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      British found these proposals unacceptable but would be prepared 
      to stall the whole thing, and start all over at Geneva in conversations 
      with Potemkin.
 
      
 
 
Already the British Foreign Office was beginning to "play 
      up" as quite a coup the fact that Lord Halifax would now 
      "get together" with the Vice-Commissar for Foreign 
      Affairs of the Soviet Union.
 
      
 
 
"Human Element"
 
      
 
 
The British Government is of course not really so foolish 
      -- though its enemies and even its friends often accuse it of 
      so being --as to suppose that the diplomacy of the now new world 
      is really based on whether this person or that -- Litvinov or 
      Potemkin or Maisky --happens to be in charge of particular negotiations. 
      The British Foreign Office, which (although it often has to pretend 
      the contrary in deference to the wishes and inner political necessities 
      of No. 10 and the Conservative Central Office) is really very 
      well-informed on everything except really basic matters, is perfectly 
      aware that Soviet diplomacy and Soviet policy are not one-man 
      affairs.
 
      
 
 
Geneva illusions.
 
      
 
 
Precisely for the reason however that a good deal of British 
      Foreign Office propaganda had been put out to the effect that 
      the Soviet Government were now so interested in the British counter-proposals 
      that they were actually going to send somebody all the way over 
      from Moscow to talk to Halifax, they put their chins out to be 
      smacked by the Soviet Government which, it had already repeatedly 
      stated, did not in fact regard the British proposals as anything 
      but a somewhat naive and despicable manner of gaining time.
 
      
 
 
So when it was suddenly announced that after all M. Maisky 
      a Soviet diplomat who by the very nature of his job really does 
      understand the English inside out -- would be going to Geneva 
      -- there was some quite unseemly petulance in Whitehall.
 
      
 
 
The petulance in question is not due to the personality of 
      M. Maisky, who is justifiably popu %lar in London, but to the fact 
      that his appointment to the Geneva job neatly cut across the 
      British Government's plan for "playing up" Geneva as 
      an "example" of how well the British Government was 
      really getting on with the Soviet Union.
 
      
 
 
The Game
 
      
 
 
For in view of the British public's presumed ignorance of 
      the fact that a representative of the Soviet Government is a 
      representative of the Soviet Government and neither more nor 
      less, it had been the purpose of the British Government to use 
      the presence of Potemkin or even Molotev in Geneva as a ground 
      for convincing the British public that the Russians do not after 
      all think so badly of the British counter-proposals. 
 
      This game has in fact been going on ever since the original Soviet 
      proposals for the conference at Bucharest which were made on 
      March 18, three days after the invasion of Prague. It will be 
      recalled how on that occasion the Foreign Office and No.l0, in 
      order to head off Opposition -- and above all Conservative -- 
      anxiety regarding the possibility that the Chambarlainites would 
      sabotage the Russian talks, deliberately encouraged the newspapers 
      to run a big line of Anglo-Russian friendship, to the extent 
      that the Evening News of all papers headlined "Moscow is 
      with us".