On the way home he stopped in London to chum with his old school friend Tom Lamont, who as one of their leading sources of funds, was much listened to by British officials. He convinced Lamont that the Bolsheviks would fight the Germans if properly handled. Lamont took him to see various cabinet members. “Don’t let Germany make ’em their Bolsheviks, made ’em our Bolsheviks,” W.B. told them.
Lloyd George was so impressed he immediately instructed a Russian-speaking Scottish diplomat named Bruce Lockhart, who was acting British Consul General in Moscow, to establish contact with Lenin and Trotsky. The bait held out by Lloyd George was that if the Bolsheviks recognized Lockhart as unofficial representative, the British would similarly recognize their agent Litvinov, who was already in London.
Much encouraged, Thompson took the first boat and arrived in Washington in January 1918. Though Lamont went with him, eager to describe Lloyd George’s reactions to W.B.’s tale, neither one of them got in to see the President. Wilson had just delivered himself of the Fourteen Points speech and felt that had settled the Bolsheviks for a while.
With Thompson gone the mantle of unofficial American representative in Russia fell on the shoulders of another mining prospector. Raymond Robins was an intensely emotional man, very much the thespian. He had large smouldering black eyes and straight black hair. People noticed that he looked like an Indian. Born in the Florida back country, he worked in Appalachian coal mines as a boy, went west prospecting, and came back rich from the Alaska gold rush. He was selfeducated, a devout Christian and a practicing evangelist. After studying for the ministry, he picked up some law and dedicated himself to settlementhouse work in Chicago. In 1912 he joined the Bull Moose movement and ran for the Senate on the Progressive-Republican ticket. A Progressive of the “Onward Christian Soldiers” variety he was picked for the Red Cross Mission on Theodore Roosevelt’s recommendation.
Arriving in Petrograd with a vast desire to do good and no knowledge of the language he picked up a young New York Jew for an interpreter. Alexander Gumberg was born in Russia and remained a Russian citizen but he grew up in the speculative intellectual life of the Jewish East Side. As business manager of the Russian language paper Novi Mir he struck up an acquaintance with Trotsky. Like so many others he returned to Russia after the revolution hoping for the promised land. A brother was a member of the Bolshevik party. Though a moderate socialist and of a somewhat sceptical turn of mind Gumberg was trusted by the Bolshevik leaders.
Through his intelligent interpreting Robins was able to make closer contact with Lenin and Trotsky than any other American. Though Robins never pretended to share their dogmatic beliefs or to approve their methods, he respected them for their dedication and their transparent ability. There was a fervor about Robins that impressed even Lenin.
Robins became convinced that he could singlehandedly change the course of history. Through Creel’s representative, Edgar Sisson, and through the Red Cross he sent home reports which he was confident would be understood and appreciated by Woodrow Wilson, whom he greatly admired.
The Bolsheviks were going to win in Russia, and they ought to win because they were the only people capable of getting anything done. During the Brest-Litovsk negotiations he reported that they were stringing the Germans along. When Trotsky refused to sign the German peace terms and came back to Petrograd to broadcast his “Neither war nor peace” statement, Robins’ faith was confirmed. If he could get a promise of immediate assistance from the Allies he believed he could induce the Bolshevik leadership to turn on the Germans.
Their partners in the “dictatorship of the proletariat” the Left Social Revolutionaries, whose support came from the peasantry and especially from the prosperous peasants of the Ukraine, were all for waging guerrilla war. Lenin was saying that peace was a necessity but Trotsky, through Gumberg, was giving Robins intimations that if American recognition arrived soon enough and were followed by Allied aid, he would be for continuing the war. Robins had fallen under Trotsky’s spell. He felt kinship with Trotsky’s dramatic oratory. He claimed that in his experience Trotsky had never failed to keep his word.
Trotsky, Robins told the sympathetic Lockhart, who was working against odds with his own government as Robins was with his, for Bolshevik recognition, “was a four kind son of a bitch, but the greatest Jew since Christ.” The Bolsheviks were using the Germans more than the Germans were using them. By spending their money to back old regime elements against the Bolsheviks the Allies were doing the Germans’ work for them. “If the German General Staff bought Trotsky they bought a lemon.”
During the earlier part of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk Sisson and Robins worked together in friendly fashion. They lived together and ate their meals together. It was through Gumberg’s influence at Smolny that Robins helped Sisson get distribution of Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech among the German troops.
Furthermore Robins, through connections which Thompson had set up, had contacts with the underworld of penniless and disinherited people who lived by catering to the various intelligence services. One group claimed to have tapped the telegraph wires into Smolny and was making hay selling the private communications of the Bolshevik command to the highest bidder.
Robins was using his connection with some of these connivers to get news of shipments of scarce war materials such as copper and nickel destined for the Germans. Then, through Gumberg, he would tip off the Bolsheviks at Smolny, who were only too glad to have them intercepted for their own purposes.
All through the Brest-Litovsk negotiations Petrograd teemed with undercover activities. Though the dictatorship of the proletariat was theoretically established the Bolsheviks had not had time to crush opposition. Free newspapers still appeared. The city was poorly policed. Selfstyled anarchists made free with the possessions of the rich. Secret agents swarmed. The German foreign office and general staff were spending buckets of money to foment pacifist and defeatist movements. French and British agents played hide and seek with them. Each secret agent was the center of a set of adventurers aiming to live high off inflated rubles while there was still time.
This gentry’s chief stock in trade with the Allied missions was documents purporting to prove that the Bolsheviks were agents of the German secret service. The first batch seems to have been distributed quite widely and gratis as a comeon. This was a set of circulars supposed to have been issued by a branch of the High Command giving instructions to their Russian agents. The dragoman of the American Embassy had a copy. Others were in the hands of the British and one set was published by a Cossack newspaper in anti-Bolshevik territory in the south.
One of the informers Robins was in touch with turned copies of these papers over to him early in February 1918. Though Robins himself took no stock in them, he felt the State Department should be informed of their existence and showed them to Sisson.
Right away Robins and Sisson disagreed as to what should be done. Both men were excited to the breaking point by the conspiratorial atmosphere of those wintry days of tension and suspense. Robins said the papers were worthless, but Sisson, a professional newspaperman and as fervent a Germanhater as could be found on Creel’s staff, decided he’d hit on the most important scoop of the war. Their argument became so personal that at their last breakfast together neither man would speak.
Left on his own Sisson had to turn to the Embassy. As happens so often in American diplomatic history, none of the Wilson administration’s agents were instructed to coordinate their activities with the others, and the last thing any of them thought of was to take the ambassador into their confidence. While Sisson was pondering how best to track down the clues he had in his hand he received a message from the Embassy that Mr. Francis would like to see him.