ABSTRACT
Towards the end of 1919 the British government began to realize that the removal of the Bolshevik regime in Russia was a lost cause. By the end of October the anti-Bolshevik forces had been driven back on all fronts. In his annual speech at the Guildhall on November 8, Lloyd George stated: “We cannot, of course, afford to continue so costly an intervention in an interminable civil war.”1 Bolshevism, he concluded, “could not be suppressed by the sword.”2 In December Denikin’s army, the only remaining White force, began to disintegrate. When, on December 12, Lloyd George and Clemenceau met to discuss Churchill’s request for further help to Denikin, the two Prime Ministers decided “not to enter into any further commitments as to furnishing assistance to the antiBolshevik elements in Russia, whether in the form of troops, war material or financial aid.”3 By the end of the year, it seemed that even the hopes of Churchill, the chief advocate in the cabinet of an all-out campaign against the Bolsheviks, had been exhausted. On December 31 he wrote to Wilson: “There seems to be very little doubt of the complete victory of the Bolsheviks in the near future.”4
