Round House

Thursday, 1 February

I prepared the speech for the constitution at home. (For use in the Political Council.)

Friday, 2 February

After lunch I went to Ma Chaojun’s home, returning the draft letter he was going to present to General Chiang. I suggested that there was no need to send such a letter. 1) The terms he suggested are absolutely the same as He Yingqin and Ye Jianying are discussing now. It is redundant to do so. 2) It was even inappropriate to ask General Chiang to send a senior official to Russia to explain to Stalin. Firstly it was because Soviet Russia would certainly answer that it could not interfere in our internal politics. (It would absolutely not admit that it had any close connection with the Eighth Route Army.) Secondly, it was certainly not good to ask others to help out with our own matters. Thirdly, if Ma Chaojun made the suggestions, close associates of General Chiang would suspect that Sun Fo wanted to go abroad again. In fact, Sun Fo wanted to do so. Ma Chaojun agreed strongly with me, but he was deeply worried about KMT-CCP tensions. He wanted to help. I suggested he discuss first with General Chiang’s close associates who supported a peaceful solution, and then he contact those experienced and moderate elements of the CCP like Ye Jianying, Dong Biwu, Lin Zuhan (林祖涵)[1] and others, so that they could be in touch with each other directly. This was because if the moderate elements of both sides do not have thorough understanding, there would be no hope of solving the various problems between them. Ye Jianying, Dong Biwu and others had earlier asked Sun Fo to relay their wishes to General Chiang that he should dispatch other people who were not that opinionated to liaise with them. I, and Sun Fo, felt it was difficult to handle because the status and circumstances of Sun Fo made it inappropriate for him to mention it to General Chiang, which would lead to misunderstanding. Therefore it was more suitable for Ma Chaojun to do so. If necessary, he could tell Ye Jianying that it was my suggestion. Ma Chaojun agreed intensely with me, and said he would try his best to do so.

I invited Xu Gengtu (徐賡圖) and others for a meal at Li Dugong’s home. Jiang, Liu, Min, Li, Ma and others were all present and I took photographs of them.

At 6.30 I returned to the Round House, and went to the Soviet Embassy with Sun Fo to meet the appointed ambassador, Panyushkin. We had a good time.

Yesterday the enemy’s Diet resumed meeting. Yonai Mitsumasa, Arita Hachirō (有田八郎)[2] as well as others made speeches. They were still on the old policy of invading China under the New Order of East Asia, which was to please the Soviet Union and work against Britain and France, but Japan had absolutely no plan how to deal with the United States. As for the Soviet-Japanese conference on boundary demarcation, Hata Shunroku (畑俊六)[3] had confirmed in his speech that it had not come to  any result and therefore it was dismissed. One can see from all these things that our enemy is about to lose.

[1] Lin Zuhan (1886-1960) was a Communist leader of China.

[2] Arita Hachirō (1884-1965) was a Japanese politician.

[3] Hata Shunroku (1879-1962) was a Japanese general.