Saturday, 27 March

Twenty-second day of the second lunar month

At noon the Yugoslavian Ambassador Stanoje S. Simic visited me. According to him, the Yugoslavian population is just only a little over 7 million. In this war, the death toll has been over one and a half million. Germany is putting a lot of pressure on Yugoslavia, and people resisting will be killed. Many lose their lives over this every month. If the second war zone is not opened in the next few months, the death toll will be on the rise, and he is also afraid that the spirit to resist Germany will be extinguished and people will be disappointed. They might even reach a compromise with Germany and this would greatly affect the future.

At 1.45, we went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see the Secretary of the Far East section, N.M. Lifanov. All the foreign Ambassadors have to go and see the Director. It was begun by the Soviet Union. But they never return the visits, which is bad etiquette in international relations, but this is the Soviet way of doing things, so we can only obey. This arrogant attitude makes people feel very unhappy and it is of no good to Soviet Union. This is in any way a bad policy.

At 5.00 p.m. I returned the visit of the Australian Minister W.Slater. From 6.00 to 8.00 I went to the Yugoslavian Embassy to celebrate the second anniversary of their National Day. The Norwegian military attaché told me that Vice Minister L [refer to original] and the Soviet General [refer to original] said that North Finland should belong to Russia. If Finland wanted to use the American force to fight the Soviet Union, it would be to no avail, because the United States was unable to oppress the Soviet Union.