our Bolsheviks

To impress these opinions on the authorities in Washington, Colonel Thompson sailed for America on November 28, 1917. He stopped briefly in London, where his friend Thomas W. Lamont arranged an interview with Lloyd George. Thompson told his story to the Prime Minister: "Let's make these Bolsheviks our Bolsheviks; don't let the Germans make them their Bolsheviks." "The Prime Minister," according to Lamont, "was very much taken with that phrase. Said he emphatically, 'I will pick out the best man in England, and will send him to Russia with the best man in America whom President Wilson will pick out. Together they will go to those people and see if they cannot work out a better destiny.'"  Americans had not yet learned that Lloyd George could say one thing and do quite another; Thompson and Lamont thought they had scored a signal success. The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution by Christopher Lasch