JOFFRE IN BERLIN.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 February 1920, Page 12

JOFFRE IN BERLIN.

LIFE IN BOLSHEVIK EMBASSY, • ] NO SHORT RATIONS THERE. The Soviet Government's Ambassador in Berlin is Jolfe. He lived in that city before the war, and was a medical student, but was expelled as an undesirable alien. When lie returned as the Bolshevik Government's representative, writes the Berlin correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, he and his staff were compelled to take up their quarters in the Elite Hotel, as the keys of the Embassy in Unter den Linden were in the hands,of the Spanish Ambassador, who refused to give them up. A fortnight later they managed to secure admission to the Embassy, and the first place they went to on entering the building was the wine cellar. To their great indignation, they found this empty. The -wines with which it had been stocked had been the personal property of the last Ambassador of the Tsar, SverbeyefT, and his Spanish colleague had shrewdly had them removed {o a private warehouse. The absence of a well-stocked cellar did not, however, prevent Joffe from leading an exceedingly luxurious life. The old servants, who had worked in the Embassy for thirty years under many Ambassadors say they had seen a good deal of luxurious living, and Count Osten Sacken, Sverbeyeff'g predecessor, was a renowned bonviveur, but such eat-' ing and drinking as took place at JofTe'a table they had never before witnessedThe Bolshevik plenipotentiary's salary was 750 roubles a month (nominally £75), but on comestibles alone he spent 5000 marks ( £250) a day. At a time when the population of Moscow and Petrograd was fast dwindling from starvation, and milk was issued in Germany only to children and invalids, ihe Soviet Ambassador sat down to a breakfast table laid with cold chicken, ham, eggs, Camembert cheese, and real cicam. 'in the evening a six-course dinner was served regularly. It began with hors d'oeuvrcs, which always included caviare and vodka, and finished up with real coflee, then a great rarity in Germany, and real French cognac. It is to be presumed that the costs of this generous diet wore, defrayed out of the propaganda funds, which were issued to Joll'e without limit.

Joll'c took his meals alone, but the rest of (ho staff, which numbered abo.it 00 persons in nil, ate at a common fable. This applied to the servants, as well as to the secretaries and attaches, or whatever they may have been called. Like most of the Supreme Commissaries of (ho People, Joil'o had attached to him a young lady secretary of considerable personal charm. This damsel also received the standardised salary of 750 roubles a month, but she bought from one purveyor to the Imperial Court a dozen nightdresses, not one of wkicli cost less than 2"io marks, and commissioned another to make her an evening dress at a price of fIOOO marks. One of the male secretaries at the Embassy, who was in receipt of an equivalent salary, lost 200,000 marks (£10.000) at the gaming tables in a single night after he had been a couple of months in Joffe's employ. The chief associates of Joffe here were, of course, Independents, but he was also on very friendly terms with Stresemann, who played a prominent part in the National Liberal Party during the last stages of tile war. The German diplomats of the old regime treated the Bolshevik plenipotentiary with the utmost consideration, and on one occasion Admiral von Hintze, then Foreign Minister, was so subtly delicate in his courtesy as to appear at a banquet at the Russian Embassy in a dinner jacket and with a red rose in his buttonhole. Before leaving Berlin Joffe did a stroke of business which ensured him an income of .'iOO.OOO roubles a year. His next official post was that of Governor-General of Vilna, and he is now one of the most influential members of the Bolshevik Government. It may enhance the credibility of these details if I add that my informant believes absolutely in the personal integrity of Lenin, whom he regards as a perfectly sincere fanatic.