Note 17 — Chapter XVII
Reading edition
Once only I was requested by a diplomatist, who was a personal friend of mine, not by the Foreign Office, to induce the Russian government to appoint a certain individual to the post of minister plenipotentiary to a country where diplomatic disputes were frequent. I asked Witte to get Lamsdorff to appoint the man and he did so. If my friend had foreseen what would come of it, he would not have made the request. He and the Russian diplomatist whom I had had sent as minister quarrelled hopelessly and the latter had to be recalled by M. Izvolsky.