Similar views were expressed by the notorious socialist and Zimmerwald pacifist Christian Rakovsky, leader of the Social Democratic Party. Writing to his main collaborator Leon Trotsky in May 1915, he accused Ionescu of "making a political principle out of venality", and of being "a man of vulgar ambitions and unmeasurable vanity, a politician of no faith, no convictions, who considers political programs to be each a cause to plead". Contending that Take Ionescu aimed to be "on all occasions, on the winning side, courting people in power", Rakovsky believed that his support for the Entente was conjectural: "Until yesterday, [he] was the man who continuously tied friendships with the Germans [...]. Anticipating victory for the Allies, [he] has now become their man, and, finding it difficult to return to his old sympathies, he threatens that, in case Russia were to fail, he would expatriate himself to America, the Romanian people having lost, in the eyes of such a "patriot", all interest once he would no longer have the hope of returning to power". On the other side of the political spectrum, Ionescu remained at odds with the Conservative leader Petre P. Carp; in 1915, referring to his policies, Carp remarked: "Talent does not justify all avatars, just as beauty does not justify all forms of prostitution".