Page:George Pitt-Rivers - The World Significance of the Russian Revolution (1920).pdf/30

 14 The equally sudden decision to withdraw all British Troops from Archangel owing to the pressure of their friends and their dupes in England drew the curtain on the drama and its logical finale.

There are still people, especially in England, who ask in mild surprise how it is that the Whites everywhere collapsed so completely and effectually; when the forces at work within the White movement are examined in the light of the afore-mentioned circumstances it need occasion very little surprise. The reflection however that the Allied Governments did so much to assist the machinations of those whose avowed object was to work "for the advent of a Social-Revolutionary government and to maintain the Bolsheviks in power until preparations of the Social-Revolutionary party were completed, and, at all costs, to prevent the march on Petrograd," this reflection may indeed be a mortifying one to those who had little idea of what was going on behind the scenes.

The White Armies were defeated, because they were inefficient, they were inefficient because political traitors were allowed to conspire to ensure their inefficiency. The administration of the occupied White territories also ensured the collapse of the movement for the same reasons. The Whites could unite on no policy because they had no common policy, because all their efforts were nullified by intrigue, conspiracy and "sabotage," and finally because no movement representing a heterogeneous jumble of contradictory and incompatible elements