Italy and smaller countries soon followed suit. France made the mistake of backing Baron Wrangel, still one more will-o’-the-wisp, and the question of the enormous debt of the Czarist régime, most of it widely distributed among French peasants, made it impossible for the French Government to renew relations with Russia. On the other hand, France’s persistence in backing counter-revolutionary movements, her support of Poland, her effort to control the Little Entente, her commercial treaty with Finland, her rôle at the Genoa Conference, and her treatment of Germany combined to increase the bitterness between the closely allied nations of pre-war days. In the summer of 1922 France began to make overtures to Moscow; but these did not go far. The invasion of the Ruhr, following upon the Lausanne Conference, widened the breach. The first of the post-war conferences to which Russia was invited was that of Genoa in the spring of 1922. At the very beginning of the conference, however, France insisted that Russia, as the price of political recognition, accept conditions that no delegates, having the interest either of their country or political party at heart, could have accepted. The opening sessions of the Genoa Conference were so arranged as to give the Russian delegates the suspicion that the conference was intending to discredit them. They resented the effort to make them appear, as the Germans had been made to appear at Versailles, as criminals and debtors. The financial proposals of the Entente Powers they believed would reduce Russia to economic servitude, and they refused to accept them. The Russians at Genoa were confronted with the same unilateral application of a principle as had confronted the Germans at Versailles. They were told that the return of Russia into the family of nations was dependent upon the recognition of the pre-war debt of Russia, upon repayment of the sums borrowed by the Russian Government from the Allies during the war, and upon the settlement of claims of foreigners for property nationalized by the Soviet. The Russians answered that they would be willing to do this if the Entente Powers would recognize Russia’s equal right to participate in all the pecuniary and other advantages of their victory, which these sums had been spent to obtain. As for the claims of foreigners against the Soviet, Russia would pay these if the Allies would pay for the confiscation of money and the damages done by the anti-Soviet generals, Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel, who had been armed by the Allies against Russia. The Russian claims for damages were far greater than those presented by the Entente Powers. Soviet counter-claims were indignantly rejected. The Entente Powers had no idea of admitting reciprocity, and insisted that Russia would have to pay. Her claims against the Entente Powers were thrown out of court.