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19*4] THE MALMO EXHIBITION
277
us and whose society helped us to bear three years of
constant nervous tension, of trials and of misfortunes
that the terrible inexorable war brought in its train.
From the outset there was a coolness between us and
my Austro-Hungarian colleague, Count Hadik. On the
other hand, my German colleague, Herr von Reichenau,
the type of the convinced Prussian and belonging to a
social set which paraded the former traditions of
Russo-Prussian friendship, gave me a warm welcome and
sought an interchange of views with his new Russian
colleague.
During the month of April I had to busy myself with
the Russian participation in an exhibition of " the
adjacent countries of the Baltic," which was to be
inaugurated at Malmo.1 The Imperial Government,
hurt by the recent Swedish demonstrations, did not wish
to take any part in the exhibition. But thanks to the
efforts of a few people who feared that this holding
aloof might be misconstrued in Sweden, M. Emmanuel
Nobel was allowed to place himself at the head of a
private initiatory committee which succeeded more or
less in forming a Russian section. The result, from the
material point of view, was very meagre: a few
embroideries and laces made by villagers, much appreciated
abroad; an exhibit by the Nobel petroleum interests at
Baku, another by the rubber manufacturers of Riga, a
cold-storage section, and finally an art section,
represented by the Russian painters of the newest school,
in which side by side with a few excellent portraits
hung some pictures which would have made the dogs
howl; these made up the Russian exhibit which I
thought compared disastrously with the Swedish,
Danish, and German sections, in which the most
interesting and the best specimens of the industries of
those countries had been carefully collected together.
Nevertheless, later on, I could only congratulate myself
on the efforts of those who, in spite of opposition from
1 A Swedish port opposite Copenhagen.
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