Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

business consultant for Mussolini in the 1920s.1

At the same time that Morgan was funding pro-Bolshevik

groups, he founded what was probably the most virulent anti-Bolshevik organization ever to exist in America. It was called United Americans and it set about to frighten everyone into believing that a Red mob was at that very moment poised to capture New York City. It issued shocking reports warning about a pending financial collapse, widespread starvation, and a desperate working class being maneuvered into accepting Communist slogans and rhetoric as a last resort. Ironically, the officers of this organization were Allen Walker of the Guarantee Trust Company, which was then acting as the Soviet's fiscal agent in the U.S.; Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railway, which was then active in the development of Soviet railways; H.H. Westinghouse of Westinghouse Air Brake Company which was then

operating a major plant in Russia; and Otto H. Kahn of Kuhn, Loeb

& Company, which was one of the principal financial backers of the fledgling Soviet regime.2

Even inside Russia itself, the Round Table was spreading its bets. In addition to the funding, previously mentioned, which was given to the Bolsheviks and to their opponents, the Mensheviks, Morgan also financed the military forces of Admiral Kolchak who was fighting against the Bolsheviks in Siberia. Not surprisingly, Kolchak also received funding from a consortium of British financiers, including Alfred Milner.

It is commonly stated that the original intent of the Red Cross mission to Moscow was to prevent the Russian government from making a separate peace with Germany which would release

German troops to fight against England and France. According to that version of the story— which portrays the actors as patriots 1. See John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972).

2. Sutton, Revolution, pp. 163-68.

3. Ibid., pp. 102,146,166-67.

280 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

merely doing what was best for the war effort—the first goal was to support the Tsar. When the Tsar was overthrown, they supported the Mensheviks because they had pledged to stay in the war. When the Mensheviks were ousted, they continued to support the Bolsheviks in order to gain sufficient influence to convince them not to give aid to Germany. It takes a great deal of gullibility to swallow that line. A far more plausible reading is that the Morgan interests were merely doing what they had always done: placing bets on all horses so that, no matter which one crossed the finish line, the winner would be obligated to them.

BRITISH AGENT OF THE ROUND TABLE

After the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia, Sir George Buchanan was recalled as the British Ambassador and replaced by a member of Milner's Kindergarten, a young man by the name of Bruce Lockhart. In his book, British Agent, Lockhart describes the circumstances of his assignment. Speaking of a meeting with Prime Minister Lloyd George, he wrote:

I saw that his own mind was made up. He had been greatly

impressed, as Lord Milner told me afterwards, by an interview with Colonel Thompson of the American Red Cross, who had just returned from Russia and who had denounced in blunt language the folly of the Allies in not opening up negotiations with the Bolsheviks....

Three days later all my doubts were put at rest. I was to go to Russia as head of a special mission to establish unofficial relations with the Bolsheviks.... I had been selected for this Russian mission not by the Foreign Secretary but by the War Cabinet—actually by Lord Milner and Mr. Lloyd George....

Lord Milner I saw almost daily. Five days before my departure I dined alone with him at Brook's. He was in his most inspiring mood.

He talked to me with a charming frankness about the war, about the future of England, about his own career, and about the opportunities of youth— He was, too, very far from being the Jingo and the Conservative reactionary whom popular opinion at one time represented him to be. On the contrary, many of his views on society were startling modem. He believed in the highly organized state, in which service, efficiency, and hard work were more important than titles or money-bags.1

1. R.H. Bruce Lockhart, British Agent (New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1933), pp. 198-99,204,206-07.

MASQUERADE IN MOSCOW

281

AMERICAN AGENT OF THE ROUND TABLE

When Thompson returned to the United States, the man he

selected to replace himself as head of the American Red Cross Mission was his second-in-command, Raymond Robins. Not much is known about Robins except that he was the protege of Col.

Edward Mandell House, and he might have remained an obscure player in this drama had it not been for the fact that he became one of the central characters in Bruce Lockhart's book. It is there that we get this inside view:

Another new acquaintance of these first days in the Bolshevized St Petersburg was Raymond Robins, the head of the American Red Cross Mission.... He had been a leading figure in Roosevelt's 'Bull Moose' campaign for the American Presidency in 1912. Although a rich man himself, he was an anti-capitalist.... Hitherto, his two heroes had been Roosevelt and Cecil Rhodes. Now Lenin had captured his imagination.... Robins was the only man whom Lenin was always willing to see and who ever succeeded in imposing his own personality on the unemotional Bolshevik leader.

In a less official sense Robins had a similar mission to my own. He was the intermediary between the Bolsheviks and the American Government and had set himself the task of persuading President Wilson to recognize the Soviet regime.

What an amazing revelation is contained in those words. First, we learn that Robins was a leader in the team