Lloyd George wanted Russia persuaded to make the maximum possible effort, a necessity again stressed at the second Chantilly Conference in December 1916. Wilson was sent as Senior Military Representative (Robertson had refused to go) on a British mission to Russia in January 1917 (delayed from November 1916), the object of which was to keep the Russians holding down at least the forces now opposite them, to boost Russian morale and see what equipment they needed with a view to coordinating attacks. The party of 50 included British (led by Milner and including a banker and two munitions experts), French (led by de Castelnau) and Italian delegations. The War Office briefing advised that Russia was close to revolution. Wilson met the Tsar but thought him "as devoid of character &amp; purpose as our own poor miserable King". Even senior Russian officials were talking openly of assassinating the Tsar or perhaps just the Tsarina. Wilson was impressed by Generals Ruzski and Danilov, although he may have been influenced too much by the views of Knox, who had been British military attaché since 1911. He toured Petrograd, Moscow (where he was concerned at the food shortages) and Riga, which he predicted the "Boches" would never capture (they would do so in late 1917), and thought that even if Tsar and Tsarina were assassinated – the Tsar was toppled a few weeks after he left – Russia would not make a separate peace. His official report (3 March) said that Russia would remain in the war and that they would solve their "administrative chaos". However, many other observers at the time, e.g. the young Archibald Wavell in the Caucasus, felt that the advent of democracy in Russia would reinvigorate her war effort, so Wilson's views were not entirely unusual.