René Blum, the gentle, cultured intellectual, was a genuine artist: amiable, courteous, and fully deserving of the often misused phrase--a man of the world. His alliance with de Basil was foredoomed to failure; for one of René Blum’s outstanding characteristics was a passion to avoid arguments, discussions, scandals, troubles of any sort. Blum commanded the highest respect from his artists and associates; but they never feared him. To them he was the kind, understanding friend to whom they might run with their troubles and problems. Blum’s sensitivity was such that he would run from de Basil as one would try to escape a plague. René Blum, you would say, was, perhaps, the ivory-tower dilettante. You would be wrong. René Blum gave the lie to this during the war by revealing himself a man of heroic stature. On the occupation of France, he was in grave danger, since he was a Jew, and the brother of Léon Blum, the Socialist leader, great French patriot and one-time Premier. René, however, was safely and securely out of the country. But he, too, was a passionate lover of France. France, he felt, needed him. Tossing aside his own safety, he returned to his beloved country, to share its fate. His son, who was the apple of his father’s eye, joined the Maquis; was killed fighting the Nazis. René Blum was the victim of Nazi persecution. Let us look for a moment at the background of Blum’s ballet collaborator. The “Colonel” was born Vassily Grigorievitch Voskresensky. In his native _milieu_ he had some sort of police-military career. Although he insisted on the title “Colonel,” he certainly never attained that rank in the Tsar’s army. He was a lieutenant in the _Gendarmes_. After the revolution, in 1918, he turned up as a captain with Bicherakoff’s Cossacks. Later on he turned naval and operated in the Black Sea. There is an interval in de Basil’s life that has never been entirely filled in with complete accuracy: the period immediately following his flight and escape from Russia. The most credible of the legends surrounding this period is that he sold motor-cars in Italy. Eventually, he turned up in Paris, where my trail picked him up at a concert agency called _Zerbaseff_, which concerned itself with finding jobs for refugee artists. It was then he called himself de Basil. At the time I met him, he had a Caucasian partner, the Prince Zeretelli whom I have mentioned, and who was a one-time manager of the People’s Theatre, in St. Petersburg. It was this partnership that brought forth the _Ballet and Opéra Russe de Paris_, which gave seasons at the _Théâtre des Champs Elysées_, in Paris, and, as I have mentioned, at the Lyceum Theatre, in London.