Yesterday I delivered my lecture at the League of Nations Union. I informed the London papers beforehand that I was planning to make an important political statement.

The importance attached by Maisky to his presentation is attested by his rebuke aimed at Garvin’s editorial in the Observer for failing to realize that ‘Peace and security in Europe [were] indivisible.’ The matter was rectified by a second editorial the following week; Garvin papers, 20 Feb. 1935.

As a result, the hall at the School of Economics was chock-full (some 600 people came), and correspondents from every newspaper and agency sat at the press desk, with many foreigners among them. Lady Astor presided. Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb)

Sidney James Webb, a Fabian; served as president of the Board of Trade in the first Labour government, 1924, and in the House of Lords as secretary of state for the colonies, 1929–31.

and Jarvie,

J. Gibson Jarvie, chairman of the United Dominions Trust, hailed Stalin’s five-year plan in a major speech in Glasgow in 1932 which was then often quoted by Stalin, who omitted Jarvie’s qualifying comment that although Russia was claiming ‘to be a Communist State, nevertheless that country to-day was, unquestionably, practising state capitalism’ (The Times, 21 October 1932).

a banker, also spoke on planning in the USSR. The audience listened to my lecture with bated breath, although I was speaking (or rather reading) for about an hour. The mood in the auditorium could be described as one of strained sympathy. The lecture was interrupted by applause at many points, as when I said that there was no unemployment in the USSR and that women enjoyed equal rights, or when I described the peace policy pursued by the Soviet government. The final part of the lecture, dealing with the communiqué of 3 February, attracted particular attention. Excerpts from it were broadcast last night on the radio. The presidium of the conference thanked me for choosing the platform of the League of Nations Union to make a political statement of major importance. Today all organs of the press gave a detailed account of the lecture, and some featured it in their editorials. Excellent! We’ve fired the first shot at MacDonald and Simon. The bullet seems to have hit the target. But we cannot rest on our laurels.