The Inside Story of the Peace Conference

by Emile Joseph Dillon

If a satisfactory answer to this proposal were returned within a fortnight, an armistice and suspension of the secret pourparlers with Germany would, I was told, have followed. That this compact would have led to a settlement of the Russian problems is more than any one, however well informed, could vouch for, but I had some grounds for believing the move to be genuine and the promises overdone. No reasonable motive suggested itself for a vulgar hoax. Moreover, the overture disclosed two important facts, one of which was known at the time only to the Bolshevist government—namely, that secret pourparlers were going forward between Berlin and Moscow for the purpose of arriving at a workable understanding between the two governments, and that the Allied troops at Odessa, Archangel, and Murmansk were in a wretched plight and in direr need of an armistice than the Bolsheviki.[263]

I mentioned the matter summarily to one of the delegates, who evinced a certain interest in it and promised to discuss it at length later on with a view to action. Another to whom I unfolded it later thought it would be well if I myself started, together with two or three others, for Moscow, Petrograd, Ekaterinodar, and other places, and reported on the situation. But weeks went by and nothing was done.[264]

I had interesting talks with some influential delegates on the eve of the invitation issued to all de facto governments of Russia to forgather at Prinkipo for a symposium. They admitted frankly at the time that they had no policy and were groping in the dark, and one of them held to the dogma that no light from outside was to be expected. They gave me the impression that underlying the impending summons was the conviction that Bolshevism, divested of its frenzied manifestations, was a rough and ready government calumniously blackened by unscrupulous enemies, criminal perhaps in its outbursts, but suited in its feasible aims to the peculiar needs of a peculiar people, and therefore as worthy of being recognized as any of the others. It was urged that it had already lasted a considerable time without provoking a counter-movement worthy of the name; that the stories circulating about the horrors of which it was guilty were demonstrably exaggerated; that many of the bloody atrocities were to be ascribed to crazy individuals on both sides; that the witnesses against Lenin were partial and untrustworthy; that something should be done without delay to solve a pressing problem, and that the Conference could think of nothing better, nor, in fact, of any alternative.

To me the principal scheme seemed a sinister mistake, both in form and in substance. In form, because it nullified the motives which determined the help given to the Greeks, Poles, and Serbs, who were being urged to crush the Bolshevists, and left the Allies without good grounds for keeping their own troops in Archangel, Odessa, and northern Russia to stop the onward march of Bolshevism. Some governments had publicly stigmatized the Bolshevists as cutthroats; one had pledged itself never to have relations with them, but the Prinkipo invitation bespoke a resolve to cancel these judgments and declarations and change their tack as an improvement on doing nothing at all. The scheme was also an error in substance, because the sole motive that could warrant it was the hope of reconciling the warring parties. And that hope was doomed to disappointment from the outset.

According to the Prinkipo project, which was attributed to President Wilson,[265] an invitation was to be issued to all organized groups exercising or attempting to exercise political authority or military control in Siberia and northern Russia, to send representatives to confer with the delegates of the Allied and Associated Powers on Prince's Islands. It is difficult to discuss the expedient seriously. One feels like a member of the little people of yore, who are reported to have consulted an oracle to ascertain what they must do to keep from laughing during certain debates on public affairs. It exposed its ingenuous authors to the ridicule of the world and made it clear to the dullest apprehension that from that quarter, at any rate, the Russian people, as a whole, must expect neither light nor leading, nor intelligent appreciation of their terrible plight. There is a sphere of influence in the human intellect between the reason and the imagination, the boundary line of which is shadowy. That sphere would seem to be the source whence some of the most extraordinary notions creep into the minds of men who have suddenly come into a position of power which they are not qualified to wield—the nouveaux puissants of the world of politics.

To the credit of the Supreme Council it never let offended dignity stand between itself and the triumph of any of the various causes which it successively took in hand. Time and again it had been addressed by the Russian Bolshevist government in the most opprobrious terms, and accused not merely of clothing political expediency in the garb of spurious idealism, but of giving the fore place in political life to sordid interests, over which a cloak of humanitarianism had been deftly thrown. One official missive from the Bolshevist government to President Wilson is worth quoting from:[266] "We should like to learn with more precision how you conceive the Society of Nations? When you insist on the independence of Belgium, of Serbia, of Poland, you surely mean that the masses of the people are everywhere to take over the administration of the country. But it is odd that you did not also require the emancipation of Ireland, of Egypt, of India, and of the Philippines....

"As we concluded peace with the German Kaiser, for whom you have no more consideration than we have for you, so we are minded to make peace with you. We propose, therefore, the discussion, in concert with our allies, of the following questions: (1) Are the French and English governments ready to give up exacting the blood of the Russian people if this people consent to pay them ransom and to compensate them in that way? (2) If the answer is in the affirmative, what ransom would the Allies want (railway concessions, gold mines, or territories)?

"We also look forward to your telling us exactly whether the future Society of Nations will be a joint stock enterprise for the exploitation of Russia, and in particular—as your French allies require—for forcing Russia to refund the milliards which their bankers furnished to the Tsarist government, or whether the Society of Nations will be something different...."

As soon as the Prinkipo motion was passed by the delegates I was informed by telephone, and I lost no time in communicating the tidings to Russia's official representatives in Paris. The plan astounded them. They could hardly believe that, while hopefully negotiating with the anti-Bolshevists, the Conference was desirous at the same time of opening pourparlers with the Leninists, between whom and them antagonism was not merely political, but personal and vindictive, like that of two Albanians in a blood feud. I suggested that the scheme should be thwarted at its inception, and that for this purpose I should be authorized by the representatives of the four[267] constructive governments in Russia to make known their decision. I was accordingly empowered to announce to the world that they would categorically refuse to send any representatives to confer with the assassins of their kinsmen and the destroyers of their country, and that under no circumstances would they swerve from that attitude. Having received the authorization, I cabled to the United States and Britain that the projected meeting would come to naught, owing to the refusal of all constructive elements to agree to any compromise with the Bolsheviki; that in the opinion of Russia's representatives in Paris the advance made by the plenipotentiaries would strengthen the Bolshevist movement, render the civil war more merciless than before, and raise up formidable difficulties to the establishment of the League of Nations.

But the plenipotentiaries did not yet give up their cause as lost. By way of "saving their face," they unofficially approached the Russian Ministers in Paris, whom they had not deigned to consult on the subject before making the plunge, and exhorted them to give at least a formal assent to the proposal, which would commit them to nothing and would enable them to withdraw without loss of dignity. They, on their part, undertook to smooth the road to the best of their ability. Thus it would be unnecessary, they explained, for the Ministers of the constructive governments or their substitutes to come into contact with the slayers of their kindred; they would occupy different wings of the hotel at Prinkipo, and never meet their adversaries. The delegates would see to that. "Then why should we go there at all if discussion be superfluous?" asked the Russians. "Because the Allied governments desire to ascertain the condition of Russia and your conception of the measures that would contribute to ameliorate it," was the reply. "Prince's Islands is not the right place to study the Russian situation, nor is it reasonable to expect us to journey thither in order to tell subordinates, who have no knowledge of our country, what we can tell them and their principals in Paris in greater detail and with confirmatory documents. Moreover, the delegates you have appointed have no qualification to judge of Russia's plight and potentialities. They know neither the country nor its language nor its people nor its politics, yet you want us to travel all the way to Turkey to tell them what we think, in order that they should return from Turkey to Paris and report to your Ministers what we said and what we could have unfolded directly to the Ministers themselves long ago and are ready to propound to them to-day or to-morrow.