In January 1918, the youthful Lockhart—a mere junior member of the British Foreign office—had been personally handpicked by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George to undertake a sensitive diplomatic mission to Soviet Russia. Lockhart's assigned objectives were: to liaise with the Soviet authorities, to subvert Soviet-German relations, to bolster Soviet resistance to German peace overtures, and to push Soviet authorities into recreating the Eastern Theater. By April, however, Lockhart had hopelessly failed to achieve any of these objectives. He began to agitate in diplomatic cables for an immediate full-scale Allied military intervention in Russia. Concurrently, Lockhart ordered Sidney Reilly to pursue contacts within anti-Bolshevik circles to sow the seeds for an armed uprising in Moscow.