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to Vologda and was able to convince myself that our ambassador had already made up his mind on ail questions, and that he listened to information that was brought to him only in as far as it coincided with his preconceived opinions. Certainly it was no intention of mine to make an appeal on behalf of the bolsheviks, for at that time I was convinced that it was necessary to intervene against them. But M. Noulens did not even allow me to develope the impressions that I had brought back from my recent visit to Kronstadt. When I was about to emphasize the revival of anti-German feelings which I had noted amongst the sailors and above ail amongst the workers, he interrupted me with the words: „The Russians will never do anything“.
Later on, this tendency to deprecate the Russians became more accentuated. One could feel it in the tone of the formulas in use, which became more and more imperious: „Tell our friends that we shall never permit any further socialist experiments in Russia“ (it was a question of the formation of a government with the aid of the right social-revolutionaries). This conception, terrifying from a moral point of view, which came as the logical conclusion of the first: „We pay, therefore we order“. How many times have I heard it made almost with this same brutality, notably on the occasion of the visit of a Polish delegation during the stay of our ambassador at Moscow. That is what they called„ to know how to talk to the Russians“.
These latter were in fact regarded as a horde of uncultured and barbarous people with whom one might do as one wished. It was not for one second admitted that they were a
