Early in 1932, René Blum joined forces with one of the most curious personalities that modern ballet has turned up, in the person of a gentleman who wished to be known as Col. W. de Basil. De Basil had had a ballet company of sorts for some time. I first ran into him in Paris, shortly after Diaghileff’s death, where he had allied himself with Prince Zeretelli’s Russian Opera Company; and again in London, where the Lionel Powell management, in association with the Imperial League of Opera, had given them a season of combined opera and ballet at the old Lyceum Theatre. With ballets by Boris Romanoff and Bronislava Nijinska, de Basil had toured his little troupe around Europe in buses, living from hand to mouth; had turned up for a season at Monte Carlo, at René Blum’s invitation. That did it. De Basil worked out a deal with Blum, whereby de Basil became a joint managing director of the combined companies, now under the title of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. A season was given in the summer of 1932, in Paris, at the _Théâtre des Champs Elysées_. It was there I first saw the new company. It was then I took the plunge. I negotiated. I signed them for a visit to the American continent. A book could be devoted to these negotiations alone. It would not be believable; it would fail to pass every test of credibility ever devised. I feel that this is the point at which to digress for a moment, in order to sketch in a line drawing of de Basil, with some of the shadows and some of the substance. Unless I do, no reader will be able to understand why I once contemplated a book to be called _To Hell With Ballet_! To begin with, de Basil was a Cossack and a Caucasian. Neither term carries with it any connotation of gentleness or sensitivity. De Basil was one of the last persons in the world you would expect to find at the head of an organization devoted to the development of the gentle, lyric art of the ballet. Two more dissimilar partners in an artistic venture than de Basil and Blum could not be found.