In the last days of 1917, Russia declared that it had uncovered a plot
by the American ambassador to undermine the new Lenin and Trotsky
revolutionary regime. It was a scandal of immense proportions at the
time, yet one that has been all but forgotten. As has one of the primary
players: Colonel Raymond Robins, then head of the American Red Cross in
Russia, who became a minor celebrity thanks to his role in events in
Moscow. Who was Raymond Robins? What had he done-or not done-to compel
one high-ranking Russian revolutionary to say, as quoted in The New York
Times in June 1920: "All the foreigners and Americans were against us
except Raymond Robins. He was the only true and faithful friend we had
among the foreigners and he was the only one who understood our aims and
fully sympathized with us..." This obscure but captivating work, first
published in 1920, reads like a political thriller in its illumination
of one of the most mysterious events in 20th century history. WILLIAM
HARD (1878-1962) also wrote Theodore Roosevelt, A Tribute (1899) and The
Women of Tomorrow (1911).