Friday, 12 March

Seventh day of the second lunar month

In the morning, I went to the second-hand shop and bought one oil painting and one water colour. They cost me 2,700 roubles, which seemed reasonable. Originally, I had wanted to buy some ordinary china, but even a very coarse plate cost over 200 roubles. A second-hand small glass cost 100 roubles, and so I did not dare buy. The daily essentials are so scarce I haven’t seen anything like this before. Compared with this, Chongqing was heaven. Even Dushiqiao and Beibei were better than here ten thousand times. I strongly agreed that the homeland I s the best.

At noon I visited the representative of Fighting France Minister M.Roger Garreau. From 1922 to 1925 he was in the French Embassy in Beiping and therefore he was very friendly towards China. He said since the defeat of the French army he went to join Fighting France and it just happened that the Vichy Government dispatched him to be the French Minister to Siam. He talked to General De Gaulle and he agreed, so he accepted the commission to go there. And afterwards, Siam and Japan started to send troops to Vietnam. France and Siam were in a war situation. Since he knew Siamese and many important people in Siam were his friends he could still exercise his duty. This set an example in international diplomatic history. Later he found that he could do nothing, so he left the Vichy Government and joined Free France, and at first worked in the London headquarters and last year he was dispatched to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s attitude towards Free France was extremely good, and approved Free France to organise an air force to take part in the front line war. Although there were only about seventy odd people (23 flyers, and the Soviet Union would let them have about 200 odd people for the ground crews), they showed their willingness to cooperate. The French air force fighters provided by the Soviet Union were the latest ones. They were light, and since there was no unnecessary equipment, the speed they could go up to was about 700 kilometres per hour. The materials used were mainly wood and light materials, and the fighters flew for about 30 odd hours and then were not used again. However, the French pilots said the planes were much better than the British spitfires and all the other different kinds of fighters from the United States in terms of mobility, so they were very satisfied. He also said that most of the Soviet arsenals were relocated to the Ural district, and production has already reached a peak and a small part of it should be able to supply China. Its anti-tank guns were very good and he urged me to ask the Soviet Union to supply China. He also said he reckoned that Japan would not dare attack the Soviet Union because when the Soviet-German war started, Japan reckoned that Germany would definitely win, therefore they took the opportunity to start the war against the United States. But this speculation has proved to be wrong. Therefore when the German army attacked Stalingrad this time, Japan just waited and watched and did nothing. Now Japan is even more careful, and the Soviet Union also thinks like this. Also the Soviet army in the Far East hasn’t been moved away, therefore he felt that the Soviet Union Government does not fear Japan as before, but is still cautious. In the future, once Germany is defeated, even though the Soviet Union did not join the war against Japan, she would try her best to help China. As for Britain and the United States not opening a second war zone, not only was the Soviet Union unhappy, but also Poland and the other countries were not satisfied. Last year he went to Britain and saw the Polish army and the Canadian army stationed in Britain, and they were both eager to fight. The Poles were particularly ready for action as their country has fallen, and their families and friends have been oppressed. At the time there were already more than 3 million troops, it was puzzling that they did not have any action. Like the landing at North Africa this time, they should be able to take Tunis, but due to the delay in military action and the political mistakes in manipulating pro-Germany friction, it dragged on and did not achieve success. If the second war zone is still not opened, Germany could use this time to conscript males in the occupied countries and the situation in the future could deteriorate.

At 4.00 in the afternoon Ambassador Kerr of Britain visited me and I told him of the meeting with Mikoyan and asked him to try to hurry up and strengthen the Indian -Iran road transportation. He said he could help, and asked me to have a conference with Gofford when I was back in Kuibyshev.

In the evening, I went to see Pushkin’s operas “Queen of Spades”. I met the two actors of the opera.