Thursday, 7 September

Fine

At 11.00 a.m. the newly-appointed Luxembourg minister to the Soviet Union, René Blum, visited me. He said he knew Gu Weijun very well and he seemed to be an honest person. Previously he was the Luxembourg Minister for Justice.

I studied Russian from 11.30 until 1.15.

At 1.30 the Swedish Minister invited us for luncheon. However, suddenly he received a phone call saying that the Finnish representative group would be arriving at about 2.00 and he should go there to meet them immediately. After having lunch I was about to leave when he was back. He told me that the Finnish representative group had over 30 people here, and there were 16 airplanes and convoy planes. Surely there will be some substantial results now.

At 5.30, the representative of Life and Time, Lauterback, and the representative of Columbia, B.C. Nichols, invited me for afternoon tea and introduced me to John Hersay and White. They will replace them and Lauterback and Nichols will leave Moscow soon.