Russians, who have no color prejudices, hit it off with the Japanese, by whom they are liked in return.  That the two peoples should feel drawn to each other politically is, therefore, natural, and that they will strike up economic agreements in the future seems to many inevitable and legitimate.  One such agreement was on the point of being signed between them and the anti-Bolshevists of Omsk immediately after, and in consequence of, the Allies’ ill-considered invitation to Lenin and Trotzky to delegate representatives to Prinkipo.  This convention, I have reason to believe, was actually drafted, and was about to be signed.  And the adverse influence that suddenly made itself felt and hindered the compact came not from Russia, but from western Europe.  It would be unfruitful to dwell further on this matter here, beyond recording the belief of many Russians that the zeal of the English-speaking peoples for the well-being of Siberia, where they intend to maintain troops after having withdrawn them from Europe, is the counter-move to Japan’s capacity and wish to co-operate with the population of that rich country.  This assumption may be groundless, but it will surprise only those who fail to note how often the flag of principle is unfurled over economic interests.

The delegates were not all discouraged by their discomfiture over the Prinkipo project.  Some of them still hankered after an agreement with the Bolshevists which would warrant them in including the Russian problem among the tasks provisionally achieved.  President Wilson despatched secret envoys to Moscow to strike up an accord with Lenin,[268] but although the terms which Mr. Bullitt obtained were those which had in advance been declared satisfactory, he drew back as soon as they were agreed to.  And he assigned no reason for this change of attitude.  Whether the brightening of the prospects of Kolchak and Denikin had modified his judgment on the question of expediency must remain a matter of conjecture.  It is hardly necessary, however, to point out once more that this sudden improvisation of schemes which were abandoned again at the last moment tended to lower the not particularly high estimate set by the ethnic wards of the Anglo-Saxon peoples on the moral guidance of their self-constituted guardians.

An ardent champion of the Allied nations in France wrote:  “We have never had a Russian policy which was all of one piece.  We have never synthetized any but contradictory conceptions.  This is so true that one may safely affirm that if Russian patriotism has been sustained by our velleities of action, Russian destructiveness has been encouraged by our velleities of desertion.  We joined, so to say, both camps, and our velleities of desertion occasionally getting the upper hand of our velleities of action ... we carry out nothing."[269]