Robert Burns in Edinburgh society. He told me
with expansive glee that they had printed two
hundred and fifty thousand of his last book, that the whole
edition was sold in two weeks, and that he had had his
portrait painted by a real artist. It is actually true that of his
eighteen different works, only two are obtainable today.


Madame Radek, who last year showed a genius for the
making of sandwiches with chopped leeks, and did good
work for Russia as head of the Committee for dealing with
Russian war prisoners, came and sat down beside me, and
complained bitterly that the authorities wanted to turn her
out of the grand ducal apartments in the Kremlin and make
them into a historical museum to illustrate the manner of life
of the Romanovs. She said she was sure that was simply an
excuse and that the real reason was that Madame Trotsky
did not like her having a better furnished room than her
own. It seems that the Trotskys, when they moved into the
Kremlin, chose a lodging extremely modest in comparison
with the gorgeous place where I had found Madame Radek.


All this time the room was filling, as the party meeting ended
and the members of the Executive Committee came in to
take their places. I was asking Litvinov whether he was
going to speak, when a little hairy energetic man came up
and with great delight showed us the new matches
invented in the Soviet laboratories. Russia is short of
match-wood, and without paraffin. Besides which I think I am