In various ways the bolsheviks promptly contribute directly or indirectly to strengthen the Germans during that period immediately following their armistice. In March I received through Consul-General Madden Summers, of Moscow, reports from our consuls,—Macgowan at Irkutsk, Nielson at Samara, Jenkins at Chita, and others, showing the movement of released prisoners and of material from Russia to Germany. Nielson from Samara reported many cars of cotton loaded and being shipped by German firms.

The Bolsheviks went through the form of inviting England, France, Italy and America to enter into negotiations for peace under the armistice with Germany. They waited ten days, professedly to give the other countries time to come in. Then they proceeded with the negotiation of a separate peace. Trotzky was at the head of the Bolsheviks in the first negotiations. Ltionenin remained in Petrograd and was practically the whole bolshevik Government. While I have no doubt that Lenin was a German agent from the beginning and disbursed German money, I believe, and so wired the Department, that his real purpose was promotion of world-wide social revolution. He would have taken British money, American money, and French money and used it to promote his purpose. He told a man who asked what he was doing in russia that he was trying an "experiment in government" on the Russian people. Germany's desire to demoralize Russia and break up the Provisional Government gave Lenin his opportunity, of which he made good use.