Monday, 27 December
At 4.00 p.m. the newly-appointed Columbian Minister to the Soviet Union, Dr.Alfredo Michelsen, visited me. He had been Ambassador to Japan, and been to various places in China. Minister Li Dijun (李迪俊) prepared an introductory name card for me. Columbia became independent from Spain one hundred years ago, and it was not until the early 20th century that it became stable. After Panama separated from it to form a new country in 1903, Columbia’s territory and population dwindled. According to the 1938 census, its population was about some 8,000,000 people, and about one third lived in the cities with the rest living in villages. Columbia was mountainous, so residents lived in places which were between 4,000 to 8,000 feet high on average. The main product was coffee, with bananas second. People there were mainly Spanish. There were only 70,000 Indians. There were not many foreign residents. People from Germany, Britian, the United States, Italy and other places numbered about 1,000. It seemed the Soviet Union had no expatriates there, but still it dispatched a full-power Minister stationed at Bogota. Is there any special intention?
I talked with Swedish Minister Assarson about the Geopolitic School. (Actually it was mentioned by the British Sir Halford J. Mackinder in his 1913 lecture on “The Geographical Pivot of History”. He said the world should be divided geographically as big islands (such as Europe, Asia and Africa) and small islands. (such as America and Australia and others.) For countries in the big islands, the Soviet Union and Middle Asia were the heartlands, if anyone could control these heartlands he could control the whole world. He supported this point with history.) This was advocated by the German professor Gerald Haushofer, and had its effect on German ambitious elements. Some even said that he was the ghostwriter of Hitler’s writings. As a matter of fact people like Hitler would not be affected by any theory. He had his idea first and then found theory to support it. Unfortunately many scholars in the United States like Bowman indulged in this type of theory (Geopolitic School). They regarded themselves too highly and looked down upon politics. They explained politics using geography saying history was formed by geography. It is just a joke. I told Minister Assarson a joke in China. It goes that in the past a barber and fingernail barber competed. The barber said that if the emperor did not shave his head he was not like an emperor. The fingernail barber said if the emperor did not have his fingernails cut, the fingernail would be too long then he would be unable to walk. The geography expert thought history was formed by geography, which is the same as the barber and the fingernail barber. Minister Assarson laughted.
Hu talked with me for more than two hours.