Today we had a farewell dinner for Masaryk. He resigns on 30 December: he cannot serve the new Czechoslovak government. He will then go to the USA, where for the next 2–3 months he will give lectures, speeches, etc. He also hopes to see Roosevelt. He wants to educate the Americans a little about European affairs and to earn some money. Masaryk evidently has no means of his own, or very few, and one has to make a living. He expects to get two or three thousand pounds which, by his reckoning, would be enough to keep him going for some three years. Later, he’ll see. Masaryk has rented a small flat in Westminster (his permanent residence will be in London) and invited me to a house-warming party after his return from the USA. His plans are still vague. He only said to me: ‘I want to do something useful for democracy and progress.’

[Munich had confirmed for Litvinov how futile it was to seek to recruit Britain and France to collective security. His outlook now conformed very much to the isolationist views held in the Kremlin, but his paralysis reflected his association with the discredited idea of collective security and his apparent refusal to consider the obvious alternative of reconciling with Germany. Maisky, whose room for manoeuvre had been significantly narrowed, retained some vestige of hope that the damage could be repaired. He tried relentlessly to galvanize into action oppositional elements inside government circles. Within the span of a single month, he entertained to lunch à deux at the embassy a wide array of politicians, including the high commissioners of New Zealand and South Africa, Cranborne, Harold Macmillan, Walter Elliot, Liddell Hart, Thomas Inskip, De La Warr, Eden, Vansittart, Butler, Samuel Hoare, Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), William Seeds

Fulfilling a lifetime ambition, William Seeds, who had studied Russian and spent time in the Russian capital at the turn of the century, was appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1938, conducted the negotiations on the triple alliance in Moscow, and was recalled to London after the Soviet invasion of Finland in December 1939.

(the newly appointed ambassador to Moscow), Randolph Churchill, Lord Cecil and Horace Wilson.

Maisky’s extra-parliamentary activities had become so pronounced that they were reported by the French ambassador to Paris, DDF, 2 Serie, XIII, Doc. 313.