Monday, 11 December

The American army has occupied Ormoc. There is progress in the Phillipines. I feel relieved. Also Britain has sent many naval ships to the Pacific and formed the Second Fleet which has taken Australia as its base and is led by Admiral Fraser. That fleet has no connection with the First Fleet in the Indian Ocean. Its strength is enough to cope with the whole Japanese Navy. This is also good news.

Counsellor Liu and his wife took the train to leave Moscow at 7.40 p.m. to take up the post of Special Envoy in Xinjiang. He told me that he left this time with great anxiety. First of all he was afraid that the Soviet side had other attempts with regard to its policies towards Xinjiang and China. In that case, he would be totally ruined. Secondly, he was afraid that the anti-Soviet cliques in China and Xinjiang would view him as pro-Soviet and attack him. This would also yield no good result. Originally, he wanted to resign and leave diplomacy as well as politics, and revive his job as a teacher. But he felt that during this difficult time for our country it seemed his sense of duty did not allow him to do so. Therefore he just held on, and I hoped that I could try my best to help him out if he thought that he could no longer stay on. I tried my best to console him. He is very honest and very responsible in his job. He always worked very hard and deligently. I worked with him for two years and I respected him more over time. I was more than sympathetic to his situation. I went with the Embassy staff to see him off, and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs also dispatched its Assistant Secretary of the Far East section and Acting Secretary to see him off.

I read Bullitt’s article “The World from Rome” in Life (4 September), which was alarmed about the Soviet Union. He thinks that Communist power has occupied Eastern Europe, and even Italy cannot escape from it. Its tone had the annotation of arousing Europeans to guard against Communism. No wonder the Soviet Union was so concerned about such an article. The tone of the Soviet newspapers seemed to dispel the misunderstanding of Britain and the United States, so they have strongly advocated cooperation. But as viewing the published newspapers unceasingly that various sides demand the recognition of the Polish Committee of National Liberation as the Polish provisional government, it seems that in the near future the Soviet Government will recognise it. Also, as I know the Soviet way of doing things, if it does one thing wrong which causes bad repercussions, it will do other things to alleviate the situation. Therefore in the past few days, newspapers have strongly advocated that the Three Powers should cooperate to the end, I suspect the Soviet Union is about to recognise the Polish Committee of National Liberation as the Polish provisional government.

From 11.00 to 1.30 I studied Russian.