John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

Once a decision was made on Siberia the decision to send a detachment to help the British hold Murmansk came easy. Some lingering doubt must have remained in the President’s mind. In his answer to Masaryk he wrote that the professor’s letter was particularly appreciated because “I have felt no confidence in my personal judgment about the complicated situation in Russia, and am reassured that you should approve what I have done.”

As part of the campaign to arouse popular support for the President’s decision to send troops to Russia the Committee for Public Information began directing towards Reds and Bolsheviks some of the hatred it had stirred up against the Germans. Press reports of the Moscow terror and of the murder of the Czar and his family made this not too hard an assignment.

When Sisson returned to Washington, still tense from his nervewracking escape from Petrograd, he resumed his position as second in command to George Creel at the old house on Jackson Place. Creel further put him in charge of the foreign desk. Sisson arrived big with portent over the globeshaking repercussions he expected from the publication of his documents on the German-Bolshevik Conspiracy.

Before leaving London, where he stopped over to consult with the British intelligence services, he prepared for the explosion by ordering all C.P.I. personnel out of those parts of Russia under Communist control. A man named Arthur Bullard, who seems to have been levelheaded and wellinformed on Russian affairs, was in charge of the Moscow office. Bullard protested that he was in no present danger. Lenin’s government seemed reluctant to come to a final break with the American missions. Bullard cabled Sisson that he was getting considerable play for the President’s statements in Russian newspapers and that he wanted to stay. Sisson answered that leave he must. In an aside to a friend Sisson explained his insistence on pulling his representatives out of soviet territory as a way of impressing the administration with the importance of his revelations.

According to Major Dansey of British Military Intelligence, the members of the secret services whom Sisson talked to in London were opposed to publishing the documents at all. British military and naval intelligence and the office of the postal censor had gone over a set of the same papers sent in by a British agent named Maclaren, whom Major Dansey described as “hipped on buying documents,” and had decided that the so-called circulars were forgeries clumsily typed on the same Russian typewriter, and that such of the accompanying letters as seemed to be genuine had little propaganda value.

Though the full story of German financing of certain Russian revolutionary newspapers during the early part of the war did not come out till many years later, the British intelligence services were undoubtedly aware at that time that the Bolshevik leaders had been helped by German agencies to return to Russia and that they might have received subsidies in the period of antiwar propaganda before their seizure of power, but they saw no sense in trying to claim that Lenin and Trotsky were acting as German agents because it was untrue on the face of it. According to Major Dansey’s account he explained to Sisson that many of the documents were forgeries and urged him to go slow with them.

All through the summer Sisson kept the documents in his safe. Le Petit Parisien , a sensational French daily, meanwhile published much the same series. Lansing was expressing the fear that their publication in America would endanger the lives of the considerable number of Americans still in soviet territory. Perhaps he smelled a rat.

The situation of the Moscow Communists seemed desperate. As fast as they shot down their opponents fresh opposition reared up against their rule. The Left Social Revolutionaries were continuing their campaign of assassination against Communists and Germans. In July S.R.s killed Field Marshal von Eichorn, the German commander in the Ukraine. In August the president of the Petrograd Cheka was assassinated and the same day young S.R. named Dora Kaplan just missed killing Lenin as he left a factory in Moscow where he had been addressing a workers’ meeting. He was wounded in the neck and a bullet perforated one lung. He escaped death by a miracle.

In the wave of massacres that followed British representatives were arrested, a British officer was killed in a raid on the old Petrograd Embassy, and a state of war was declared to exist between the Soviet Government and the Allies. Even in the frenzy of repressions that continued long after Lenin was out of danger Americans were not molested.

As news of one hideous excess after another poured in from Russia, George Creel seems to have been of two minds as to whether to publish Sisson’s papers or not. Lansing was still opposed and wrote the President to that effect As was his wont Creel went over Lansing’s head direct to Woodrow Wilson.

The President said to publish. Instalments were distributed to various newspapers. The New York Times started publication in the second section of its Sunday edition on September 15.

A few days later the New York Evening Post broke the story that the documents were forged. About the same day a worried cable reached the State Department from Ambassador Page in London. He had just talked to Major Dansey and Major Dansey expressed grave doubts. Furthermore Major Dansey said that he had told Sisson, when they had talked in London, that the British thought the documents were forgeries. Page asked rather pointedly why Sisson hadn’t informed his own government of these doubts.

Creel immediately called Sisson who was out of town on the long distance phone. Sisson denied “specifically and absolutely” having had any such conversation with Major Dansey, but he did admit having met him. A couple of college professors supposed to know Russian were induced to look over the documents and to declare in writing, in a guarded sort of way, that they were genuine. Publication continued.

On the afternoon of August 2, William S. Graves, freshly appointed major general in the National Army, received a message in code from the Chief of Staff ordering him to take the first fast train to Kansas City. Graves, who had just taken over command of a division training in Palo Alto for service in France, had served for several years as secretary to the General Staff, and after pulling all the strings he knew, had finally gotten himself assigned to combat service. Worried for fear something had gone wrong with his plans, he sat up in a day coach all the way from San Francisco to Kansas City because the pullmans were full. His instructions were to proceed to the Hotel Biltmore and there to report to the Secretary of War.

When the much puzzled general stepped off the train in the Kansas City station, he was approached by a redcap who told him that the Secretary of War was waiting to see him in a private room.

His conversation with Mr. Baker was hasty because the little man was about to catch a train out.

The Secretary began by saying in a jocular tone that he was sorry but he had to send Graves to Siberia. He said he knew the general wanted to go to France and that Graves mustn’t blame General March; March had tried to get him out of the assignment. Some day, Baker added mysteriously, he might tell Graves why he had to be the one to go. “If in future you want to cuss anybody for sending you to Siberia,” he said, “I am the man.”

He pulled a long sealed envelope out of his pocket and thrust it in the general’s hand. “This contains the policy of the United States in Russia which you are to follow. Watch your step; you will be walking on eggs loaded with dynamite. God bless you and goodbye,” and he was off to his train.