Sunday, 30 January

[Refer to original for letter which Fu Bingchang wrote here as a joke].

At 6.00 p.m. the Australian Minister, Jim Maloney, invited the Diplomatic Corps for refreshments and to bid farewell to Counsellor Officer.

At 8.00 p.m. I went to the American Embassy to attend Ambassador Harriman’s banquet celebrating President Roosevelt’s birthday. Ambassador Kerr just happened to return to Moscow today from Britain, and he also joined in. As there were too many people I was unable to talk to him. According to Laurence, the reporter from the New York Times, he will leave Moscow for Britain soon, and is ready to land with the first batch of the Allied army attacking Europe. This kind of spirit from the American reporter is worth respecting. From this one can see that the second war zone will soon be opened. I talked to American writer Maurice Hindus and Canadian reporter Davis, with regard to cooperation between the Allied countries and the Soviet Union, and the post-war European and Asian situation, and they were quite pessimistic. They said that they were quite suspicious over whether the Soviet Union will cooperate sincerely with Britain and the United States and its various Asian policies (Such as whether the Soviet Union will join the resistance against Japan, whether it has ambition towards small countries near it, whether it has its own bad intentions towards China, especially Manchuria, Mongolia and Xinjiang, and so on, as well as its policies towards the Asian people and so-called possessions.). They also asked for my opinion about the prospects for Asia. I said we shouldn’t be so pessimistic. What we call cooperation cannot depend on one side. When we talked about the Asian people, I wonder if the United States and Canada will be ready to use the blood of the Americans and Canadians to maintain the extreme imperialism of the British and Dutch in the Far East, and to enslave the majority of coloured people under a white minority. In other words, what Germany is attempting in Europe has been deemed by Americans and Canadians as a great evil. They are willing to sacrifice their lives to vanquish it. But in Asia, what the British and Dutch did was much worse than what the Germans did but they just thought that the system was fine and would not accept any change, and they were willing to use their blood to maintain the status quo. If they do not rectify this contradictory concept, then the prospect will be bleak. I also told them a little bit about the injustice shown towards the indigenous people of Dutch Indonesia and Malaya, and how harshly the Chinese were treated by whites. They were quite moved. Probably both of them are quite progressive.

Hitler broadcast yesterday but he mentioned absolutely nothing about what is happening about the war. The whole speech just said that if it were not for Germany’s efforts the red disaster would not be stopped. He then said a great deal about the political achievements of the National Democratic Party. It was clear that he reckoned that there was no hope of victory. It was also obvious those who have recently become dissatisfied with the National Democratic Party must be quite numerous.