The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

by Adam Tooze

Lenin’s recent move toward the Germans had shifted the terms of the debate entirely. Whereas it might once have been possible to oppose intervention on the grounds that it gave encouragement to reactionary forces, now Lloyd George insisted ‘I am interventionist just as much because I am a democrat as because I want to win the war.’ The ‘last thing’ Lloyd George ‘would stand for, would be the encouragement of any kind of repressive regime’ in Russia ‘under whatever guise’.10 Only a democratic Russia would provide a real buffer against the German threat. As Britain’s Chief of the Imperial General Staff had put it, ‘unless by the end of the war democratic Russia can be reconstituted as an independent military power, it is only a question of time before most of Asia becomes a German colony, and nothing can impede the enemy’s progress towards India, in defence of which the British empire will have to fight at every disadvantage’.