Sunday, 26 March

Heavy snow

Today the Red Army arrived at the East bank of the Prut River. The Soviets have been fighting for 33 months, and for the first time they have reached the border. No wonder the Soviet Government think it is something worth celebrating. From there they can attack Lasi, so the German army occupied the whole of Romania again yesterday. Romania will suffer the same as Hungary. If a small country wants to gain benefit it will face disaster in the end. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria are examples of this.

In the evening, Churchill made a broadcast. What he said was mostly on internal affairs, but some points are worthy of attention. 1) With regard to the war zone, Churchill said it could deduct 60 divisions of Italian armies and at the same time check 25 divisions of German armies. 2) In the South Pacific Britain recognised American leadership, which is the same as the United States recognising British leadership in India and Burma. As a matter of fact, the British loss is bigger than the United States, and now the advantage of jungle warfare has switched to our side, Japanese casualties have been much more than those of the Allied army, and the ratio is already 3 to 4.  1. The progress of the Chinese army under Stilwell has been quite good. He also said that not long before he had said that after defeating Hitler’s Germany, he would still need quite a lot of time before he would be able to defeat Japan. Now this period will be shorter than he predicted. 3) He praised Tito’s guerillas’ achievements.

In the evening, I invited Secretary Xie and his wife to the Grand Theatre to watch the opera “Backchisarai Fountain”. The main female character was M.G. Bololeobsakaya the dancer who was highly praised in Life magazine last year. Her dancing was quite good, but not particularly beautiful. L.K. Chekasoba who played the Queen was more beautiful, and her dancing was quite good. Both are rising stars. The setting and other things are quite good, and better than those at Ala-Mata. During the interval, I met the Greek Ambassador, and he said Churchill had mismanaged the Yugoslavian matter. He thought Churchill shouldn’t over-praise Tito and repress Mihailović too much, because the two of them are not the problem, it is actually a problem between Serbia and Croatia. Britain and the United States should maintain the Atlantic Charter and the so-called justice of war and shouldn’t only care about wartime essentials at the moment. Recently the Yugoslavian King Peter married the Greek Princess. No wonder he made this kind of comment. Britain was not unwilling to help the Yugoslavian Government, but what Mihailović did aroused dissatisfaction. As the Chinese saying goes, a person can help himself then the God will help him. People in the Yugoslavian Government did not come round and just hoped others would sacrifice for them. There is no such thing. Because of my position and circumstances, it was inappropriate for me to have any comment. I just nodded and said nothing.