These individuals would, it was said, welcome peace and friendship with the Entente, and give particularly favorable consideration to any proposal coming from the English-speaking peoples, in whom they were disposed to place confidence under certain simple conditions. The need for these conditions would not be gainsaid by the British and American governments if they recalled to mind the treatment which they had theretofore meted out to the Russian people. At that moment no Russian of any party regarded or could regard the Allies without grounded suspicions, for while repudiating interference in domestic affairs, the French, Americans, and British were striving hard to influence every party in Russia, and were even believed to harbor designs on certain provinces, such as the Caucasus and Siberia. Color was imparted to these misgivings by the circumstance that the Allied governments were openly countenancing the dismemberment of the country by detaching non-Russian and even Russian elements from the main body. It behooved the Allies to dissipate this mistrust by issuing a statement of their policy in unmistakable terms, repudiating schemes for territorial gains, renouncing interference in domestic affairs and complicity in the work of disintegrating the country. Russia and her affairs must be left to Russians, who would not grudge economic concessions as a reasonable _quid pro quo_. The proposal further insisted that the declaration of policy should be at once followed by the despatch of two or three well-known persons acquainted with Russia and Russian affairs, and enjoying the confidence of European peoples, to inquire into the conditions of the country and make an exhaustive report. This mission, it was added, need not be official, it might be intrusted to individuals unattached to any government. If a satisfactory answer to this proposal were returned within a fortnight, an armistice and suspension of the secret _pourparlers_ with Germany would, I was told, have followed. That this compact would have led to a settlement of the Russian problems is more than any one, however well informed, could vouch for, but I had some grounds for believing the move to be genuine and the promises overdone. No reasonable motive suggested itself for a vulgar hoax. Moreover, the overture disclosed two important facts, one of which was known at the time only to the Bolshevist government--namely, that secret _pourparlers_ were going forward between Berlin and Moscow for the purpose of arriving at a workable understanding between the two governments, and that the Allied troops at Odessa, Archangel, and Murmansk were in a wretched plight and in direr need of an armistice than the Bolsheviki.[263]