Saturday, 25 December

At noon the Canadian Ambassador, Wilgress, visited me. He has just been upgraded as Ambassador. (Recently Canada raised its legation at the embassy to reciprocate with the Soviet Union, China and Brazil.) We talked for a long while. He is an understanding and straightforward person. What we talked about was as follows: 1) With regard to this visit of the Czechoslovakian President, Benes, Ambassador Wilgress thought it was quite successful. As for Benes wanting to be the mediator between the Soviet Union and Poland, he thought that his status was not as high as Eden’s, because the majority of the Polish Government didn’t know him very well. 2) He had also told Ambassador Wilgress that Britain and the United States should recognise De Gaulle’s organisation as the French Government. Because if this was not the case, the open-mined elements under the leadership of De Gaulle would be unable to obtain the full support of the Allies, and its anti-reactionary elements would rise up against De Gaulle. In the future France would have civil war, and this wouldn’t be fortunate for Europe. Ambassador Wilgress asked for my opinion. I said it seemed that Britain and the United States had difficulty because De Gaulle’s organisation was different from the exiled governments of the Netherlands and Belgium, which had no legal foundation. If Britain and the the United States disregards the law and suggests someone at random set up a certain government, it will be no different from the puppet governments set up by the Axis. Also in the future if people were unwilling for these people to be their leaders and rose up against them, I wonder if the Allies would use force to coerce people to accept a government they didn’t want to accept, which would be contrary to the Atlantic Charter. If Britain and the United States did likewise, and France became a new example, the Soviet Union could then dispatch someone to organise various governments in Eastern Europe. Then Britain and the United States would have to recognise them. For Britain and the United States this was so dangerous. As for De Gaulle, he now possesses an army with 500,000 people, in the future if he returned to France with the Allies, they were enough to maintain his status. If they still couldn’t maintain his status, it proved the French didn’t support him and the Allies couldn’t offer help again. All in all, under the current circumstances, it solely depended on what De Gaulle did. I thought he should make France cohesive, and put his military efforts towards the liberation of France. To strengthen one’s political standing, it depend solely on what one does, and there is no need to strive for right internally or externally. Ambassador Wilgress thought what I said was quite right. 2) With regard to the Swedish Minister, Ambassador Wilgress said it was a great pity. He thought the Soviet Union took revenge on Sweden which had sentenced the manger of the Soviet Interaid stationed in Sweden to 15 years imprisonment. This was the Swedish Government’s biggest mistake, but it was not Minister Assarson’s fault. As for Finland, Ambassador Wilgress also thought that Finland should send people to the Soviet Union to ask for immediate peace, and Sweden should join the Allies fighting as soon as possible because Sweden is in a fairly good position. If it could join now it might shorten the war. So he had urged Minister Assarson to strive hard on these two matters on returning to Sweden, and keep silent about his personal matter. I said I had also urged Minister Assarson to do the same.

At 3.00 p.m. American Ambassador Harriman invited me to afternoon tea and met with Lieutenant-general William J. Donovan. President Roosevelt dispatched Donovan as his private representative to Chongqing and Moscow. He had just come from Chongqing. According to him: 1) He had met the Generalissimo, President Kung, Minister He Yingqin and Dai Li (戴笠)[1] and others. He discussed intelligence towards Japan and cooperative matters with them, and he asked me to cooperate with Ambassador Harriman here. 2) He had been to Burma. He said that the Burmese North route was open. Land forces could invade Burma via this. Two divisions of our expedition army have entered Burmese territory, but still haven’t fought the enemy. The provisions in India are in difficulty. 3) The Thai Minister in the United States said Thailand was afraid that China had ambition towards it. I explained the Sino-Thai relations to him in detail.

Ambassador Harriman asked me about the transportaion via the Soviet Union matter. I told him what actually happened. He also said that when he talked to Minister Mikoyan about this, he also said it was a problem which was difficult to solve. What he referred to was related to Japan politically. This was exactly the same impression I received.

The Military Attaché of a certain neutral state talked to the Vice Military Attaché of Japan here, saying he wanted to visit Japan after the war. The Vice Military Attaché of Japan said he was afraid after the war there would be no Japan. So one can glean how pessimistic the Japanese are.

[1] Da Li (1897-1946) was a close associate of Chiang Kai-shek. He was in charge of the KMT intelligence service.