THE curious position occupied by Russia vis-à-vis of all foreign Governments, not excluding even those Baltic Governments with which she has made treaties, naturally leads to the existence of very anomalous relations between the Soviet and the foreign journalists who find their way now and then into Red Russia. As no country, save Poland, is formally at war with Russia, journalists from the outer world can, if they are very persistent, find their way to Moscow through Reval or Finland. All they have got to do is to secure the visa of some Bolshevik agent, and there are now many recognized Bolshevik agents in Northern Europe and in London. This visa will not, of course, be given unless the Commissar is sure of his man; but it is given: I have known it to be given to persons whose own Governments had refused them passports to Russia. Indeed, there is no way of keeping out of Russia any person who wants to go there, and who is regarded by the Bolsheviks as sound. He has only to demand a passport to Reval, which cannot as a rule be refused, and from Reval the resident Bolshevik Mission will at once send him through to Moscow. Even when his own Government will not allow him to go abroad, he may appeal to subterranean agencies which will arrange his journey to the Mecca of Communism. For there are now in every European country two Governmental systems,—one visible, the other hidden—and both of them issue passports. During the month I recently spent in Moscow I was astonished at the number of foreigners who entered that city by the underground method, but it is not of such people that I wish to speak here; it is rather of the honest, adventurous, non-Bolshevik journalist whose curiosity is excited by the mystery of Russia, and whose determination to probe that mystery is only strengthened by the risks against which he is warned and the obstacles which are placed in his way. Unfortunately it is not always his editor who issues these warnings or interposes those obstacles; quite the contrary. Instead of holding young journalists back, their own newspapers sometimes excite them to go forward by cabling bitter taunts. “Are you going to wait till cheap excursions are running to Moscow?” wired one American paper to its representative on the Finnish frontier, with the result that the young correspondent in question made a heartbreaking appeal to the Commissars to let him pass. He was allowed to pass, but he ever afterwards felt himself to be under an obligation to the Reds, and consequently wrote very much in their favour. If the present system persists, this sort of thing will occur frequently, and the publication of a considerable amount of pro-Bolshevik material in the foreign Press will be the natural result.

Even though most of the matter written about Russia in the outside world will continue, as now, to be anti-Bolshevik, that matter will not have the same news value as matter sent from inside Russia, especially as conditions in that country are changing so rapidly that the Russian expert of to-day will be hopelessly out of date to-morrow. And, if the present anomalous state of affairs continues, it will leave the casual correspondent and the Communists themselves the only sources or, rather, the only source from which outer Governments can obtain information of developments in Russia, where there are no longer any foreign consuls or diplomatists. Even if there were, it would be difficult for them to obtain much information, as the new ruling class in Russia is very different from the old, being characterized by all the intense suspiciousness and reticence which we should expect to find in men who have been conceived in the womb of revolution, and have passed the greater part of their lives outwitting the police and carrying on secret machinations against the established order of things in every land. In comparison with these hard-faced Puritans who deny themselves the pleasures of the table, and whose only relaxation is work, conspiracy, and murder, the old type of Tsarist official was incredibly simple, gullible, and expansive.

Bolshevik Russia certainly possesses a terrible fascination for the adventurous journalist, for the unscrupulous editor, and, I may add, for a large section of the general public in every country. The Communists are well aware of this fact, and are cleverly utilizing this fascination for the purpose of their own Propaganda. They only allow into Russia, as a rule, foreign correspondents who have written in favour of them or against their enemies; and I have known perfectly honest men who tried to qualify for admission by writing ferocious onslaughts on the White Finns. No Foreign Office in the world keeps such a careful, voluminous, and up-to-date record of newspaper writers as the Russian Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. It is well qualified to do so, being itself composed mainly of Russian Pressmen who have passed most of their life abroad, generally in England, and who are convinced that, for their purpose, journalists are far more important than diplomatists. The latter send home dispatches which circulate among a small circle of officials and are then permanently pigeon-holed; the former appeal to the large masses, the very people whom the Bolsheviks want to reach. And they have so contrived matters that the journalist who enters Russia will only be able to send out Bolshevik Propaganda. He almost always tries to give an impartial description and to send out both sides of the question, but as the Bolsheviks invariably cut out all criticism of themselves, the outer world only gets the pro-Bolshevik matter. Most correspondents try to put matters right when they leave Russia, but it is then too late: the impression has been made, and the man in the street has no desire and no time to read intricate explanations of stale news. If we resume relations with the Bolsheviks, the same system will continue, and the Soviet Government will derive great advantage from it, for though conscientious correspondents will from time to time consider it their duty to explain the true state of affairs, they will only be expelled, lose their posts, lose touch with Russia, and soon cease to be authorities on current happenings here. It is fresh news from a country that newspaper readers want, not commentaries written by people who lived there years before.

It may be maintained that the Bolshevik attitude towards news is practically the same as that of most Continental Governments and of Japan, that the present abnormal state of Russia justifies abnormal measures, and that things were just as bad under the Tsar. It is certainly true that the Soviet Government is justified in exercising the utmost severity towards the foreign Press, but, on the other hand, we are fools to let her use the foreign Press as she does; and it seems to me certain that, even if we enter into relations with her, she will continue the present system in its full rigour. This would not matter so much if Russia were pursuing a policy which affected only herself, but, on the contrary, she is pursuing a policy which has an extreme and vital interest for every nation in the world; she is carrying out a great social experiment in which all humanity is keenly interested. And her system of mixed severity and blandishment vis-à-vis of the foreign Press is one which never existed before in any country and does not exist in any other country now. When I lived in Russia during the revolutionary movement of 1905-1906, I found that I could telegraph to England practically whatever I liked. There was not a single English or American correspondent in Russia at that time who did not oppose the unfortunate policy of the Tsar’s Government, and some of those correspondents were almost Bolshevik in their views, yet all of them were treated with the same courtesy by the authorities and not one of them was ever expelled. And in all other countries of the world, not excluding even Japan, there are many foreign correspondents who habitually criticize the Government under which they live, but who are nevertheless allowed to remain and never discriminated against.

At present a correspondent is allowed into Russia for three weeks only, and that fact is clearly stated in the permit he receives. If he does not distinguish himself during those three weeks by writing something favourable about the Bolsheviks, his permit will not be renewed, and, if he writes nothing at all, he will have to leave even before the three weeks have elapsed. No matter how long he stays, he is a compulsory, non-paying guest of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, and it is impossible for him to get hotel accommodation or lodging in the ordinary way. That system alone places him in a false position, and the great kindness which is shown him makes it very hard for him to be impartial. The Foreign Office has half a dozen large houses in Moscow for its foreign “guests”—the Hôtel Métropole, the Hôtel National, the Hôtel Savoy, the palace of a Russian sugar king on the Sofieskaya Naberezhnaya, and the beautiful villa of a German factory owner in Hartonovskaya Street. Princely apartments in the Kremlin are sometimes placed at the disposal of visitors whom the Bolsheviks regard as peculiarly sound in their views, and some of these highly honoured guests have been foreign journalists.

Along with this lavish hospitality there is a sleepless vigilance to prevent the “guest” coming in contact with the wrong sort of people, and the most meticulous care to keep him in the right atmosphere. Any visitor who calls on him in his hotel must run the gauntlet of a bureau downstairs to which he must submit his name, and under these circumstances a Russian who is unfavourably disposed towards the present régime will, for extremely good reasons, be unlikely to call and still more unlikely, if he does call, to have his name sent up. Pasted on the door of some of these palaces is a notice to the effect that nobody may visit any guest without first obtaining a written permit from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and, by way of emphasizing it, there always stands, alongside this notice, a sentry with a rifle. Each correspondent has attached to him an interpreter, guide, and warder all in one—a reliable Bolshevik in the service of the Foreign Office—who speaks the language of the correspondent as well as Russian. This functionary reports every movement of his charge, keeps undesirable people at a distance, translates the right sort of matter from the Bolshevik newspapers, gives the right sort of information, makes the proper explanations, and keeps the correspondent in the proper circles. The minuteness of the care taken by the Bolsheviks to create a favourable impression is almost incredible. It is like the care of a scientist conducting a delicate chemical experiment in a laboratory, or like the care of a nurse for a patient hovering between life and death. It goes even so far as to send tramcars flying past, while the foreign observer is looking, and to galvanize into fictitious life factories which have long been dead and will be dead again once the correspondent has left. As Potemkin humbugged Catherine the Great “as to conditions in Russia by conducting her through sham cities run up for the occasion by scenic artists,” so the successors of Catherine humbug English Labour delegates and foreign correspondents in the manner I have described. No strict Christian mother is more careful about the books her little children read and the conversations which they hear than the Bolshevik F.O. is about the literature which their guests peruse and the words to which they listen. I know of one English correspondent in Moscow who was forbidden to attend service at the Anglican Church owing to fear, on the part of the Bolshevik specialists who had him in hand, that the success of the delicate experiment which they were conducting on his mind with elaborate and patient skill might thereby be imperilled.

The foreign correspondents are not all kept together, for, if they were, they might generate by discussion among themselves an independent atmosphere of their own. They are therefore distributed very carefully among the various guest-houses, in each of which they are outnumbered by Russian and foreign Bolsheviks, so that the tone of conversation is always predominantly Communist. Some of these Russians are ex-diplomats and ex-officers, and are often of high intellectual attainments. In the hotel where I lived there was a young ex-diplomat who had worked in the Russian Embassy at Constantinople, and sometimes, after an evening spent in talking to him about Near Eastern politics and about diplomatic personages whom we both knew, I could hardly believe that, if such a man believed in it and worked for it, Bolshevism could, after all, be so very different from any other system of Government. A still more remarkable companion was an ex-naval officer who had been everywhere in the world, was a Futurist painter, had the most charming manners, and knew very much more about Elizabethan dramatists than I do. He had made, for example, a special study of Ben Jonson, some of whose plays are now being performed in Moscow; and, when I left Russia, he entrusted me with money to buy him, not cigarettes or clothing, but certain of Ben Jonson’s works. I do not accuse him of diplomacy or duplicity or propaganda. We had both been studied dispassionately and ultimately brought into contact with one another by a keener intellect than either of us possessed.

Notwithstanding the fact that the foreigner makes allowance for all this propaganda and laughs at it occasionally, he is nevertheless influenced very considerably by it. I was never so much struck by this fact as on one occasion when I disclosed my position and my military rank to an honest English gentleman of what I may call Asquithian views in politics, who had undergone for some weeks an intensive course of this psychological treatment at the hands of the Bolsheviks, and was on the point of leaving for England. He laughed at my fears, told me to declare myself an officer and claim boldly the right to leave for England with the other officers, and assured me that the Extraordinary Commission had been deprived of the power to inflict capital punishment. If he knew all that I knew he would have held very different language, but I saw that it would take a long time to make him see things as they really were, and I had only got him away for a few moments from his interpreter, whose ear was probably glued, however, to the keyhole. Although he was very far from being a Bolshevik and flattered himself that he saw through all the little wiles of his hosts, it would be really as hard to make him alter the opinion he had formed of their moderation as it would be to make him change his religion. One’s views are formed from what one sees and hears, and if the eyes and ears of an observer are carefully controlled his opinions are, to some extent, forced on him; nevertheless, having formed an opinion, he dislikes to change it, as his doing so would be equivalent to a confession that he has been gulled.

This extraordinary system for influencing the Press—a system which may have a profound effect on journalism all over the world—presupposes in its author a profound knowledge of psychology and a keener appreciation of the power exercised by newspapers over public opinion than any government exhibited until the outbreak of the Great War. But when one tries to ascertain who invented it, one finds that, like the tank, it owes its origin to circumstances and to a variety of inventors. It may even owe something to the great and elaborate system of dealing with the Press of neutral and friendly countries which was gradually built up in England during the war. Practically all the Bolshevik leaders have been journalists for the greater part of their lives; and, unlike the prominent English statesman who once said that he never read the newspapers, they have made a close study of this remarkable force, which was unknown to antiquity and which was ignored by most modern historians before the time of Macaulay; they have investigated the secret of its strength; and have sedulously sought out its weak points. Unfortunately, however, this flattering attention will probably result in their doing more harm to independent and honest journalism than has been done during the last two hundred years by all the statesmen who ignored it, and contemned it, and persecuted it, and knew nothing whatever about it. Trotsky, himself a journalist to his finger-tips, is even credited with the intention of making all Russian newspapermen wear a special uniform, but that is another story and too long a one to be given here.

I fancy, however, that I can detect Trotsky’s hand in what I shall hereafter describe simply as the System (with a big S). Litvinov has also had something to do with it, for he takes an extremely keen interest in foreign journalists, and has an accurate knowledge of even obscure writers who specialize in Russia. He pays more attention, indeed, to inferior but prolific journalists than he does to great writers, for he knows that if the great writers influence tens of thousands of middle-class people, the small writers influence millions of workmen, and even contribute by their daily presentment of contemporary developments in little-known countries to form the opinions of the masters.

And what I have said of Litvinov is equally true of the Bolshevik Missions in Reval and London. The institution which is directly charged with the administration of the System is not itself very imposing, and the secret cannot be found there. Something must here be said, however, about that institution, which is, of course, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

That ministry is lodged in a cramped and unimposing wing at the back of the former Hôtel Métropole; and the entrance to it is through a door formerly used by the hotel servants. Painted on a small square of wood hung outside this door is the inscription: “People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.” It is a rough, makeshift signboard, such as the poorest provincial shopkeeper in this country would be ashamed of, but it accords very well with the ostentatious poverty which prevails in the building where Chicherin, in a dispatch to Mr. Francis, the American Ambassador, proudly described the Soviet, of which he formed part, as “the Government of the Poor and of the Oppressed.”

Inside the entrance an armed Red soldier is always on guard: at least, he and his rifle are constantly in evidence, though very often he himself is asleep on a dilapidated sofa. There is a lift to facilitate ascent to the upper regions, but it has not been in working order since the Reds came into power, and visitors have got to mount a flight of dark stairs. On reaching the first-floor, a door on the left leads into the suite of rooms devoted to the Censorate. The first apartment is an anteroom where one sometimes finds English, American, Rumanian, and Italian correspondents being enlightened by their various interpreters and getting Bolshevik decrees and newspapers translated for them while waiting to have their articles and telegrams censored. Further on, there are three other rooms, the central one being the office in which the censoring is done and in which a number of correspondents are also to be found waiting, the nearest room being also a waiting-room to which correspondents from the central room sometimes retire, while the censor is arguing some delicate point with some one correspondent, and the furthest room being the private office of Comrade Rosenberg. In all these apartments Bolshevik women clerks, who generally speak some foreign language, work spasmodically on a damaged Russian typewriter, which seems to be shifted about from one room to another. There is also on the premises a German Underwood with Latin characters, which is sometimes used at a pinch by the correspondents. Passports are also attended to in the central room and permits to leave the country granted to foreigners. Two Bolshevik officials attend to the Press and to the passport business. Their names are Rosenberg and Feinberger, and both of them are Jews with a very good knowledge of English and a still better knowledge of German. The chief of the department is Rosenberg, a good-natured and hard-working but somewhat moody and neurasthenic man. Sometimes he is pleasant, sometimes suspicious, morbidly touchy, and almost inaudible, but always he is impossibly and ludicrously severe as a Press censor. He will only pass whole-hearted and unstinted admiration for Lenin and all his works, and has no use even for praise if it is faint. To give one example of his methods out of thousands, a correspondent once commented in a purely descriptive article, most of it very pro-Bolshevik, on the inconvenience caused to pedestrians by the huge masses of half-melted snow which had been allowed to accumulate last spring in the streets of Moscow, where it constituted such a formidable and amazing obstacle that every correspondent who visited the city at that period immediately started to write about it before speaking about anything else. This comment annoyed Rosenberg. “Why do you speak of this snow?” he asked petulantly. “There are places where the snow has disappeared and where the streets are clean. Why not describe those places?”

Feinberger lived so long in England that he knows English much better than Russian; but though he wrote, I think, for English Labour papers which, at all times of crisis, opposed the mildest and most necessary Press censorship as an infringement of English liberty, he is now himself the most merciless and unfair of censors. When he read the notes I submitted to him about Yurovsky, the Tsar’s murderer, he objected to my mentioning the fact that Yurovsky was a Jew, and made me strike out the word “Jew” as if I should be likely to forget that fact, which, moreover, he did not dispute. I once spoke of the “lugubrious” funeral march which the Bolsheviks play in memory of their comrades who have fallen, and he also objected to this word “lugubrious,” which was, he maintained, a term of ridicule.

These, it must be remembered, are not exceptional cases; they are typical cases. With such a censorship, the position of a foreign correspondent in Moscow is such that no self-respecting journalist could tolerate it for a moment, and that no decent British paper should send a representative there until the system is altered. For if a correspondent is made to eliminate from his dispatches all criticisms of Communism and all reference to facts which tell against Communism, quite a wrong impression will be made on his readers. I must admit that the Bolshevik censors always make their deletions in the correspondent’s presence and never tamper with dispatches; nevertheless, the position of the foreign correspondent in Moscow is such that he is liable, without knowing it, to become a danger to his own people. If he is a sincere and conscientious man, very anxious to stay and study the intensely interesting problem presented by this unique Socialist Government, he may be tempted to let his dispatches go out mutilated without reflecting on what a false picture of the country they will eventually form in the minds of his readers. If he is simply an adventurous, jovial person without any great feeling of responsibility towards the public, he will be rather amused than otherwise by the thought that he is being maintained in a palace entirely at the expense of the Soviet Government, with motor-cars placed at his disposal, money advanced to him, his radios sent free, clothing and furs given him almost for nothing; and will cheerfully allow the Bolsheviks to cut anything they like out of his messages. Now there are unscrupulous journalists in the world just as there are unscrupulous Bishops, and even one such journalist in Moscow at the present moment might do considerable harm. The mere fact of his being able to make a “scoop” every week might possibly lead him to shut his eyes to many things. And there are newspapers here and there throughout the world which would not, I am afraid, object to having a correspondent in Moscow able to send them occasionally exclusive news of the highest interest, and costing them nothing at all for his expenses and his radios—that is to say, nothing beyond his bare salary. If there is such a paper in England and it finds such a correspondent in Moscow, I hope that the public will be made to understand the position thoroughly; and I do not ask them to rely on my statement only: the slightest investigation will show them that 99 per cent. of the foreign journalists who have visited Russia during the last two years will bear me out in what I have said above. There are, I know, British journalists who are honestly convinced that Bolshevism is a good thing for Russia, as there are British newspapers honestly convinced that the Bolshevik side should be given as well as the anti-Bolshevik side. But I maintain that such newspapers should refrain from sending such correspondents until the Soviet Government allows more conservative newspaper representatives to send also their views from Moscow. This is not, however, a matter in which official action should be taken: it is a matter for the newspapers themselves and the public of this country. Governmental interference would only make things worse.

To show how intolerant the Bolsheviks are, I may say that a very pro-Bolshevik British journalist confessed to me once that he was almost excluded from Russia altogether, because a book he had written about the Soviets was regarded by the Commissars as hostile, though in England it was considered to be pro-Bolshevik. He lamented the amazing “touchiness” of the Commissars, but I should use a stronger word than “touchiness”; I should call it the determination of the Reds to tolerate no criticism, even of the mildest and most sympathetic kind. The existence of this state of mind would merely amuse me if it concerned only Russia, but at the present critical moment it concerns all mankind in a vital manner; and if any one paper ever tries to steal a march on its rivals by sacrificing its own honour and that of its representative in the manner indicated, I think that the whole world should understand the infamy of which that paper is guilty. If, after August, 1914, the Germans had retained the British correspondents in Berlin and allowed them to cable only pro-German propaganda, these correspondents would, for obvious reasons, have done less harm than correspondents telegraphing Bolshevik propaganda from Moscow at the present moment. As soon, of course, as English correspondents of all shades of opinion are allowed to send fairly impartial dispatches from Russia, the position will have altered entirely, and it will not matter then whether some of those correspondents are pro-Bolshevik or not. No one could object to Lenin’s censorship being as severe in 1920 as the Tsar’s was in 1905; but, after having had personal experience of both those censorships, I can affirm that Lenin’s is incomparably the more drastic of the two. It is so drastic that it converts all correspondence from Russia into Bolshevik propaganda; and, as I have already pointed out, it involves unheard-of interference with foreign journalists, the restriction of their movements, their constant supervision by spy-interpreters, the selection by the Soviet Government of the people to whom they are allowed to speak, their absolute dependence on the Bolsheviks for food, housing, clothes, and transport. With incredible audacity Lenin seeks to use against us the very correspondents whom we send to ascertain the real position in Russia, just as his Extraordinary Commission has, by the threat of death, compelled several French agents in Petrograd to work secretly for it and against their own Government, while apparently continuing to work against it and for their own Government.

The one saving feature, however, of the System which the Reds have drawn up for the manipulation of the foreign Press is that, like everything else in Bolshevism, it is too extreme, and thus overreaches itself. For instance, if the Reds allowed correspondents to send some criticism from time to time, they would be far wiser and more dangerous. But I have no fear that this warning will make them change, for they are incapable of change. If they were crafty enough to simulate moderation, especially in their dealings with the foreign Press and with foreign Labour, they would be much more dangerous than they are.

To return now, for a moment, to Rosenberg and Feinberger: these officials are not only censors; they are also managers and directors of the foreign journalists. They find food and lodging for them. They furnish them, if necessary, with clothes and motor-cars. They arrange for interviews and for visits to factories. They let them see the most secret correspondence of Royalty, and lift for them the veil which has hidden, so far, the arcana of modern statecraft. They get them tickets to meetings addressed by Lenin and Trotsky. And, of course, the more Communist a correspondent is, the greater the facilities that will be extended to him. But it will not be sufficient for him to say that he is on the side of the Soviet. He must prove that he is by sending to his paper the sort of messages they want him to send, and, as they file the English papers, it is impossible to deceive them by mere promises.

Up to the year 1914 there was a growing disposition on the part of foreign correspondents, especially those attending Peace Conferences and little wars in which their own countries were not immediately interested, to drop all attempt at impartiality and make themselves mere mouthpieces of prominent and ambitious men who rewarded them by “first news.” This did not matter so much in the old days when other correspondents could do the same thing on the other side, and when independent-minded journalists were admitted everywhere, but in the case of Russia it will matter seriously, for, within its territories, the Soviet Government tolerates no independence and no “other side.” I have even known the Moscow correspondent of a London paper let Feinberger send radios in his name for weeks at a time, while he himself was absent in other parts of Russia. The readers of that paper, and perhaps the editor, were under the impression that they were getting the views of an impartial English gentleman on exceedingly important developments, but what they were really receiving were the compositions of a Bolshevik Government official who is also a member of the Third International, and, as such, a fanatical worker in the cause of revolution in England. And as Feinberger had access not only to all the latest news and all the highest personages, but also to the messages of the other correspondents which passed through his hands, there was, of course, no possibility of competing with him.

It may seem incredible, but it is a fact, that Chicherin personally sees every news telegram which leaves Moscow by radio. This involves his sitting up all night, and certainly he is a demon for work. A single look at his haggard face as he wanders about his Foreign Office, shabbily dressed and with a muffler round his neck, and starting violently whenever he is addressed, would be enough to convince anyone that he is very much over-worked. He is invariably to be found in his office at night, as he has found that at night he is less liable to interruption than in the daytime, and also because radio messages are more easily received at night-time. He generally receives newspaper correspondents at 1.30 or 2 a.m., and the few foreign diplomatists who have visited the country since his accession to office are always asked to call at a similarly unearthly hour. A Rumanian Mission once objected to 2 a.m. as rather late, whereupon he made it 1.30 a.m., and kept them waiting half an hour.

Chicherin is a visionary and a fanatic who, before the Bolsheviks came into power, divided up his ancestral acres among his tenantry, and is at present penniless. He is one of those dangerous enthusiasts who do not drink, and for whom the festive board has no attraction. His food is sometimes brought in to him as he sits in his office, and it is never either plentiful or appetizing. His assistants lead the same kind of life as he does, and the usual time for a foreign correspondent to do business with them is between 11 at night and 6 in the morning. I had dinner with Rosenberg once, and found that he and his wife live principally on stale black bread and cold imitation tea without milk or sugar. I satisfied myself that the meal I then partook of had not been got up for dramatic effect, and I know that the Foreign Minister himself fares no better. All the Bolshevik chiefs who are really dangerous to the world lead a simple life and work very hard. Consumed by ambition or fanaticism or a combination of both, they are spurred on to perform prodigies of work by the feeling that they sit in the throne of the Romanovs, rule nearly a seventh of the land surface of the globe, hold like clay in their hands over a hundred million of plastic, ignorant people, and are looked up to with secret or undisguised admiration and hope by another hundred million of foreign workers. On this latter point they are probably mistaken, but that is what they believe, and it explains the frenzy with which they work, the privations to which they subject themselves, and the extraordinary lives which they lead. As was recently pointed out in The Times, even Edmund Burke, who had no love for the French Terrorists, admitted that, though the powers and politics by which those Terrorists won success at the beginning of the Revolution were “not those of great statesmen or great military commanders,” but the practices of vulgar criminals, they displayed nevertheless an energy which enabled them to supply their innumerable defects and made them “terrible even to the firmest minds.” “They have one thing, and one thing only,” he says, “but that one thing is worth a thousand; they have energy.” The strong passions of such men “awake the faculties; they suffer not a particle of the man to be lost.” They had the insight of hate. “They saw the right thing from the beginning. They saw that in its spirit, and for its objects, it was a civil war, and as such they pursued it.” All this might be applied, without the change of a syllable, to the Terrorists who now misgovern Russia.

Chicherin belongs to the gentry class, and served for some time as a diplomatist under the old régime. Aristocratic in face and in manner, he has a good knowledge of English, French, and German, and is very accessible to journalists, much more so than the Foreign Minister of any Great Power, for he regards correspondents, especially Labour correspondents, as truer representatives of their people than accredited diplomatists. The fact that they are not elected, and that their influence is extra-Parliamentary, probably tells in their favour, for Chicherin, like all the Bolsheviks, has Walt Whitman’s detestation of “the insufferable insolence of elected persons.” He professes to talk with absolute frankness, keeping back nothing; and to publish all outgoing and incoming dispatches. All the correspondence which he carried on with the diplomatists of the Entente at the time they left Russia, in July, 1918, has already appeared in English and French, and a copy of this publication was given to me. His last message to Ambassador Francis was to wish him a safe voyage, and to send, through him, greetings “to the descendants of Cromwell’s Ironsides settled beyond the Atlantic,” for Chicherin never neglects an opportunity of introducing Propaganda into his official messages any more than Cromwell ever neglected an opportunity to introduce Biblical references into his. Next to his fanaticism, his most prominent characteristic is his profound and ineradicable distrust of foreign diplomatists and Governments—a distrust which he bases on the policy of the Allies during the last three years in all the States bordering on Russia, and also on the disclosures made to him by Captain Sadul of the French Military Mission. As Chicherin himself graduated in a diplomatic service which was never celebrated for its scrupulousness, and belongs at present to a school of diplomacy which recognizes no law, his distrust is incurable, and it is very unlikely, therefore, that he and his colleagues will ever make an honest peace with the West. If there is a truce, it will be a short one, and will be followed by a greater and perhaps a final trial of strength.

Chicherin seems to work very harmoniously with the other Commissars, and both Lenin and Trotsky place full confidence in him, for both of them frequently refer to him in public utterances as a sound and trustworthy spokesman of Soviet Russia. The routine work of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs is left entirely to Chicherin and his subordinates, but on very important occasions Lenin, Trotsky, and the other two men, who form the supreme committee of five, are consulted with regard to important statements made to foreign Governments, with the natural result that those statements have sometimes a patchwork character.

Chicherin’s office is easily the most original Foreign Office in Europe, being more like a small Labour Club over a public-house during the progress of a strike, than the headquarters of an important Government department. Instead of the well-groomed young men whom one ordinarily meets with in such places, one encounters roughly clad, unshaven persons with heavy top-boots that have never been polished and without collars. Conversations about politics are sometimes conducted by visitors with a future Ambassador or a Conseilleur d’Ambassade en disponibilité, who repairs the handle of a door while he is talking, or punctuates his remarks with the blows of a hammer driving in nails to hang up a picture. There is the same air of impermanence about the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs as there is about the Sublime Porte. In one case the impression is that of Asiatics encamped in Europe; in the other case of rioters occupying a palace. Several of the old diplomatists have, it is true, come back; but, with the exception of one young man who has opened a Far Eastern Department in a lumber-room over Rosenberg’s office, where he is generally to be found cooking his own food or washing up after meals, all these old-régime people are given employment outside. To one of them has been allotted the interesting task of examining all the secret papers of the late Emperor and of the old Foreign Office, on the chance of finding some scandal which will compromise other monarchs and their Governments.

The feeling of impermanence of which I have spoken is never stronger than when one is waiting at night with the other correspondents for news by radio of some important event in the outer world. At such moments the air is tense with suppressed excitement. One feels as if one were in Sydney Street with the desperadoes who were cornered there, or as if one were one of a party of actors and critics assembled behind the scenes and trying to produce a ghastly merriment, while, before the footlights outside, a hopeless play is being produced to an infuriated audience without the faintest prospect of its being allowed to reach the last act. On the stage, the frenzied dialogue of actors uncertain if they will ever manage to escape with their lives. Behind the scenes a sceptical Press, wondering if, by any chance, they will become involved in the final, unrehearsed catastrophe which they see approaching. With the Press a number of nervous actors still dressed for their parts, and awaiting with ill-concealed anxiety the summons to “go on” again.

One discovers, not without alarm, that the officials one has been dealing with, under the impression that they are the heads of a great State, are merely part of a very small gang which has, by an amazing coup, seized on the Government of a vast Empire, and which is far from sure of its position. A combined attempt is made by the “diplomatists” and journalists to boil some water for tea in a disused kitchen, which has been discovered on the other side of the passage. Rosenberg contributes black bread. An English correspondent who came to Moscow without the permission of his own Government supplies butter, which he brought with him from Esthonia. A plucky young American lady, the correspondent of the Associated Press, produces a packet of tea. (That American lady was arrested at 4 o’clock the same morning by the Extraordinary Commission.) A Rumanian and an Italian Socialist, who was a naval officer during the war, complete the party, which seems somehow like a gang of burglars audaciously refreshing themselves in a mansion which they have plundered. Outside, Moscow is profoundly dark and quiet, save when a solitary rifle-shot at a great distance breaks the silence. Chicherin is alone in his office waiting for the radio message which he expects. It is at such a time that one best realizes the vital importance to the Bolsheviks of their great wireless station at Moscow, for without it they would be lost and isolated amid their snows, and Chicherin would have very little to do from one year’s end to the other.

It is extraordinary what small things bring about these crises. I remember two of these small things. The first was the seizure by the Japanese of Nikolsk, an act which led the Soviet Government to believe that Churchill had persuaded Japan to take active steps in Siberia, and that, in return for vast territorial concessions, the Mikado was going to march half a million of men to the Urals and to Moscow. The second was Kapp’s abortive attempt at a coup in Berlin. Judging by the excitement which these trifling events produced in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, I should not like to be there when the real disasters come.