ABSTRACT
With the German Peace Treaty temporarily out of the way, Lloyd George turned to Russia. He had abandoned the idea of peacemaking with the Bolsheviks. Perhaps the whole untidy affair could be cleared up by doing a quick deal with Kolchak, who looked as if he was going to win anyhow by such standards of the Great War as could be applied to the confused situation in Russia. Then the Allies could try and control him, and keep him away from the Germans. So Lloyd George had given way to Churchill; and Sir Henry Wilson, seeing which way the Arctic wind seemed to be blowing, had wired Kolchak to strike through to North Russia, and link up with British and Russian forces at Archangel-and leave Denikin to his own devices. It remained for Lloyd George to break this fait accompli discreetly to President Wilson, and win him round. The best way of doing this, he felt, was by inducing Kolchak to revive the Constituent Assembly (many of whose original members Kolchak had, however, long since murdered), and to promise land to the peasants; these were the cardinal points, he thought, that were worrying the President. The ‘broker’ for this operation would be the venerable revolutionary Chaikovsky, who had spent many years in exile in the United States, who had already recognised Kolchak-and from whose territory British troops were to make their transarctic dash to Siberia. This, then, was Lloyd George’s task while the Council of Four were awaiting the German reply to the Peace Terms.
