you off, in order to avoid armed conflict." Even if the Allies
gave no answer the Note would still have served a useful
purpose and would be a landmark in history.



Litvinov followed Bucharin. A solid, jolly, round man, with
his peaked grey fur hat on his head, rounder than ever in
fur-collared, thick coat, his eye-glasses slipping from his
nose as he got up, his grey muffler hanging from his neck,
he hurried to the tribune. Taking off his things and leaving
them on a chair below, he stepped up into the tribune with
his hair all rumpled, a look of extreme seriousness on his
face, and spoke with a voice whose capacity and strength
astonished me who had not heard him speak in public
before. He spoke very well, with more sequence than
Bucharin, and much vitality, and gave his summary of the
position abroad. He said (and Lenin expressed the same
view to me afterwards) that the hostility of different
countries to Soviet Russia varied in direct proportion to their
fear of revolution at home. Thus France, whose capital had
suffered most in the war and was weakest, was the most
uncompromising, while America, whose capital was in a
good position, was ready for agreement. England, with
rather less confidence, he thought was ready to follow
America. Need of raw material was the motive tending
towards agreement with Russia. Fear that the mere
existence of a Labour Government anywhere in the
world strengthens the revolutionary movement elsewhere,
was the motive for the desire to wipe out the Soviet at all