Friday, 27 October

Dull, rain

Military Attaché Guo said that from the Norwegian Military Attaché he heard the news via a Soviet engineer. He said that the engineer was back from Vladivostok. The engineer said that the Soviet people in that area were preoccupied with the installation of fortifications, which seemed to be against the Japanese. Also the said engineer is an important person in the Party, and according to him, when Churchill and Stalin met this time, Churchill agreed that after the Soviet Union joined the war against Japan it would receive Lushun and the railway direct line from Manchuria to Lushun. Therefore he asked Burrows about it during the banquet the night before last. I said this type of news was totally unreliable. Since Ambassador Harriman told me that Churchill and Stalin did not talk about the problems of the Far East, and Minister Wilgress also explained that Churchill did not dare to discuss this with Stalin behind Roosevelt’s back, and Churchill would not trust Stalin to such an extent in case Stalin told China and United States about this matter. It would put Churchill in a very difficult situation and Stalin might not dare propose this to Churchill, therefore this kind of news is completely unreliable. I felt that with regard to such news Military Attaché Guo hadn’t judged with common sense but asking Burrows instead was inappropriate, and this might make people look down upon him.

Churchill made a report to the British Parliament about the meetings in Moscow. He also said that the Polish issue has not been resolved, and he hoped Prime Minister Mikolajczyk could come to Moscow again. He also said that Britain and the United States will try their best to encourage the exile Yugoslavian Government to cooperate with Tito. This is enough to prove that the Polish and Yugoslavian issues haven’t been completely solved.

I studied Russian from 5.00 to 8.00 in the evening.