Saturday, 31 October

To Sartrouville with Kitty, Ken, and Qian, in the afternoon and signed a contract with Colonel Robert A. Ellis to loan our house to him for one and a half years.

Professor and Mrs. Chen Yuan arrived from Spain. He is staying with us while Mrs. Chen is to be the guest of Wang Junbi. They had supper with us.

An article appeared in this evening’s Le Monde about Japan. It is very interesting. The substance is as follows:

Important meetings are going to take place soon between Japan and the United States in Washington.  Japan is to be represented by Ikeda Hayato (池田勇人)[1] and the United States by Walter S. Robertson. The United States would press the Japanese government to accelerate her rearmament and bring up her ground forces to 300-350 thousand men. Tokyo would reply that in the first place the constitution imposed on her by General MacArthur in 1945 forbids her to maintain an armed force, and secondly, she has great financial difficulties. Ikeda would try to convince Robertson of the necessity of increasing substantially American aid to Japan before the latter can give any assurance of concentrating on rearmament as the United States wishes. So far, economic aid to Japan has been very low—only fifty million dollars in the form of raising production in agricultural products. Ikeda would let the United States know that Japan can only envisage an armed force of 160 thousand men, i.e. less than half of what the United States demands. Tokyo wants to rebuild her air force with 500-600 aircraft but the United States would not hear of it. In Asia, the United States, like Europe, adopts the policy of reducing the role of her allies to that of furnishing only an infantry while reserving to herself the modern technical arms. It is interesting to state that Japanese aircraft would meet, as in Germany, series difficulties. It is not surprising to see that the communists seize this occasion to hold out their hands to Japan. A peace offensive is taking shape from Beijing and being directed towards Tokyo. A private commercial agreement is going to be signed with a Japanese parliamentary delegation. At that occasion, Guo Moruo offers to Japan the signing of a non-aggression pact and the Peoples’ Daily proposes the resumption of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries. Washington tries to minimize the importance of these repeated gestures, but they will impress Japanese opinion and develop there the neutral tendencies already relatively strong. It is a very interesting article and conforms with what I had learnt.

[1] Ikeda Hayato(1899-1965) was a Japanese politician.