uctive side of their
conceptions.

It was followed by no coherent action. Discourses, promises, maneuvers,
and counter-maneuvers were continuous and bewildering, but of systematic
policy there was none. Statesmanship in the higher sense of the word was
absent from every decision the delegates took and from every suggestion
they proffered. Nor was it only by omission that they sinned. Their
invincible turn for circuitous methods, to which severer critics give a
less sonorous name, was manifested _ad nauseam_. They worked out cunning
little schemes which it was hard to distinguish from intrigues, and
which, if they had not been foiled in time, would have made matters even
worse than they are. From the outset the British government was for
summoning Bolshevist delegates to the Conference. A note to this effect
was sent by the London Foreign Office to the Allied governments about a
fortnight before the delegates began their work of making peace. But
the suggestion was withdrawn at the instance of the French, who doubted
whether the services of systematic lawbreakers would materially conduce
to the establishment of a new society of law-abiding states. Soon
afterward another scheme cropped up, this time for the appointment of an
Inter-Allied committee to watch over Russia's destinies and serve as a
sort of board of Providence. The representatives of the anti-Bolshevist
governments resented this notion bitterly. They remarked that they could
not be fairly asked to respect decisions imposed on them exactly as
though they were vanquished enemies like the Germans. The British and
American delegates were swayed in their views mainly by the assumptions
that all central Russia was in the power of Lenin; that his army was
well disciplined and powerful; that he might contrive to hold the reins
of government and maintain anarchism indefinitely, and that the
so-called constructive elements were inclined toward reaction.

In other words, the delegates accepted two sets of premises, from which
they drew two wholly different sets of conclusions. Now they felt
impelled to act on the one, now on the other, but they could never make
up their minds to carry out either. They agreed that Bolshevism is a
potent solvent of society, fraught with peril to all organized
communities, yet they could not resolve to use joint action to extirpate
it.[260] They recognized that so long as it lasted there was no hope of
establishing a community of nations,