Friday, 25 August

Fine

From this week onwards, I have increased my Russian study time to every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, from 11.00 in the morning until 1.30 in the afternoon. I practised more in the lessons, and read the textbook “Three Sisters” one hour at a time, conversation for half an hour, the remaining one hour rest to be divided between reading the newspaper and studying Russian grammar. I’ve tried for four days, and the results seem to be quite good. But after the lessons, every time I have to use another two hours for further study. In total I have to spend 16 hours per week. My official workloads are already very heavy, it would be very difficult to extract more time to do so. Sometimes I even have to wake up in the middle of the night to study for an hour before going back to bed again. Although it is difficult, I deeply believe that if one doesn’t work hard one cannot get good results. Therefore I am still keen to do it.

At 6.00 p.m. it was the Uruguay’s National Day. The Uruguayan Minister held a reception in the Grand Hotel. The Soviet Vice Foreign Minister Vyshinsky raised his glass with me to congratulate our victory in war against our common enemies. He also said China and the Soviet Union were real allies. His wordings clearly indicated that Japan is also an enemy of the Soviet Union. The Soviet director of the naval intelligence division talked with me for a long time. He stated clearly that after they have defeated the Germans they will join us fighting against the Japanese, because the Soviet people also hate the Japanese. The Canadian Minister Wilgress told me as follows.1) Recently in the Leningrad monthly Zvyazda there was an article about the world peace organisation. It was rumoured that it was written by the former Ambassador to the United States Litvinov, but he only used the name of a professor. Based on what he discussed with Litvinov, Wilgress said the idea was, speaking overall, very fine. Wilgress expressed disagreement only on the point of the separation of satellite organisations and peace organisations. 2) The Polish problem has escalated. When Prime Minister Mikolajczyk came to Moscow there were hopes that the problem could be solved. But after Polish the Commander-in-Chief Sosnkowski arrived in Rome and came in contact with the Vatican, the attitude of the exiled government suddenly became hardened. Vatican organisations normally never criticised war news, but recently it had suddenly commented, saying that the Red Army did not advance into Warsaw because the Soviet Union hoped that the German army would destroy all the anti-German elements in Warsaw city. Therefore the Soviet Union was extremely unhappy with the Vatican. As a matter of fact the Vatican interfering in politics now is most unwise. 3) Polish interests were originally managed by the Australian Embassy, but recently it received notification from the Soviet Government that it no longer needed to manage on behalf of Poland and should transfer management to the Polish Committee of National Liberation immediately. I cabled the Foreign Ministry to report.

The Head of China Consulate, Zeng Jianping (曾建屏), is being transferred back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and he passed through here. He visited me this afternoon. He said he has been in the Soviet Union for 8 years, therefore he asked to be sent back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is from Swatow and he graduated from (Moscow) Zhongshan University. I exhorted him to drill deeper into knowledge, particularly Russian and English.

This morning Secretary Yang Shuren went to Iran. I asked him to take a letter to Li Tiezheng, explaining that earlier the reason I wanted to transfer Chen Houpei (陳厚培) to the Tashkent Consulate was mainly because he could not maintain his living in Iran not that he did not want to follow Li Tiezheng. I asked that Li Tiezheng shouldn’t misunderstand Chen Houpei.