1 April 1917. George Buchanan

4, Dvortsovaya embankment, Petrograd, Russian Empire (British Embassy)

The impression which the new Ministers made on me when I went to convey to them our official recog- nition was not such as to inspire me with great con- fidence for the future. Most of them already showed signs of strain and struck me as having undertaken a task beyond their strength.

Prince Lvoff had, as leader of the Zemstvos, done invaluable work in organizing subsidiary services for supplying the army with warm clothing and other things of which it stood in urgent need, and both he and his colleagues would have made excellent Ministers in more normal times. But the situation was the very reverse of normal, and in the impending struggle with the Soviet what was required was a man of action, prompt to seize the first favourable opportunity for suppressing that rival and illegally constituted assembly. There was no such man in the Government. Guchkoff, the Minister of War, was capable and energetic and fully alive to the neces- sity of restoring discipline in the army. But he could not carry his colleagues with him, and eventually resigned as a protest against their weakness. Miliukoff , staunch friend as he was of the Allies, advocated the strict observance of the treaties and agreements which the Imperial Government had concluded with them. He held that the acquisition of Constantinople was a matter of vital moment for Russia ; but on this question he was almost in a minority of one in the Government.

As regarded the propaganda which the Socialists were carrying on at the front, MiUukoff was deplorably weak, contending that nothing could be done but to meet it with counter-propaganda. Kerensky w^as the only Minister whose personality, if not altogether sympathetic, had something arresting about it that did not fail to impress one. As an orator he possessed the magnetic touch which holds an audience spellbound, and in the earlier days of the revolution he unceasingly strove to instil into the workmen and soldiers some of his own patriotic fervour. But, while advocating fight- ing out the w^ar to a finish, he deprecated any idea of conquest, and when Miliukoff spoke of the acquisition of Constantinople as one of Russia's war aims, he promptly disavowed him. With his hold on the masses, with his personal ascendancy over his colleagues, and in the absence of any qualified rival, Kerensky was the only man to whom we could look to keep Russia in the war. Tereschenko, the Minister of Finance, who subsequently became Minister for Foreign Affairs, was one of the most promising members of the new Government. Very young, an ardent patriot, brilliantly clever, and possessed of an unbounded faith in Kerensky, he was inclined to be too optimistic. I had a great personal regard for him, and we soon became friends. His mother was very rich, and he was supposed — though without cause — to have financed the revolution. An amusing story is told to the effect that when, after the Bolshevik revolution, Tereschenko, together with his colleagues, was imprisoned in the fortress, Schteglovitoff, the reactionary Minister of Justice, and a fellow-prisoner, meeting him in the exercising yard, remarked, " You paid five million roubles to come here. I would have sent you here for nothing."

, and others