I had always had a certain feeling of association with
Maxim Litvinov since his family and mine shared a charwoman when he was living in the Hampstead Garden Suburb during the First War, and I used sometimes to walk down to the Tube with him. But I remember better an attempt I made to put him in touch with Sir Austen Chamberlain for the first time when the latter, as Foreign Secretary, was heading the British Delegation at the League of Nations Assembly at Geneva, in, I think, 1926, and Litvinov turned up with some Soviet colleagues for preliminary discussions on disarmament. Russia had not then joined the League and effective diplomatic contact between London and Moscow was negligible. There was nothing at Geneva to bring the Foreign Secretary and the Russian delegate in contact; Sir Austen was, in fact, on point of leaving for home. But it seemed to me absurd "that the two should be staying within a mile or so of each other and never so much as shake hands. So I talked to Mr. Eden, who was then Sir Austen's Parliamentary Private Secretary, and Sir Walford Selby, his Private Secretary, and secured a kind of non-committal indication that if M. Litvinov asked to see Sir Austen he could hardly meet with a refusal. That had to be put a little diplomatically to Litvinov, who did make the neces- sary approach. It had its due effect, and a conversation which I understood was quite friendly resulted. But it was no more fruitful than many more recent talks between British and Soviet representatives have been. Litvinov was not a free agent.
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