Past and Present-Day Influence on Russia with a Glance at the Future

Abstract

IN dealing with the Russian problem I will divide my statements into three parts-past, present, and future. Several years ago in an effort at comparison, I took the year 1917 for Russian with the year 1776 for the United States. This was a mistake, as it would have been better to say that we were blinded by the example of the English Revolution of 1688. We-I mean the Russian intelligentiathought it was possible to have a revolution in Russia without bloodshed, and this was the chief reason for the downfall of the Russian Provisional Government. We thought we had enough force to stand solely on our moral influence, and few, if any even among the foreign statesmen, thought the Bolshevik revolution possible. I recall that there were but few exceptions to this general trend of opinion. One was your great American, Theodore Roosevelt, who said to me that the only way to save the situation in his opinion was to send immediately to Russia a large American expeditionary force and show the Russian people that the United States was prepared to back them in prosecuting the European war and finishing it on a democratic basis. The second was the Honorable A. J. Balfour, who was then Secretary of Foreign Affairs in England, and British High Commissioner in Washington, and who, according to confidential information which I received in Washington, declared to President Wilson and Secretary Lansing that they must not give any aid to Russia because she was doomed to failure and would be unable to fight any more. When I asked the right honorable gentleman how he could make such a statement against his still fighting Ally, he said: