File No. 763.72/8278
The Ambassador in France ( Sharp ) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 24, 7.42 p.m.]
2942. Frazier informs me that the following is summarized translation of resolutions adopted at meeting of Supreme War Council this morning:
With the purpose of adopting a policy to be followed in Russia, the war cabinet of Great Britain requests the military representatives to express an opinion as to whether southern Russia and [Page 597] Rumania are capable of opposing an effective [resistance to] the Bolshevik forces maintained and directed by the Germans. If the Bolsheviks are allowed freedom of action:
- (1)
- The wheat of Odessa and the gasoline of Batum will reprovision Germany;
- (2)
- This reprovisioning will not only benefit the Central Empires but also the neutrals (the Allied blockade pressure on Holland and Scandinavia especially would no longer be effective, and, as Germans could more easily reprovision Switzerland with Russian wheat than the Allies with American wheat, it will be in her power to dominate the reprovisioning of Switzerland and consequently be in a position to exact a free passage for her troops through Switzerland);
- (3)
- Supposing that the Allies lose control of southern Russia altogether, it is essential that they continue to dispose of Batum and Trebizond as naval bases against enemy commerce in the Black Sea;
- (4)
- It is the duty of Allies to assure the existence of the Rumanian Army and of Rumania which has made no treaty with the enemy and to this end to enter into relations with Ukraine and the Cossack countries which would furnish the Allies with the necessary resources.
For all these reasons of supreme importance and without being able to guarantee that the forces of southern Russia and Rumania are or are not in a condition to oppose a victorious resistance to the Bolshevik forces maintained by the Germans, the military representatives consider that it is necessary for the Allies to sustain by all means in their power all the national groups which are resolved to continue the struggle.
The military representatives, however, believe that such resistance cannot be sustained indefinitely unless it were possible to establish more direct communication between the Allies and their friends in Russia either through operations in Turkey, which would open a direct route to Tiflis and lead to a separate peace with Turkey, or the opening of the Dardanelles to navigation, or via Vladivostok and the Siberian Railway.
Suggested by British representative.