Thursday, 23 November

Fine, sun

I studied Russian from 10.30 until 1.30. Teacher Mashina told me that when she came this morning she thought that it would be not easy to teach for three hours non-stop. She just tried it as an experiment. However, it was totally beyond her expectation that I could learnt for three hours unceasingly. I am about fifty years old and I have such spirit to learn. I was very relieved.

In the evening the Netherlands Ambassador invited us to a cocktail party. The editorial of The Times the day before yesterday was against the dividing of German territory. It advocated after the powers occupiy Germany for a certain period of time, they should maintain their military strongholds in Germany for ever so as to prevent Germany hatching an invasion attempt. In other words, Britain is formally against the Soviet proposal that the German territory which Poland would possess reaching Oder river, and France, Belgium, Netherlands would occupy to the west of German territory reaching Rhine River. The Soviet People paid exceptional attention to the arrangement deeming that Britain still insisted in maintaining a strong and intact Germany in order to use it as a defence against the Soviet Union, and still wanted to revive its policy of equilibrium in Europe. Charles de Gaulle made a report in the European Advisory Commission, and he said that France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway had no other choice but to unite with Britain, but this union should cooperate with the group of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Certainly we cannot blame these policies of principle, but how the leaders of both sides manipulate and act matters most. De Gaulle is scheduled to come to Moscow next week, then the meetings of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill would be after the arrival of De Gaulle.

Miliary Attaché Guo said he heard that there has been a huge reshuffle of senior military officers. He thinks that the Generalissimo’s reforms this time will be quite thorough.

Today Teacher Mashina said in Russia, the Russian custom of serving guestsias to try one’s best to boast how good the food is that he has made, because it would be very impolite to serve guests with foods which one thought to be below par. This is different from the custom of our country.