Free Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Plot for Global Revolution by Giles Milton

reports were carefully scrutinised by William Wiseman in New York. ‘I am receiving very interesting cables from Maugham,’ he informed Mansfield Cumming in London. ‘He asks if he can work with British intelligence officers at Petrograd, thereby benefiting both and avoiding confusion. I see no objection . . . He is very discreet.’
    Maugham spent his evenings ‘coding my sombre impressions.’ Then, when the work was done, he would take himself off to the Hotel Europe and swill goblets of brandy with English and American journalists.
    ‘[We] caught the Russian mood – ‘ Nitchevo! ’ [It doesn’t matter],’ wrote one of those journalists. ‘[We] managed to enjoy ourselves and forget the revolution.’
    On one occasion, Maugham had lunch with Louise Bryant, the partner of John Reed who would later write his celebrated account of the revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World .
    ‘You won’t reveal you had lunch with a British secret agent, will you?’ joshed a well-lubricated Maugham at the end of the meal. Bryant erupted into a peal of laughter. ‘It couldn’t have been funnier if he’d said he was an ambassador of the Pope,’ she wrote.
    The situation in Petrograd was by now so troublesome that Maugham saw no future for Kerensky’s government. ‘The Germans were advancing; the Russian soldiers at the front were deserting in droves, the navy was restless and there were stories bruited that officers had been cruelly butchered by their men.’
    The stories were true. Bolshevik gangs were taking advantage of the unrest to murder and pillage.
    In the first week of October, a desperate Kerensky summoned Maugham to a private meeting. He had a message that he wished Maugham to relay to Britain’s prime minister as soon as possible. It was ‘so secret that he would not put it in writing.’
    Maugham agreed to deliver it to Lloyd George in person and left Petrograd that very day. But he was obliged to write the message down, for he was worried that his uncontrollable stammer would ruin his delivery of it once he was in the prime minister’s presence.
    Kerensky’s secret proposal was an audacious political manoeuvre that had two principal objectives: to keep Russia in the war and simultaneously undermine the Bolsheviks. He wanted Lloyd George to make an offer of immediate peace with Germany, but on such stringent terms that Germany would have no option but to refuse.
    A German refusal, argued Kerensky, would enable him to reinvigorate the Russian war machine. He could instil in the army a renewed sense of purpose. ‘I can go to my soldiers and say: “You see, they don’t want peace.” Then they will fight.’
    Kerensky’s idea was bold but wholly unrealistic. Maugham knew that the British government would never agree to his proposition. He also knew that he was dealing with a broken man. Kerensky’s last words to Maugham were a testimony to his failure as a political leader.
    ‘When the cold weather comes I don’t think I shall be able to keep the army in the trenches,’ he said lamely. ‘I don’t see how we can go on.’
    Maugham found it all very sad. ‘The final impression I had was of a man exhausted. He seemed broken by the burden of power.’
    Maugham left for London that very day, taking a train to Oslo and then a boat to England. He debriefed the prime minister about his mission and repeatedly tried to relay the message from Kerensky, proposing that Britain make an offer of peace to Germany. But each time he started speaking, Lloyd George cut him short.
    ‘I received the impression, I don’t exactly know for what reason, that he had an inkling of what I had to say to him and was determined not to let me say it.’
    In the end, Maugham grew so frustrated that he thrust his handwritten account of Kerensky’s proposition into the prime minister’s hands.
    ‘He read it and handed it back to me.
    ‘ “I can’t do it,” he said.
    ‘It was not my business to argue.
    ‘ “What shall I