File No. 861.00/2006
The British Embassy to the Department of State
Memorandum
The British Embassy present their compliments to the Department of State and have the honour to inform them that a telegram has been received from His Majesty’s Government stating that General de Candolle, British representative with the Cossacks at Novocherkassk, is of opinion that, as events are at present shaping themselves, the various attempts to establish settled government and autonomy in southern Russia are doomed to result in the formation of disconnected and isolated islands in a sea of anarchy. In his view the only possible expedient for keeping the Ukraine, Cossacks of the Southeastern union, and Siberia in touch with the local authorities and one another, is for those bodies to take some opportunity of composing differences with the Bolshevist government at Petrograd. Such an opportunity would arise were the Petrograd government to have a momentary falling out with the Central powers. The composition of differences would have to be based on a confederation of autonomous states whose bond of union would be limited to resistance to the Central powers, mutual undertakings not to interfere with one another’s territory, and the exchange of fuel and food from the south with, for example, manufactured goods and munitions from the north.
His Majesty’s Government hold that it has become quite clear that passive resistance to the Central powers is the utmost that can be expected from the southern governments. It is also clear that the Rumanian Army must form the first element in such resistance. So long as that army is in being in Moldavia, it prevents our enemies from having access to the foodstuffs of the Black Sea coast and the Ukraine. The keeping of that army in Moldavia and the feeding of it from Bessarabia and the Ukraine have, therefore, become vital matters. They can only be carried out if the Rada is adequately assured of its relations with the rest of Russia so that it can attend to matters beyond those which are immediately necessary to enable it to secure its own existence.
His Majesty’s Government are, therefore, in accord with the views expressed by General de Candolle, and they are approaching the Allied Governments with a view to instructions in this sense being sent to the Allied representatives throughout Russia.
The British Embassy are instructed to ask the United States Secretary of State for an expression of his views at as early a date as possible.