rooms he should concede. This plan has, of course, proved
very hard on house-owners, and in some cases the new
tenants have made a horrible mess of the houses, as might,
indeed, have been expected, seeing that they had previously
been of those who had suffered directly from the
decivilizing influences of overcrowding. After talking for
some time we went round the corner to the Commissariat
for Foreign Affairs, where we found Chicherin who, I
thought, had aged a good deal and was (though this was
perhaps his manner) less cordial than Karakhan. He asked
about England, and I told him Litvinov knew more about
that than I, since he had been there more recently. He asked
what I thought would be the effect of his Note with detailed
terms published that day. I told him that Litvinov, in an
interview which I had telegraphed, had mentioned somewhat
similar terms some time before, and that personally I
doubted whether the Allies would at present come to any
agreement with the Soviet Government, but that, if the
Soviet Government lasted, my personal opinion was that the
commercial isolation of so vast a country as Russia could
hardly be prolonged indefinitely on that account alone. (For
the general attitude to that Note, see page 44.)


I then met Voznesensky (Left Social Revolutionary), of the
Oriental Department, bursting with criticism of the
Bolshevik attitude towards his party. He secured a ticket for
me to get dinner in the Metropole. This ticket I had to
surrender when I got a room in the National. The dinner
consisted of a plate of soup, and a very small portion of