250 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
more valuable than ever to the Soviet officials, and that it was
now made a special task to provide information of every kind
for his forthcoming book. Statistics on the increase of the crops,
the vast growth of population, the huge sums invested, and
every other point of interest were provided. The heads of the
Soviet State were industrious in furnishing explanations on
every point not perfectly clear. The way in which this was
done was mentioned above when dealing with Kalinin's
statements about the reasons for the milk shortage noticeable
in Russia. Nor were simple and plausible explanations wanting
for the lack of petrol in the towns, or the situation in the
Ukraine. On his return to Paris M. Herriot set forth his views
in a large number of articles, delivered lectures and made
speeches at banquets, all in the sense which his Moscow
utterances had made it easy to foresee; so that, quite apart
from his book, his work must have been entirely to the
satisfaction of Moscow.
The only point on which the Kremlin miscalculated was the
echo provided by the French press to Herriot's journey. Even
before his arrival in Paris a controversy arose in the press
over the part which he had played as propagandist of the
Soviet Union. He was attacked by important papers like the
Matin, Journal des Debats, Candide and, in French Switzerland,
by the Journal de Geneve. The Matin quoted a passage from
the Dictionnaire de la Conversation, referring to Catherine IFs
journey with Potemkin as her guide, and the Journal des
Debats suggested in a leading article that M. Herriot "merely
shrugged his shoulders" when facts were quoted against him,
**He shrugs his shoulders if people speak of the famine in the
Ukraine; but he is in ecstasies when he had a chance of looking
at the second greatest industrial undertaking in the world."1 The
same paper made fun of his standing phrase to the effect that
the French people wanted peace, and insinuated that it was
irrelevant to the question of the Russian famine.
1 September 19,1933.