was theoretically established the Bolsheviks had not had time to crush opposition. Free newspapers still appeared. The city was poorly policed. Selfstyled anarchists made free with the possessions of the rich. Secret agents swarmed. The German foreign office and general staff were spending buckets of money to foment pacifist and defeatist movements. French and British agents played hide and seek with them. Each secret agent was the center of a set of adventurers aiming to live high off inflated rubles while there was still time.

  This gentry’s chief stock in trade with the Allied missions was documents purporting to prove that the Bolsheviks were agents of the German secret service. The first batch seems to have been distributed quite widely and gratis as a comeon. This was a set of circulars supposed to have been issued by a branch of the High Command giving instructions to their Russian agents. The dragoman of the American Embassy had a copy. Others were in the hands of the British and one set was published by a Cossack newspaper in anti-Bolshevik territory in the south.

  One of the informers Robins was in touch with turned copies of these papers over to him early in February 1918. Though Robins himself took no stock in them, he felt the State Department should be informed of their existence and showed them to Sisson.

  Right away Robins and Sisson disagreed as to what should be done. Both men were excited to the breaking point by the conspiratorial atmosphere of those wintry days of tension and suspense. Robins said the papers were worthless, but Sisson, a professional newspaperman and as fervent a Germanhater as could be found on Creel’s staff, decided he’d hit on the most important scoop of the war. Their argument became so personal that at their last breakfast together neither man would speak.

  Left on his own Sisson had to turn to the Embassy. As happens so often in American diplomatic history, none of the Wilson administration’s agents were instructed to coordinate their activities with the others, and the last thing any of them thought of was to take the ambassador into their confidence. While Sisson was pondering how best to track down the clues he had in his hand he received a message from the Embassy that Mr. Francis would like to see him.

  David R. Francis was a cigarsmoking whiskeydrinking old Kentuckian who had been Secretary of the Interior under Grover Cleveland, had served as Governor of Missouri and promoted the St. Louis World’s Fair. When, as a deserving Democrat with a reputation for business acumen, he was offered the embassy in Petrograd he seems to have felt that with war threatening he could not refuse any service the President asked of him. Not wanting to subject his wife and family to the hazards of wartime Russia he set out accompanied only by a secretary and a faithful colored valet He intrigued the Petrograd diplomatic corps during the last days of the Romanoffs by the simplicity of his establishment, his rough diamond frankness and his penchant for poker.

  A further cause for comment was his relationship with a Madame de Cramm, a voluble lady suspected of being a German spy largely on account of her name. She was in and out of the Embassy at all hours, giving the ambassador lessons in French, so it was said; she accompanied him on walks through the broad Petrograd streets on the white nights of summer. The gossip about Madame de Cramm may account for some of the standoffish attitude of Robins and Sisson towards the Embassy staff.

  Mr. Francis was no sooner established in the Romanoff capital than the imperial façade crumbled away disclosing a turmoil of ideologies and cutthroat factions which he was no better equipped to understand than any of the other Americans stumbling through the political nightmare. Being a man of some worldly knowledge he might have acquitted himself better if he hadn’t been, intentionally he felt, kept in the dark as to the intentions of the Administration.

  About the time of Sisson’s quarrel with Robins the ambassador was approached by a Russian journalist, with a great black beard and a rather unsavory history, who showed him the photostat of a letter of Joffe’s which he claimed proved under the table dealings with the enemy during the Brest-Litovsk talks. Much more interesting material, the journalist implied, could be had for a price. Mr. Francis called up Sisson and asked him to look at the photostat. Sisson brought along the material Robins had turned over to him. The two men put their heads together and decided that genuine or not the stuff should be cabled to Washington. Meanwhile Mr. Francis asked the State Department for twentyfive thousand dollars to spend for undisclosed purposes.

  When Lansing showed Wilson the cable the President, who evidently blamed Ambassador Francis for Thompson�
�s imprudence in so openly backing the wrong horse, noted: “our views and Francis’ have not in the least agreed on the use which should be made of money in Russia.” However he left the decision to Lansing.

  The draft was honored and Francis, who probably felt that Creel’s representative knew more about administration policy than he did, gave Sisson his head. Sisson got help from the British secret service and documents poured in. A few samples were cabled to the State Department in the diplomatic code. Secretary Lansing expressed interest, so with redoubled zeal Sisson bought every scrap of paper that was offered him.

  Sisson’s eager sleuthing was interrupted on February 18 when the German General Hoffmann announced that his patience was at an end and ordered his troops to advance into Russia. In two weeks his armies occupied the Baltic provinces. A German division marched into Narva, less than a hundred miles from Petrograd.

  Panic struck the city. In Smolny, behind the rifles of their praetorian guard of Latvian troops, the Bolshevik leaders began packing their records for the move to Moscow.

  Allied agents scattered in all directions. The embassy staffs crowded into special trains. The British managed to get through to Sweden before the civil war between Reds and Whites cut off communication across Finland. Monsieur Noulens the French ambassador was forced to turn back, an accident of war which greatly added to his distaste for the revolutionary Russians. Mr. Francis, insisting that since he was accredited to the Russian people and not to any particular government, his business was to remain on Russian soil as long as he could, retired in good order to Vologda.

  Vologda was an ancient lumbering town, reported to have more churches than dwellinghouses, about three hundred miles east of Petrograd at the junction of the Trans-Siberian railroad with the line that led north to Archangel. From Vologda Mr. Francis was in a position to retreat either to Archangel or to Vladivostok, if retreat became necessary. The other embassies joined him there and for a few months Vologda became an Allied oasis from which the western diplomats looked out on the chaos about them. Nothing the Bolsheviks could do, not even the threats and blandishments of Karl Radek, their most disarming jokester and their most persuasive journalist, could lure the embassies to Moscow.