Then in February came the Bullitt Mission originally devised as a “feeler” by Colonel House. Mr. Bullitt went to Russia and experienced one of those astounding conversions which the leading Bolshevists, by showing only their better side, seem capable of producing. The American Delegation asked Mr. Lloyd George to see Mr. Bullitt; and, with his usual accessibility, he invited the young American to breakfast. The proposal brought by Mr. Bullitt was not an offer from the Bolshevists, but the suggestion of an offer by the Allies—a very different affair.[132] President Wilson himself refused to meet Mr. Bullitt, a course which seems to gather some justification from Mr. Bullitt’s subsequent proceedings in America. But the proposals embodied in the Bolshevist memorandum were not such as, at this time at any rate, had any chance of serious consideration. The mere proposal to take the whole matter out of the hands of the Peace Conference was not calculated to conciliate that body.[133] Then in April came the Nansen episode, which turned out, in Mr. Bullitt’s adroit hands, to be yet another effort to renew the peace negotiations of February. The gulf still proved impassable. The Allies would not authorise Nansen to undertake his intrepid and humane adventure without the power to distribute food and control the Russian railways: and the Bolshevists would on no account agree to that course. Neither side trusted one another. A civil war was raging, and the issue was still undecided. Neither side would give way; and once more the time limit expired.[134] Still eager to attain peace in Russia, and finding that the hope of conciliation was vain, Mr. Lloyd George now swung over to the policy of helping Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin on the condition of obtaining democratic and constitutional guarantees. The guarantees were given, and seemed favourable. Help was sent. But there was one point on which the “White” Russians would make no concessions—the independence of the Border States. We all know how since on that rock of adventures of the “White” Russians have shipwrecked; and so the hopes of the Allies have been disastrously thwarted. It seems at the present moment as if an immense mass of human suffering might have been averted if the original policy of Mr. Lloyd George in January-February of 1919 had received reasonable and friendly consideration in London and in Paris.