On the date of arrival I had only a few moments for conversation with Sir Charles Eliot, our High Commissioner, on the political situation.  I gathered from him and his Staff that a desperate effort was being made to join the forces of the Directorate of Five, which stood as the All-Russian Government and received its authority from the Constituent Assembly at Ufa—­largely Social Revolutionary in character—­and the Siberian Government, the outcome of the Siberian Districts Duma, which met at Tomsk and was largely reactionary, with a small mixture of Socialist opinion.  The English and French representatives were genuinely anxious that a workable compromise should be made between these two groups and a Cabinet formed that would give confidence to moderate Russian opinion, and so command Allied recognition with reasonable prospects of success.  This very desirable ambition of the Allied “politicals” had the sympathy of every friend of Russia, but advice is one thing, accomplishment another.  It was impossible to expect that the effects of hundreds of years of tyranny and bad government could be swept away by the waving of a diplomatic wand.  The Siberian Government was largely composed of the “old gang,” Revolutionary and Royalist, and derived its support almost exclusively from the desire of the people to escape further bloodshed; it was guarded by the Royalist Cossack clans, as lawless as they are brave.  The Ufa Directorate derived its authority from the moderate Social Revolutionary party composed of the “Intelligenzia”—­republican, visionary, and impractical.  Kerensky was, from all accounts, a perfect representative of this class, verbose and useless so far as practical reconstructive work was concerned.  This class blamed the unswerving loyalty of the Cossacks and the old army officers for all the crimes of which the Tsars were guilty, and had hunted them like rats in cellars and streets during the worst days of the Second Revolution.  The officer and Cossack class cursed Kerensky and the Social Revolutionaries for destroying the old army and letting free the forces of anarchy and Bolshevism, which had destroyed the State and had massacred the manhood of Russia in an orgy of violence and hate.

There should be no mistake made as to the apportionment of blame.  Kerensky is considered by all classes of Russian society as the cause of all their calamities.  They think, rightly or wrongly, that at the supreme moment when the destiny of his race and country was placed in his hands he proved traitor to the trust; that had he possessed one-tenth of the courage of either Lenin or Trotsky millions of Russians would have been saved from worse than death.