Friday, 1 September

Fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month

Fine, hot

At noon, I received Donald Nelson, General Patrick Hurley, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, A. Harriman, General Dean, Balfour, Admiral Archer, Colonel McNally, Edward Locke, Jauies A. Jacobson, General Zhu, General Guo and others for luncheon at the Chinese Embassy. Hurley and Ambassador Harriman told me that three of them talked to Foreign Minister Molotov. Nelson said that the United States wanted to cooperate with China both during and after the war, as well as help China in its economic construction. Since the United States and the Soviet Union are allies, the United States should let the Soviet Union know this, but this did not mean it needs to seek Soviet consent. Molotov answered that with regard to military and economic assistance, only the United States had the strength to do so, the Soviet Union was glad to learn about this, and thanked the United States for letting them know. Molotov also said that Soviet policy throughout has been that they wanted to have a strong China, led by Chairman Chiang to unify China, and it had tried its best to further Sino-Soviet friendship and cooperation. Unfortunately, the various friendly gestures from the Soviet Union were not well received by China. Hurley and others said according to the impression they got from China, the Chinese Government was very eager to cooperate with the Soviet Union on friendly terms, but they only felt that the Soviet Union did not receive well all China’s good intentions. All in all, both sides wanted friendly cooperation, and the Americans felt pleased with this. Hurley said that he was very satisfied with the talk yesterday, and they had prepared concrete proposals. When they arrived at Chongqing they could report clearly to Chairman Chiang in great detail. In case he had queries, they would show him the concrete suggestions in the proposal. All in all they thought China should take the initiative to better the Sino-Soviet relationship. The luncheon lasted until 4.00 p.m. Afterwards I cabled Chairman Chiang to report.

Yesterday I caught a cold and I did not feel very well, but I still managed to do things and did not show any sign of fatigue today. It was so lucky.