Lenin makes an interesting contrast to Woodrow Wilson. Lenin picks the strongest minds he can get and complains that he cannot find enough brains. He feels a particular lack of brains in the diplomatic service. The small corps around Tchicherin will be highly inadequate to spread over the earth when the time comes for sending ambassadors and consuls to every country in the world. Russia will be as slip-shoddily represented as America. It is only the English who realize the value of a school for diplomats.
Lenin has never been known to dismiss a man after he has worked with him only half a year. And no man has ever deserted him no matter how Lenin may have ridden down his opposition.
Politically, Lenin has a hard, cold, calculating brain and uses all men to his own ends. They forgive him because he does it openly and for no personal gain.
The Soviet Premier is by no means a vain man. He rarely autographs pictures of himself, and the diary the American editors always request us to ask him about will never be written. He says he is too tired to write down notes after the day’s mass of work has been done. Lack of vanity and conceit is an equal reason.
He hates to be flattered or to have his portrait painted. He was in real distress because he consented to allow Claire Sheridan to do his bust. Angelica Balabonova was spending an evening with the Lenins in their apartment that same week and she said, reprovingly:
“Revolutionaries have something else to do beside spend their time in such a way.”
Lenin answered:
“I agree with you and I felt unhappy about it, but when Comrade Litvinov asked me to sit, it seemed such a small matter that I didn’t like to be disagreeable.”
As a matter of fact, he only gave Mrs. Sheridan a few hours and, from her own account, worked all the time he was posing.