ome of which cannot live by
themselves, in debarring the inhabitants from a voice in the matter, in
creating a permanent agency for foreign intervention, and ignoring
Russia's right to reparation from the common enemy. The Russians were
not asked even informally to say what they thought or felt about what
was being done. This province and that were successively lopped off in a
lordly way by statesmen who aimed at being classed as impartial
dispensers of justice and sowers of the seeds of peace, but were
unacquainted with the conditions and eschewed investigation. Here, at
all events, the usual symptoms of hesitancy and procrastination were
absent. Swift resolve and thoroughness marked the disintegrating action
by which they unwittingly prepared the battlefields of the future.

Nobody acquainted with Russian psychology imagines that the feelings of
a high-souled people can be transformed by gifts of food, money, or
munitions made to some of their fellow-countrymen. How little likely
Russians are to barter ideal boons for material advantages may be
gathered from an incident worth noting that occurred in the months of
April and May, when the fall of the capital into the hands of the
anti-Bolshevists was confidently expected.

At that time, as it chanced, the one thing necessary for their success
against Bolshevism was the capture of Petrograd. If that city, which,
despite its cosmopolitan character, still retained its importance as the
center of political Russia, could be wrested from the tenacious grasp
of Lenin and Trotzky, the fall of the anarchist dictators was, people
held, a foregone conclusion. The friends of Kolchak accordingly pressed
every lever to set the machinery in motion for the march against Peter's
city. And as, of all helpers, the Finns and Esthonians were admittedly
the most efficacious, conversations were begun with their leaders. They
were ready to drive a bargain, but it must be a hard and lucrative one.
They would march on Petrograd for a price. The principal condition which
they laid down was the express and definite recognition of their
complete independence within frontiers which it would be unfruitful here
to discuss. The Kolchak government was ready to treat with the Finnish
Cabinet, as the _de facto_ government, and to recognize Finland's
present status for what it is in international law; but as they could
not give what they did not possess, their recognition must, they
explained, be like the