attached much importance to staff talks as proof that the French were committed to the alliance, and the break-off in staff talks caused much bitterness in Moscow. In December 1937, Delbos visited all of France's allies in Eastern Europe except for the Soviet Union, Coulondre in a dispatch wrote: "that in spite of all the excuses which will be forthcoming, this will not ameliorate Franco-Soviet relations and restore confidence". The same month, Litvinov was interviewed by the Moscow correspondent for Les Temps where he expressed himself with what Couoondre called much "avec sevérité" about Franco-Soviet relations, saying that the French were not taking the alliance very seriously. Litvinov warned that the Soviet Union would reach a rapprochement with Germany if the French continued with their present course, saying his government was very dissatisfied that the French were refusing to resume Franco-Soviet staff talks. Litvinov added that France was committed to the defense of the international system created by the Treaty of Versailles while Germany was committed to the destruction of the Versailles system. He concluded his interview by saying the Soviet Union had been excluded from the Paris peace conference of 1919 and only chose to defend the Versailles system because it wanted to, not because it had to. In response, Coulondre warned Paris that the Soviet regime "could be led eventually to envision a rapprochement with Germany. Presuming to consider an entente with the Reich as easy from the moment the USSR ceased to defend the maintenance of the status quo in Europe, he [Litvinov] added that such a thing could be arranged without the formalities of treaties...It is improbable, given the seriousness of the subject, even while speaking unofficially to a journalist, that M. Litvinov would had dared upon such a point without have been authorised in advance from on high, and his declaration appears to me as a sort of warning that the Soviet government wanted to give in a roundabout way". From the Sudetenland crisis to the Munich Agreement After the Anschluss, Coulondre predicted to Paris that Germany's next target would be Czechoslovakia rather than Poland. Coulondre always stated his opinion that if France had to choose between the Soviet Union and Poland as an ally, it should pick the former rather than the latter as the Soviet Union had much greater military and industrial power. Like many other French diplomats in the 1930s, Coulondre often