But from boyhood he also prided himself in his gift for conversation. Given the chance to talk to people, he felt he could get pretty much anything he wanted. “Haven’t you ever been overawed by a secretary,” he had remarked only recently to a visitor in his office, “and finally, when you have reached the man you wanted to see, discovered he was very human?” He was sure that if he could meet Stalin and deal with him, then he could get to know Stalin and understand him; in this, like so many others before him, he was greatly mistaken.
