btained 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]

Toward Kolchak and Denikin the attitude of the Supreme Council varied
considerably. It was currently reported in Paris that the Admiral had
had the misfortune to arouse the displeasure of the two Conference
chiefs by some casual manifestation of a frame of mind which was
resented, perhaps a movement of independence, to which distance or the
medium of transmission imparted a flavor of disrespect. Anyhow, the
Russian leader was for some time under a cloud, which darkened the
prospects of his cause. And as for Denikin, he appeared to the other
great delegate as a self-advertising braggart.

These mental portraits were retouched as the fortune of war favored the
pair. And their cause benefited correspondingly. To this improvement
influences at work in London contributed materially. For the
anti-Bolshevist currents which made themselves felt in certain state
departments in that capital, where there were several irreconcilable
policies, were powerful and constant. By the month of May the Conference
had turned half-heartedly from Lenin and Trotzky to Kolchak and Denikin,
but its mode of negotiating bore the mark peculiar to the diplomacy of
the new era of "open covenants openly arrived at." The delegates in
Paris communicated with the two leaders in Russia "over the heads" and