And yet Lord Milner brought back to England the most satisfactory and reassuring report. And that was less than a fortnight before the Revolution broke out.
I do not accuse Lord Milner either of incompetence or of any deliberate attempt to conceal the truth. Lord Milner's case is only one of an endless number of instances of this dangerous habit of lulling the people into pleasant illusions rather than letting them know anything disagreeable.
Now this policy of shirking the truth was bound to lead to disaster, and all of us, Russians and Allies alike, have paid a terrible price for it. The Allies let Russia fall to pieces rather than accept the plain truth that she was exhausted. And, having let Russia down, the Allies are now paying the terrible price themselves.
But, even to-day, the Allies are blaming, not their Press for perverting the truth about Russia ever since the war broke out; not their Governments and Lord Milner for ignoring the truth; not their Ambassadors and Military and Civil Missions for hiding the truth; not their Parliaments, which evidently preferred to live in a world of pleasant illusions and never insisted on being told the plain truth. No! All the more violently do they blame the Russian revolutionary democracy, which continually insisted on the truth that Russia was on the verge of ruin, and implored the Allies to take urgent measures to save Russia and themselves before it was too late.
Even when all was lost—when Russia as a State was destroyed; when all the economic, national and social foundations of Russia were undermined and the dissolution of the army was an accomplished fact; when at that time Kerensky, in an attack of utter despondency, did at last exclaim, "Russia is worn out!"—the Allied Press and public would not accept it. Instead of coming to reason even at that eleventh hour, the Allies preferred to continue in their world of illusions. Russia was again proclaimed "a mystery" which "always fights best
