Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/21

 about a counter-revolution, to restore the horrors of czarism, or did she desire to get possession of some definite city or some definite territory? We asked the co-operation of the American representative to find out precisely what Great Britain desired.

In the meantime the policy of underground conspiracies of the Entente agents was making rapid progress, The British lieutenant Sidney Reily was preparing an attempt to seize Vologda and incite an insurrection in Moscow. Lockhart tried to bribe the Lettish sharp-shooters for a coup d'etat. On August 30 an attempt was made on Comrade Lenin, and the latest disclosures by Savinkov show that an attempt was also planned on Trotsky. On September 1, Lockhart was arrested and the conspiracy directed by him liquidated. Some time later a conference which was being held at the British embassy at Petrograd, and in which Russian White-guardists participated, was raided. When the agents of the Extraordinary Commission forced their entrance into the embassy, the British naval officer Cromie opened fire and in the exchange of shots that followed was himself killed. This circumstance was, of course, made use of by the British interventionist press in their agitation for more energetic intervention in Russia. The British socialist press, however, published the information about Lockhart's conspiracy and made clear to those who were open minded the real meaning of this crisis.

In Germany at this time we continued our work aiming at the determination of our relations with that country. Despite the weakening of the German military policy in the east, the pressure upon us was still sufficiently strong to demand energetic activity on our part to overcome it. During this period an attempt was made to settle our relations with Finland. In the middle of March Comrade Kamenev, who was sent in February on an extraordinary mission to France, where he was not allowed to enter by the worst of our enemies—the Government of Clemenceau—was arrested by the