Land & Water 
July 1 8, .'918 
Intervention in Russia 
IN no phase of this great war has the distinction between 
purely mihtary and purely political considerations been so 
marked as in the "present still debated policy of allied 
intervention to support the Nationalist Party or parties in 
what was once the Russian Empire. Yet in no phase have the 
two been logically so closely connected. Were intervention 
on a large scale and immediately carried out, possibly as a 
military operation, there would not be a moment's hesitation 
upon the political side. If the Western Allies had a great 
superiority in numbers over the Central Empires they would, 
as a matter of course, support in the east with some sufficient 
expeditionary force the armed risings which threaten the 
enemy's power there. The enemy has reduced himself in 
Russia to about 45 second-rate divisions, derman and Aus- 
trian combined. That represents less than a sixth of his 
total force (excluding Bulgarians and Turks combined) ; 
far less than a tenth of his fighting power in men, and certainly 
not a twentieth of his material power, perhaps not a fiftieth. 
For his magazines, aircraft, heavy pieces, poison appliances, 
arid the rest are quite insignificant upon the eastern front, 
where he regards himself as perfectly secure. In other words, 
the whole of his weight is on the west. If in such a situation 
we could compel him to serious anxiety in the east, it is obvious 
that we should do so. But the very first element in the affair 
which strikes one is the severe limitation of any such effort. 
We can seize ports ; we can aid the small disciplined forces 
which have apparently got control of the Trans-Siberian 
railway and, so far as one can judge very fragmentary and 
confused accounts, are even holding Samara in European 
Russia ; we can — at least America can — send rolling stock 
to increase the wretched supply now available upon the 
Trans-Siberian and so forth. But we cannot put in a large 
expeditionary force at short notice to depend upon six 
thousand miles of communication reduced to one single 
avenue, a double line of railway, and that within three 
months of the Siberian winter. The real issue is whether 
or not such force as could be maintained would act as a rally- 
ing point for the national reaction in Russia against the 
International Anarchists, who betrayed the cause of thei 
■ allies last year. , M 
The question we have to answer is whether the national forces 
— actual or potential — which would welcome intervention^ 
are sufficient to make intervention advisable. And having 
put that down as a main question, let me follow the tradition 
of this paper in past issues of the sort by saying that it is 
a question no layman should answer and one on which only 
expert knowledge can advise the authorities in whose hands 
we are for the conduct of the war. 
That is a negative conclusion like so many that have been 
put forward during the last four years in these columns, 
but it is a sound one. The' spectacle of this journalist advis- 
ing a particular policy, that journalist denouncing it, when 
neither can possibly know the necessary secret and perhaps 
voluminous evidence upon wl^ch the policy should be judged, 
is fantastic. And the only reason that we do not see how 
fantastic it is, is that we have grown so used to the dic- 
tation of the Press in less important and domestic matters, 
that we continue to follow that authority in matters of 
life and death ; and matters only to be decided upon concrete 
knowledge which not a hundred men possess. 
It was exactly the same in the case of Mesopotamia, and 
of Salonika. It is not for us to judge ; we cannot judge, and 
the less disturbance of public opinion is excited while such 
grave issues are being determined, the better. 
Meanwhile this negative conclusion— that publicists have 
no business to meddle with Govemmdnt in time of war- 
gives ,us the right to criticise very strongly two arguments 
which are being put forward against intervention. For they 
are arguments that show either an ignorance of the extremely 
perilous passage in which the Allies now find themselves 
or of elementary history. ' 
The first is the argument that we ought not to intervene 
agamst "Democracy" as represented by the Anarchist cau- 
cuses, largely led by Internationals in the few great Russian 
towns ; and the other is the argument that nothing need be 
sent because nothing large can be sent. 
As to the first of these it can only be advanced by men 
who do not even now appreciate that England the whole 
«>ciety and tradition by which they are what they are 
depends upon the issue of this war. Even if democracy 
were admitted to be the only tolerable form of Govern- 
ment everywhere acclaimed by the human race as its ideal 
and even if the Terrorist groups in the large Russian towns 
were the protagomsts of that ideal, that would be no sort of 
reason for not destroying them, after it had become apparent 
that they were acting, some of tliem consciously, more of 
them unconsciously, as the agents of the enemy. A narion 
fighting for its life cannot even discuss such points. Those 
whose action threatens it with death, it must itself, if it can, 
destroy. 
Bolshevik Policy 
But in point of fact, the international leaders of the 
Russian Extremists have not made even a pretence of 
standing for democracy. They stand, when they are sincere, 
they pretend to stand, even the most insincere of them, 
for something very different : For an international arrange- 
ment which shall produce a struggle throughout the world 
between those who support private property and those who 
would put the means of production into the hands of politi- 
cians as trustees of the community. Not a word in their 
phraseology is popular. They show no sign in anything 
they say or do of the popular mark. They repeat the pedan- 
tic phrases of a particular middle-class theory which the mass 
of the Russian people have never heard of, and which if they 
did hear of it, that peasantry would scorn, as every peasantry 
scorns inhuman and academic schemes. What these people 
have done — they are but a handful — is to permit the peasan- 
try to take up vast areas of land hitherto the property of 
others, and there Hes the crux. Is the effect of this new "posi- 
tion such that the peasantry will continue for some time 
longer to support those whom they have told were its authors ? 
Does the new ownership which the peasant craved make him 
wilHng to defend the Anarchists in the town at the expense 
of the national traditions, or is he, now that he has got the 
land, ready to rally to order and to a resurrection of the 
national religion, the national pride, and all the rest of the 
Russian story ? Judged on the analogy of our Western 
peasantries the latter question would seem to suggest the 
truth. They are intensely national. On the satisfaction of 
their desire for land they become but the more national. 
|i.But we have no right on this analogy to presume that the 
Isame is the case with Russia. There are very few men living 
"'.in the West who can answer whether it was so or no, even 
before the Revolution : and even those men to-day can only 
guess atwhat the' Revolution has done to the Russian mind.. 
They cannot be certain. 
Yet it is upon their guess that our policy must depend.. 
For if the Russian peasant has come to think that foreign 
intervention menaces his new property in land, we should, 
by adopting that policy, make our position worse than it is 
and so far from embarrassing the enemy, we should aid 
him. 
In the matter of the second argument that a small force 
is no use and a large one cannot be sent, I should answer 
that tliis directly contradicts all historical experience. If 
the general sentiment of an unarmed and disorganised people 
is against you, and in favour of small organised minority in 
its midst, then your sending the small force to oppose that 
small organised minority is a fatal error. The great un- 
organised mass is unfit for fighting though it turns the scale. 
But if the great mass is on the whole in favour of your inter- 
vention, -and if the organised minority you are attacking is 
hated by them, then even a small disciplined force makes a 
prodigious difference. It is not only a nucleus and a rallying 
point, it is also an instructor. Further, it gives the unarmed 
just what they needed, a weapon, and the unorganised an 
organism. If Brittany had been really roused against the 
revolution, Quiberon Bay would have succeeded. It is no 
argument to say, "No matter what the state of Russian 
feehng, it is useless to send troops because we cannot send 
enough." It is an argument to say, "The state of Russian 
feeling is such that the troops you send would only provoke 
it." Unfortunately, that argument cannot be used with 
knowledge by any one now writing upon the London Press. 
It is, even with those of them who know Russia best, an 
estimate of new and unknown things. 
There remains, of course, the distinction between inter- 
vention by European or American and bv Asiatic troops; 
the latter with the advantage of number and with the very 
grave disadvantage of presenting an obvious challenge. 
But that IS a matter of policy which I do not think it right 
to discuss publicly. The great quarrel of the world has not 
yet brought in upon any large scale this cross cleavage. It 
has been upon the whole a quarrel between sane Europe and 
a branch of Europe insane through cruelty and pride, which 
Europe must eliminate, but preferably by her own powers. 
