Monday, 2 August

The London broadcast said that Chairman Lin died yesterday. A special meeting was summoned by the Central Government, and it nominated the Generalissimo to take his place. This time it seemed real, but after the last mistake, I had to be very careful, and wait until the official telegram from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and only then would I convene the memorial service. The doyen of the Diplomatic Corps here, the Afghanistan Ambassador, Ahmed Khan, telephoned me with regard to this and I told him the truth. He told me that if I received the telegram to please inform him at once so he could organise all the other embassies to lower their flags. Many embassies have been sending in condolence cards. The Australian Charge d’Affaires came in the afternoon and brought a card from the whole of the Australian Embassy personnel. He has just come back from Moscow, and Kerr said that the reason Satō went to Moscow was really because the Japanese took the Soviet ships into custody, and the result was that the Japanese have now released all the ships and the Soviet Government has ordered that all ship captains do not divulge the news about Japan to the American side. Satō also proposed Molotov that they could have a general review of the Soviet-Japanese relationship, but Molotov said that for the moment the Soviet-Japanese relationship was quite good, there was no need to review and then refused. So Satō was very disappointed.
As to the recently established National Committee for a Free Germany in Moscow, he thought 20% of this idea was to cope with the German side to form the Russian Liberation Committee, 50% was because they felt internally Germany was really a bit shaky, which could be of great use politically. 30% was trying to show Britain and the United States that the Soviet Union should have a share in German affairs. Izvestia published an article opposing the Eastern Europe Federation, saying this would help Britain, because it would aid American isolationism and anti-Soviet elements. I immediately sent a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to report what Ambassador Kerr said and also about what the Swedish Ambassador said yesterday.
This afternoon Counsellor Chen went to see Director Litvinov about the spare parts for planes of the European and Asian company and he admitted he had already used them.