Monday, 28 August

Light rain

Yesterday I received a telegram from Vice-President H.H. Kung, saying that Donald Nelson and General Patrick Hurley will come to China via Moscow and he asked me to receive them. Now the American Embassy says that they will probably arrive the day after tomorrow, so now I shall start preparations.

The day before yesterday Counsellor Liu went to see Secretary Litvinov of the Soviet Foreign Office. He said that we could not totally fulfil the contract as we used materials to settle the debt and expressed the discontent of the Soviet Government. With regard to repaying the debts, it is worth paying attention as the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs mentioned it first. Probably it is because of the problem in Xinjiang province. They think that our Central Government is biased towards Sheng Shicai, so they took the opportunity to express discontent, and Litvinov also mentioned several cases of discontent with regard to Xinjiang province. The Xinjiang authority did not put it first. It is really bad.

Shang Zhen sent a telegram to Military Attaché Guo, saying that upon his arrival in the United States he did not talk to any American reporters, and with regard to the Soviet-Japanese Incident he also hasn’t made any comment. He asked Military Attaché Guo to explain to me. I asked Shaozhou to relay this to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Attaché Liu Zhengyu received a telegram from Officer Chen, asking him to return to the Foreign Ministry to become Section Chief. He came to me for guidance. I told him he did not have a good future here, so I agreed that he could return to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also advised him that on his return to the Foreign Ministry he should try to work harder on his studies, so if there was the opportunity he could be transferred to other sections and his future would be glorious. He was very grateful. He immediately cabled his reply to Officer Chen.