details of this business (the notorious Masoyedoff affair) and his keen criticism of official Russia and of the army surprised me. He shared my views of Russia and also my fears. With the Russophilism of our people in Prague he did not agree; and he aptly remarked that a Russian Grand Duke, installed as ruler in the Royal Castle there, would mean champagne and French mistresses. Svatkovsky settled presently in Switzerland where we saw each other often; and he followed me to Paris afterwards.
We went quietly over the whole situation. I found that I could trust him and therefore I informed him of my plans. He reported to St. Petersburg not, or not exclusively, through the Russian Ambassador of whom he thought little. Finally he compiled a complete memorandum setting forth my views and plans and sent it to St. Petersburg. Thus the Russian Foreign Minister, Sazonof, received a second report from me (January 1915), the first having been sent through Seton-Watson in October 1914. In point of fact I kept in constant touch with representatives of Russia; and the closeness of my relations with them from the outset is one reason why I did not hasten to Russia, although our own people, there and elsewhere, who knew nothing of these relations, thought I kept away because I was a “Westerner” and anti-Russian. The truth was that the whole position obliged me to remain in the West, where we had no political relationships and had to make people understand our ideas. Before leaving home I had recognized that the fate of Europe would be decided in the West, not in Russia; and the longer I stayed in the West the clearer did this become.
With the French I did not establish permanent relations while in Rome. I thought I would leave that until I had studied the position in Paris, and I imagined that France had been better informed of our affairs in former years than proved to be the case. The British Ambassador, Sir James Rennell Rodd, I saw occasionally and he forwarded letters for me to London. Prince Bülow, the German Ambassador, I did not see though a meeting with him had previously been arranged. I should have been glad to talk to an official German public man, but Bülow begged to be excused, saying that he had no time. He was then trying to win Italy over to the side of Germany and Austria. He offered the Italians parts of Austria—and Vienna got angry. Indeed, Vienna was suspicious of the whole relationship between Italy and Germany.
Italians in official positions I did not approach. Italy was
