-4-
 
suffer at recurrent intervals the threat of their own
 
destruction. The King smiled and said that he was well
 
aware that the Allies did not have these objectives in
 
mind, and said, "In the first place, how could any one
 
seriously think of annihilating over eighty millions of
 
people?" He continued "You can hardly conceive of cutting
 
off the heads of that number of men and women."
 
     The King said that in some ways he believed the world
 
had got better during the past centuries, but that the
 
great difficulty in Europe was the fact that certain
 
peoples had lived on war, and had repeatedly made war
 
for century after century. For three hundred years the
 
Italian people had refrained from participation in European
 
wars of their own making. The German people, he said, on
 
the other hand, had dedicated themselves almost exclusively
 
to war and that unfortunately was now one of the major
 
problems again to the fore in the present unhappy situa-
 
tion.
     
     The King then brought up the subject of Russia. He
 
said that in the old days before 1914 he had frequently
 
visited Russia, and had known the interior of the country 
 
from the Baltic to the Caucasus. He had considered the 
 
Russian people then a collection of downtrodden, barely
 
human masses, interlarded with a collection of thieves.
 
He wondered whether the situation, in so far as Russia
 
was concerned, had improved very much during recent years.
 
He mentioned that he was given, to understand that the
 
present government of Stalin was very strong. He asked
 
whether I believed that Russia should seriously, be regarded
 
as a great military power. He said Russia had not, in his 
 
                                                  judgment,