To Pichon, it was an outrage that France and the United States were placed so far back. Even before they set out, he complained to Roosevelt that they were stuck behind ‘ces Chinois’, who were of far less consequence globally. The American attempted to laugh him out of his pique by pointing out that the Chinese, in their richly embroidered robes, were so gorgeously attired they deserved to take precedence. The Foreign Minister was not mollified. When he discovered that the third occupant of their carriage was to be the representative of Persia – in Roosevelt’s estimation, ‘a deprecatory,
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