TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ALLIES AND RUSSIA.
WE choose as a heading for this article " The Allies and Russia," because it would be impossible to emphasize too much the fact that, if the problem of Russia is to be solved, it must be solved by all the Allies. This is not a matter where one Foreign Power can step in and redeem Russia from Bolshevism. However gallant the attempt might be, the Power which made it would be bound to fail and would also go bankrupt in the process. The conflicting reports from Russia and the rapidly changing policy of the Allies in the past have provided us all with bewildering and disheartening reading ; it was difficult to see daylight anywhere, though at least once within recent months we thought that the dawn had appeared when the British Government made particularly confident state- ments about the improved situation. But like most bewildering problems, the Russian one can be reduced to comparative simplicity if we try to disentangle the essential facts from the unessential, and treat those essential facts— which are quite few in number—from a severely practical or ordinary commonsense point of view. And to begin with, we must repeat that Russia must be saved by all the Allies or by none. We have been hampered hitherto•by the unwillingness of our Allies to co-operate heartily with us and with the Constitutional Russians. British officers and men have worked tremendously hard in Archangel and Murmansk in trying to organize the Constitutional Russians and put them in a position to help themselves. It is also true, so far as we know, that we have done all we possibly could in helping General Denikin with the materials of war. Whether we ought to claim much credit or only a little, the fact stands out plainly enough that General Denikin Is the one Russian leader who has scored brilliant successes. He has not only cleared the Black Sea districts of the Bolshevists but has recaptured the greater part of the Ukraine. The reasons which have prevented the United States and Japan from co-operating thoroughly with Admiral Koltchak and the Russian Constitutional forces in Siberia may be sound and natural, but at all events the absence of co-operation has been conspicuous enough. President Wilson, basing his opinion chiefly on reports from the unfavourable ground of Eastern Siberia, has been restrained by his doubts about the democratic soundness of Admiral Koltchak ; and the Allies, we fancy, have been unable to agree as to the conditions upon which Japan should join actively in the campaign. The question we have to ask ourselves, then, is whether Great Britain, in default of a thorough-going agreement among the Allies that Russia can and must be saved. from Bolshevism by extraneous assistance, could go on and do the job alone. The answer must emphatically be—No. Even if we wanted to do the job alone we could not.
This leads us on to a second question—whether we should do good or harm by trying to help the anti-Bolshevik Russians to a limited extent. The answer to this question must be drawn from experience—from history—as much as from anything else. As we have often pointed out, there is no more dangerous undertaking than that of landing in a foreign country in order to help part of the population against their oppressors. However lightly people may think in the abstract about the possibility of accepting foreign help, when that help arrives they resent the presence of alien troops upon the sacred soil of their country. Look at what happened when Great Britain tried to help the .victims of the French Revolution. The assistance we offered to the Royalists of La Vendee will for ever be associated with the ghastly failure at Quiberon Bay. To take another instance from the same period, we occupied Toulon, just as we recently occupied Archangel and Murmansk, and tried to organize the people into successful Insurrection. We made the attempt almost single-handed, for although we received some help from Spain it did not amount to much, and no other country opposed to the French revolutionaries offered any. Once again the result was miserable failure. There was always a tendency among the most anti-Jacobin Frenchmen to regard us as invaders and not as friendly co-operators. Moderate Frenchmen who loathed the Terrorists with all their souls did not really get together and assert themselves till we had abandoned our efforts to help them. Of course we know,, and it may just as well be acknowledged, that a certain amount of odium attaches to those who, having tried to carry out a friendly mission, confess that they cannot do it and retire from the struggle. Great Britain is now rather in the position in which she was when Bismarck launched' the first of his series of unscrupulous Empire- making enterprises and attacked Denmark. The British people were anxious to help Denmark, but when we con- sulted the French and others, we discovered that if we went to the rescue of Denmark we should march alone. It is not to be wondered at that in the circumstances Lord John Russell felt unable to do anything. Denmark went under, and Bismarck, having tasted blood, went confidently forward in the career of annexation which brought Germany into that notorious and terrible frame of mind that was not appeased till the Great War. It is all lamentable to look back upon. Nevertheless Great Britain could not do what we all wish now had been done without the help of her Allies. Limited action—necessarily limited action—may, in fine, do more harm than good, and in dealing with the Russian question now we must ask ourselves whether the Russians are not more likely to save themselves when they are thrown upon their own resources than they are likely to be if we restrict their sense of responsibility by giving them a certain amount of help. After all, Russia is a country with a vast population and with still vaster resources of wealth, hardly as yet drawn upon. If such a country cannot save itself, can it really be saved by a pinch of help here and a pinch of advice there ? We think not. On the contrary, it may be that the Bolshevik wild beast, by being prodded in the ribs instead of being boldly strangled, may be made more furious than ever and devour more of its enemies. The knowledge that they are thrown upon their own resources may act as the right tonic, where all other medicines have failed, for persons who are tempera- mentally lethargic, as many of the. Constitutional Russians apparently are. An incident, small in itself but significant, which happened some months ago in Russia will illustrate what we mean. A British General, noticing that the sending up of supplies to the front line was not being pushed on quickly enough by the Russians, took down a company of British soldiers to the scene of operations to set a good example. He told the men that he wanted them to show their Russian comrades how to work, and the men, thus put on their mettle, hurled themselves upon the supplies with the British enthusiasm which is always called forth by a sporting event. They were too busy for some time to notice what effect their performance was having upon the Russians, but when they did at last take notice they found that most of the Russians were sitting down watching them—whether in admiration or astonishment does not very much matter, as the example in any case had no result. It is something more than a convenient excuse, then, it has the value of a positive remedy, to insist that it is right for the Russians to rely upon themselves. Deep down all nations have common fundamental qualities, and it must not be supposed that the Russians are an exception. It appears from the history of New Zealand that the less the colonists depended upon the help of British troops the better they did in their long struggle with the Maoris.
Now let us look at the consequence of abandoning Russia from another, and less reassuring, point of view. There was no doubt a time when if the Allies had been in thorough accord and had had their whole hearts in the business they might have carried out a great united crusade against Bolshevism as the enemy—for such -it undoubtedly is—of the peace of the whole world. But after the war all men were war-weary, and the Americans, who remained much the freshest nation, were restrained by their traditional objections to foreign entanglements and by the scruples of Mr. Wilson. More than a year ago Mr. Wilson spoke of the Allied responsibility for Russia as being an " acid test." But what has happened to that test now ? Reactions from the refusal to meet the test are bound to bear upon the future of the League of Nations. The League was created in order to administer the con- science of the whole world in the direction of keeping the peace and securing that all nations behaved with decency and justice. Now we see the Bolsheviks of Russia, with their hands dyed in blood, denying justice or even the barest toleration to those who will not join them in the exaltation of a particular class and a particular political creed. The preliminaries of putting the League of Nations into working order are signalized by what is in effect a confession that all the horrors and indecencies and injustices in Russia do not concern other civilized nations. Surely this is the bare meaning of the fact that the civilized nations have shown their unwillingness to take any action. Let us admit it—it is not a promising start for the League. The more friendly people are to the idea of the League, the more unready they seem to be to support its operations in practice. Before the League came into existence its most ardent supporters framed numerous schemes assigning to the League powers to handle an international army and to coerce recalcitrant countries by economic pressure. But now the barest suggestion of applying economic pressure—in other words, of blockading a country and depriving it of the essentials of life—is enough to provoke angry protests. It is difficult not to sympathize with any protest which has humanity for its motive, but these ardent friends of the League apparently never thought out the logic of their own ideas. For our part, as our readers may remember, we always feared that the League would. defeat itself if it were vested with too many powers ; if, in brief, it was too ambitious. We should greatly have preferred to see a simple single agreement among law- abiding nations to respect the sanctity cf treaties and to combine in punishing those nations which regarded treaties as scraps of paper. A League with much wider duties, however, has been born. We sincerely trust that it may be possible to make it work, and certainly all right-minded people ought to cease mere cavilling and try to do their best to make it a success. But it is on these very grounds that we cannot help saying that all the Allies as a body ought to confess their joint and equal responsibility for Russia. It is plain enough that Great Britain tried to lead the way in helping Russia, and now gives up the task because she cannot carry so much on her own shoulders.
A word remains to be sa'd as to the safety of the Russians who accepted our help in Archangel and Murmansk. The best formula that has been put forward on the subject, we think, was that of Lord Robert Cecil, who laid it down that all Russians who had worked with us in Archangel and Murmansk should be " put in as good a position as they would have occupied had they not assisted us." We must not incur the odium of having it said that we have done has than we promised in such a matter as removing all those who wish to be removed to a place of safety.
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