The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [72]
Whatever their long-term potential differences might have been, during 1917 both states wanted to keep the Russians in the war. On 7 April 1917, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, worrying that ‘revolutionary pacifists’ were becoming dangerously influential in Russia, cabled Spring Rice to organise, as a matter of the ‘highest importance’, the despatch of ‘messages from labour leaders, from Russian Americans, and from prominent men in the U.S. emphasising necessity of continuing the war in order to secure triumph of principles of freedom and democracy’. 25 Given the task of implementing this, Wiseman organised some appeals to be sent, but there is no evidence that they had the slightest effect in Russia. In order to counter the impact of allegedly pro-German returning exiles – Leon Trotsky, for example – Wiseman also proposed an ambitious plan to send to Russia parties of pro-Ally émigrés – Czech, Slovak and Polish, as well as Russian – who had ‘made good’ in America, to be ‘lecturers and propagandists’. They would ‘carry with them details of the German intrigues in America and warn their Russian comrades against similar traps’. They would emphasise ‘the necessity for the two great republics working together for the freedom of the World’, and ‘persuade the Russians to attack the Germans with all their might, and thus accomplish the overthrow of the Hohenzollern dynasty and autocracy in Berlin’. Wiseman argued that the operation ‘has to be entirely unofficial, and very secretly organised, as any idea of Government support would ruin the scheme’. It was, in fact, precisely the kind of deniable operation for which the Secret Service was ideally suited.
Wiseman put the plan to both Colonel House and the Foreign Office in London. Having indicated to House that the scheme was based on reliable British intelligence from within Russia, and to London that he was working on information gathered by the United States government, Wiseman got both sides to agree. While approving the plan, Balfour’s private secretary, Sir Eric Drummond, indicated that London would prefer the Americans to run it on their own, but Wiseman told him that the Americans had no means of dealing with the émigré groups upon which the scheme depended, except through himself. Besides, there was a glittering intelligence prize to be won. ‘It is possible’, cabled Wiseman, ‘that by acting practically as a confidential agent for the United States Government I might strengthen the understanding with House so that in future he will keep us informed of steps taken by the United States Government in their foreign affairs, which would ordinarily not be a matter of common knowledge to the Governments of the two countries.’26 Wiseman got London and Washington each to allocate $75,000 (approximately $1.2 million in modern prices) to his scheme and recruited the British author Somerset Maugham (to whom he was related by marriage) to go to Russia.
Maugham, who had gained intelligence experience in Switzerland in 1915-16, spoke Russian and could use his existing good cover as a writer and journalist. Although he afterwards wrote that his instructions were ‘to get in touch with parties hostile to the government and devise a scheme that would keep Russia in the war and prevent the