Sunday, 16 July

Fine, sun

At 11.00 in the morning I went with the American Red Cross representative, Hubbell, and Shaozhou to the Hu’s Retinue villa. In the afternoon, Prof. And Mrs. Steinburg and the well known writer N. Tikhanov and his girlfriend visited us and we asked them to stay the night. Tikhanov was originally an imperial Russian noble, and during World War he had been in the cavalry. This time his whole family stayed in Leningrad during the siege.  Five of them including his mother, daughter and his younger sister died of starvation. He was from head to toe a writer as he depicted vividly the siege of the old capital and how his beloved cat died of starvation. Though he is very famous, and is the best known among modern Soviet writers (He was the Chair of the Union of Soviet Writers), he was honest and lovely, and did not have the bad habits of the literati. He can sleep on the balcony floor in the evening. According to Shaozhou, they are still a little bit suspicious of Britain and the United States, and are afraid they do not fully use up their strengths, and want Germany and the Soviet Union to exhaust their manpower and resources respectively. Then finally when Germany knows that it will be defeated, it will surrender to Britain and the United States. In this way Britain and the United States will occupy Berlin first. The British and American military advancement in Western Europe is so slow that no wonder the Soviet people have such suspicions. As a matter of fact, the fighting capability and sacrificial spirit of Britain and the United States are far inferior to those of the Red Army but for such shortcomings, the British and American Governments could hardly tell others. Tikhanov’s girlfriend was young and pretty and was also from Leningrad. Their relationship is close but they do not want to go public. It is a great pity.

The Red Army has recovered Grodno. It is only several tens of kilometres from East Prussia.