were joined by a member of the Soviet whose
name I forget.

It was Kamenev's first talk with Litvinov after
his return, and I think they forgot that I was
there. Kamenev asked Litvinov what he meant
to do, and Litvinov told him he wished to establish
a special department of control to receive all com-
plaints, to examine into the efficiency of different
commissariats, to get rid of parallelism, etc., and,
in fact, to be the most unpopular department in
Moscow. Kamenev laughed. "You need not
think you are the first to have that idea. Every
returning envoy without exception has the same.
Coming back from abroad they notice more than
we do the inefficiencies here, and at once think
they will set everything right. Rakovsky sat here
for months dreaming of nothing else. Joffe was
the same when he came back from that tidy Berlin.
Now you; and when Vorovsky comes ( Vorovsky
was still in Petrograd) I am ready to wager that
he too has a scheme for general control waiting in
his pocket. The thing cannot be done. The only
way is, when something obviously needs doing, to
put in some one we can trust to get it done. Soap

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