The Entente statesmen protested vigorously against the conclusion of a direct agreement of this character both to Dr. Rathenau and M. Tchitcherin, asserting that it anticipated and prejudiced the general principle of settlement with Russia, in which Germany’s interests were the same as those of the other nations. The Germans were accused of bad faith and the Russians of duplicity. Loudest in denunciation were Mr. Lloyd George and M. Barthou. When Germans and Russians both answered that the negotiations had begun long before the Genoa Conference, but that anyway, even if they had not, the two delegations, excluded from the secret conferences of the preceding fortnight, had only followed the example given them by the British and French delegations, there was a wrathful outburst.
The assumption was that Great Britain and France had the right to do what they denied to Germany and Russia. Germany was a defeated nation. Russia was an outlaw nation. They should not forget their complete dependence upon the Entente Powers. There was truth in this contention in so far as Germany was concerned. Germany was at the mercy of the Entente Powers for the time being. But Russia was not at their mercy, and the Russian delegates did not see why any such illusion should be entertained by the Entente statesmen. When they demanded reciprocity in adjusting claims for damages and obligations contracted during the war, it did not occur to them that they were “insolent,” as Mr. Lloyd George put it, or “impudent,” as M. Barthou said. The only positive result of the Genoa conference was the Russo-German treaty. Tchitcherin and his colleagues rejected the conditions of the Entente Powers and left Genoa, declaring that they would never sign any agreement except on the basis of reciprocity in the fullest sense of the word. They did not intend to barter Russia’s economic independence for political recognition.
The year following the Genoa Conference was one of rebuffs and disillusion for Russia in her attempt to secure recognition from the Entente Powers and the United States. Up to the Genoa Conference it had seemed as if the Moscow Soviet was going to win out in the fight for re-entrance into the family and councils of the great powers. Great Britain and Italy had modified their original attitude; and after the conference France appeared to be considering the negotiation of a trade agreement. The French were greatly exercised over the Russo-German treaty, and the French press began to warn the Government that it would be foolish to allow Germany and Great Britain to secure a favored commercial position in the country that had been so long and so intimately connected with France. From the very fact of the large French investments, was the policy followed at Genoa a wise one? And could France afford to stand by and make no effort while Berlin established intimate relations with Moscow? M. Herriot, senator and former mayor of Lyons, made a visit to Moscow, which was not unfavorably commented upon in newspapers that had been most bitterly anti-Bolshevist. Those Frenchmen who were interested in the Near East kept insisting that France could not afford to let Soviet Russia become too powerful at Angora any more than at Berlin.