Memoirs of a British Agent

by R. H. Bruce Lockhart

  To-day, the scene seems comic enough and, indeed, a trifle undignified as far as my own participation is concerned. But at the time it was a serious business. Indeed, so great was Greenep’s capacity for nursing a grievance, that he might very easily have involved the Consulate-General in a scandal or in expensive litigation, and, certainly, in ridicule.

  There were, however, compensations. In November, 1915, the Ambassador wrote me a letter informing me that the Foreign Office was so pleased with my work that I was to be left in charge of the Consulate-General until the end of the war. I used this letter with great effect in order to improve my financial position, which, with my increased responsibilities, was becoming precarious. For some time I had been conducting a bitter correspondence with the Foreign Office. We were in the middle of a great war. I was being involved in far greater expenditure than ever Bayley had had to face, and I was receiving neither increase of pay nor increase of office allowance. I enlisted the services of the Ambassador on my side. They were given whole-heartedly. Very early on, he wrote to the Foreign Office saying: “There is scarcely any Consular post of the same importance as Moscow at the present moment. It is the industrial and, in a certain broad sense, the political capital of Russia…. You will have seen from Mr. Lockhart’s despatches the excellent work that has been done by that office since Mr. Clive Bayley’s departure.”

  Even Ambassadors, however, cannot disturb the unimaginative routine of the Chief Clerk’s Department or of the Treasury, and it was not in an obdurate Whitehall, but in the heart of my grandmother that Sir George Buchanan’s letter was of service to me. The old lady, thrilled always by success, was delighted by the Ambassador’s encomiums. I knew just exactly how to launch my appeal. My brother Norman had supplied the perfect form to all of us, when he was a small boy in his first term at Marlborough. As his birthday approached, he had written to his grandmother as follows:

  “Dear Grannie,

  I hope you are well. I am enjoying school very much. My birthday is next Tuesday. All the boys here have cameras and spend their time taking snap-shots. The weather has been very good, and we have played more hockey than ‘rugger.’ I am in the fourth form and my housemaster is called Taylor. His nickname is ‘Trilby.’ He is a parson and he says prayers faster than anyone I have ever heard. I hope you are well, dear Grannie, and that you are not finding Edinburgh too cold. I was first in scripture last week.

  Your loving grandson,

  NORMAN.

  P.S.—I have no camera.”

  With the right bow in my hands—and this time I had it, I could play a still better tune on this fiddle. I gave the old lady a glowing account of the Scots in Russia and the part the Bruces, the Gordons, the Hamiltons, had played in building St. Petersburg and in winning Peter the Great’s battles. Had not a Learmonth—the very name of her house—provided Russia with her greatest poet? I dwelt on all the famous people I had met. I described the dinners given by my colleagues and by my Russian friends. My P.S. assured her of my unfailing belief in ultimate victory provided the cost of living could be kept down.

  Perhaps in her dreams (I have said she was ambitious) she already saw me rallying the spent Russians to the attack. Perhaps she was amused by my artfulness in the same way as she had been amused by my brother’s hint about the camera. At any rate, just as he received his camera, so I received my cheques—cheques, too, for generous amounts—which relieved my financial embarrassments and enabled me at any rate to keep my end up.

  May her soul rest in peace. She was a grand woman and even in the days of my failure she treated me better than I deserved. Without her I should have been completely lost in Moscow—a reflection which I feel sure will not make the members of the Chief Clerk’s department sleep less comfortably in their beds. Let them not think I bear them a grudge, The Whitehall game of battledore and shuttlecock, of vouchers and vouchers for not producing a voucher, has been played ever since the gods were on Olympus. It will be played for all time. On the whole, too, it is played in good temper by both sides. My only complaint is that in war time the rules of the game should be relaxed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS 1915 DREW to its end, my political work increased. The Allies were now seriously anxious about the Russian situation, and to my other labours was added the task of entertaining and shepherding the various missions sent out by France and England to stimulate the Russians to fresh efforts. Hitherto we had had a small list of more or less regular visitors. They included men like Colonel Knox (now General Sir Alfred Knox), Sir Samuel Hoare, the head of a special intelligence mission. General Sir John Hanbury-Williams, and Admiral Sir Richard Phillimore, the two British representatives attached to the Tsar’s military headquarters, and the various officers attached to the different armies on the Russian front. Of these officers, Colonel Knox, who had spent many years in Russia, was by far the best informed on military matters. Very early in the war he had seen the cracks in the Russian wall, and, if the Allies formed an exaggerated idea of the Russian strength, it was certainly not the fault of the English military attaché. Up to the revolution no man took a saner view of the military situation on the Eastern front and no foreign observer supplied his Government with more reliable information.

  Of the others Sir John Hanbury-Williams was a charmer, who was popular with everyone. Admiral Phillimore maintained the highest traditions of the British Navy by persisting in rising daily at seven o’clock—or was it six?—in a country where nobody stirred before nine or ten. The impression on the Russians was immense and wholly beneficial. Sir Samuel Hoare triumphed over a whole field of obstacles by the same industry and persistence which to-day have elevated him to Cabinet rank. His appointment to St. Petersburg was not popular with the regular soldiers. It was hard to understand in what respect his mission could supplement the work which was being done by the other British organisations. He himself had no special qualifications for the task, and, when he arrived, I anticipated friction and failure. With a less tactful man the forebodings would have been justified. Sir Samuel, however, beset himself to his task with unflagging and unobtrusive enthusiasm. He learnt Russian. He worked indefatigably. He made it his business to meet every class of Russian. He gathered in his information from many fields, and, unlike most intelligence officers, he showed a fine discrimination in sifting the truth from the chaff of rumour. In short, he made good. If, at the time, anyone had asked me to lay the odds against Sir Samuel as a future leader of the Conservative Party or as a possible Prime Minister of England, I confess that I should have had no hesitation in going the limit. Now, however, I realise that the same qualities which he showed in Russia in circumstances of great difficulty have stood him in good stead in his subsequent political career. Behind Sir Samuel’s small frame there is, combined with considerable ability, courage, and capacity for mastering his subject, a strong and very persistent will power. Where eighteen years ago I should have laid a thousand to one against, to-day I should not give more than two to one.

  These, as I have said, were our regular visitors. Now they were to be supplemented by the various side-shows. The first of these to visit Moscow was the French political mission to Rumania. Its object was to counteract German influences in Bucharest and to bring Rumania into the war. It was composed of Charles Richer, the eminent scientist, Georges Lacour-Gayet, the historian, and M. Gavoty, the former proprietor of the “Revue Hebdomadaire.” I saw much of all three men during their long stay in Moscow for, strangely enough, the mission was held up for weeks before it reached its destination. It was combated—and, for a long time, successfully—by the French Minister in Rumania.

  This visit is very memorable to me for three reasons: the first, entirely creditable, the second purely vain, and the third slightly discreditable, for which, however, my wife must share the blame. The creditable reason is that in Richet I met the greatest genius and most attractive personality I have ever known. Few men who have seen anything of the politico-military administration of the war can hav
e any faith left in the “great man” theory. Most of our geniuses die unrewarded, but it is quite certain that they are rarely, if ever, found in the unfertile field of politics or modern warfare. Richet, however, is a genius who has found honour in his own time. Absolutely unaffected and simple as a child, he is wholly charming in character. The first constructor of a modern aeroplane and a poet and a prose writer of distinction, he received the Nobel prize for medicine. The war took six of his seven sons, but it left no rancour in Richerts heart—no hate except of war itself. He is still living; still at the age of eighty almost alone among his countrymen in throwing his weight into the scale of international understanding against the balance of malicious self-interest and ignorant nationalism.

  At that time Richet was of course a patriot—that is, he believed in an Allied victory as an essential condition to the defeat of militarism. How well, too, he pleaded the Allied case before the Russians. How quickly he understood the Russian character. After his first speech in Moscow—a wonderful performance with all the University professors on the platform—he took me aside.

  “This is our war,” he said, “your country’s and mine. We must be strong in ourselves and count only on ourselves.”

  The second reason why this visit remains very vividly in my memory is that it was to have furnished the occasion for my first big public speech. It is true that a few weeks before I had made my first public speech in Russian at the opening of a hospital. It had been, however, very short. At the luncheon given by the British Club to the distinguished Frenchmen I was to have made my first attempt at war propaganda on a public platform. On the eve of the luncheon I was stricken with tonsilitis and influenza. I fainted at the telephone and cut my head on the receiver as I was in the act of summoning the doctor. It was perhaps a fortunate escape. The three Frenchmen were brilliant professional orators. It was better for me to make my début among my own countrymen who, in Parliament and outside it, are in my experience (and I have visited nearly every Parliament in Europe and have heard most of the great foreign orators) the worst speakers in the world.

  The third and slightly discreditable reason was the procuring by my wife of a document of considerable importance. I have said that the French mission had not been allowed to proceed to Rumania owing to the protestations of M. Blondel, the French Minister of Bucharest. The three Frenchmen were very indignant and made little attempt to conceal their anger or their intention of demanding explanations when they returned to Paris. Their hands had been strengthened against their own diplomatic representative in Rumania by a report by Marshal Pau, the one-armed French general, who had just completed an extensive study of the whole situation in that country. Pau’s report was known to be extraordinarily frank in its criticisms, and we were very desirous of seeing the original document. During the visit one of the Frenchmen (as all three are still living, it would be unfair to say which) stayed with us in our flat. Like most Frenchmen he was a courtier. In Paris the most severe and respected of professors, he thawed in the warm and rather licentious atmosphere of Moscow. He made my wife his confidante. He became indiscreet. One afternoon, to relieve her of a headache, he gave her the famous Pau report to read. With great presence of mind she committed it to writing, and in this manner I was able to send a complete copy to Sir George Buchanan. Soldiers have a reputation for bluntness, but the Marshal’s report would have shocked even the bluntest fire-eater in our own War Office. In language more effective because it was unadorned by any extravagances of style, it gave a devastating picture of conditions at the Rumanian court in 1915. The Marshal had spared no one. There was a thumbnail sketch of the King with chapter and verse for the numerous weaknesses of a character in which there was little to admire. There was a complete dossier of romantic adventure in high places with a “Who’s who” of the personalities involved and a record of their influence and political sympathies. There was an un-flattering picture of the French, British and Russian ministers, who were accused of setting a bad example in war-time to Rumanian society and of wasting their diplomatic effort by unseemly dissensions among themselves. The Marshal was frankly pessimistic. Rumania’s subsequent entry into the war was to justify his gloominess. He thought nothing of the Rumanian army. He thought still less of Allied diplomacy in Rumania. The full force of his indignation was reserved for the French and Russian ministers, whose antipathy to each other enabled the pro-German party to drive a wedge between two influences which should have been paramount. England, said the old soldier, had no historical role to play in Rumania. The only influence she could usefully exert would be through the good looks of her men. She should send her best-looking military attaché to the Rumanian Court. As a result of the Pau report there were changes in Rumania. As her new military attaché, England sent Colonel C. B. Thomson, who was subsequently to become the personal friend of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, to be made a Labour Peer and a Cabinet Minister, and to perish in the ill-fated initial voyage of the dirigible R.101.

  I remember little about that second Christmas of the war except that it was gay. Russians, rightly or wrongly, never allowed depression to interfere with their festivals, nor did they try studiously to cultivate a war attitude. They were un-disciplined and amoral. Their whole effort was individual and not co-operative.

  On January 1st, 1916, my wife and I spent the whole day paying official visits—one of the few really irksome duties of officialdom in Russia. The beginning of the year must have inspired more people than myself with good resolutions, for as a result of my visits my diary notes for January are remarkably optimistic. Two factors were responsible for this healthier atmosphere. Our Russo-Greek friend, Lykiardopoulos, had just returned from an adventurous journey into Austria and Germany. He had gone to obtain information for the Allies, and, disguised as a Greek tobacco merchant, had visited the leading cities of both countries. “Lyki” had left Moscow as a profound pessimist who was convinced of the invincibility of the German arms. He returned full of optimism, quite certain that Germany was feeling the pinch more than Russia and that Russia could hold out far longer. As far as supplies were concerned he was, doubtless, right. What he had miscalculated was the difference in the resisting power of the two peoples.

  His news, however, made Moscow cheerful, and for a few weeks he was a national hero. Still more encouraging was the reception of Prince Lvoff and Chelnokoff by the Emperor at his military headquarters in Moghilieff. The visit had been arranged by General Alexeieff, the Chief of the General Staff and a sturdy patriot, who had a soldier’s contempt for the average Russian politician. When the Grand Duke Nicholas was commander-in-chief, the Cities and Zemstvos Unions had always addressed their petitions to him personally. Their relations with the Emperor had been less happy. Disliking the various political resolutions which they had passed, he had hitherto refused to see them. On this occasion, therefore, they came to Moghilieff to see General Alexeieff and not the Emperor. As Mayor of Moscow Chelnokoff brought with him the greetings of the “heart of Russia” to the army and an official resolution of the City Duma affirming that no peace must be made until complete victory had been attained. General Alexeieff, knowing the immense work these great public organisations were doing in equipping the army with every kind of supply, was determined to restore good relations between the Emperor and the two Unions.

  “The Emperor’s all right,” he informed the two Muscovites bluntly. “The only trouble is the band of b——who surround him. You wait here, and I’ll take the resolution to him.”

  Presently he returned with the order that Chelnokoff was to enter the Imperial presence. When the broad-shouldered Mayor limped into the room, the resolution was lying on the Emperor’s table.

  “Why was this excellent resolution not sent to me direct?” asked the Tsar.

  Chelnokoff stammered out some clumsy excuse about etiquette and said that, if His Imperial Majesty would allow him, he would offer him the greeting there and then. He then stood up and in his best official manner conveyed Moscow’s loya
l greetings to the Emperor and read the resolution. The Tsar was greatly pleased.

  “I agree with everything in this resolution,” he said. “Peace will not be made until complete victory is attained. You are right, too, in expressing your gratitude to the army. We should go down on our knees before it.”

  The Tsar then questioned Chelnokoff about the situation in Moscow. The Mayor replied that there was no fuel, and not enough to eat because the railways were being run so badly and that, in these circumstances, rioting during the winter months was a possibility that could not be excluded. The Emperor replied that, if people were cold and had not enough to eat, one could not be too severe on them if they complained with violence. He asked rather suspiciously if the Mayor were not exaggerating.

  Chelnokoff replied: “No.”

  The Tsar then said: “Everything I can do to alleviate this situation will be done.”

  I received a full account of this visit from Chelnokoff as soon as he returned to Moscow. Both Prince Lvoff and he—grave, bearded men with no frivolities in their lives—were as pleased as schoolboys. They had returned from the “Stavka” with a whole heartful of optimism. The Emperor had been splendid. Their own work was now to go forward unimpeded. The army was on their side. What, then, did St. Petersburg matter? The army was more important, more powerful, than any Government.

  Alas! the high hopes raised by this visit were to be rudely shattered. Impending tragedy would not allow the Emperor to deviate from the fate which had been marked out for him. A little common-sense, a few words of praise, on the Emperor’s part, would have been sufficient to strengthen the ties of personal loyalty, to chain to his throne the patriotic fervour of the vast bulk of the people of Russia. How small was the effort required I had seen in the enthusiasm of these two public leaders, who, considerably less revolutionary in temperament than Mr. Lloyd George, were to be driven unwillingly into revolution and to become its first victims. The effort, however, was beyond the Emperor’s capacity of vision. The old system continued. The national effort was cramped in every way. Every minister who sympathised with it was sooner or later certain to be dismissed. And as, one by one, the patriots and the men of confidence disappeared, the allegiances of three hundred years were undermined by despair. In my own mind the feeling of inevitable disaster became stronger and stronger. Yet in public I had always to appear ultra-optimistic, calm and resoute, and unshakeably convinced of the ultimate victory of the Allies. If my real optimism was confined to the West, I had to simulate increasing confidence in the East. And after a time a smile which has no heart behind it becomes visibly artificial.