Thursday, 17 June

The Cuban Counsellor Raoul Herrera-Arango visited me. His Minister, A. Concheso was their American Ambassador concurrently the Minister to the Soviet Union. It was because the Soviet Union dispatched its Ambassador to America, Litvinov, and he is concurrently Minister to Cuba. So Cuba dispatched its Ambassador to America to concurrently hold the post of Minister to the Soviet Union. It was easy for the Ambassador to America to concurrently act as the Cuban Minister because they were not too far away. But for the Ambassador to America taking care of affairs of the Soviet Union, it was a big joke within the diplomatic circle. Probably the small countries were worried that people would look down on them. Because the Soviet Union did not appoint an Ambassador to Cuba, Cuba took revenge and did the same to the Soviet Union. When one deals with small countries one should be very careful, but the Soviet Union still doesn’t understand the way of doing things. If one country doesn’t exchange diplomatic envoys, it is perfectly okay. But in case one country needs to exchange diplomatic envoys and sign treaties with other countries, in order to show sincerity it should dispatch the right person to take care of diplomacy, otherwise it would be better not to do anything. Now the friendship between the Soviet Union and Cuba not only doesn’t look so good after exchanging envoys, but also because of his bad arrangement it has become even worse. It is simply useless.

I know nobody will go back to China for the coming 6 months, so I have tried to use airmail to send a letter to Fanny for the first time.