Tuesday, 1 August

Thirteenth day of the sixth lunar month, Jiashen year

Rain

At 11.00 a.m. I returned my visit to the British naval representative Admiral Archer, and again we talked about the war situation in Europe. He told me the Burmese war was fine.

At 5.30 I returned my visit to the Swedish Minister. He told me that when he visited Satō he did not dare talk for long, and he left after a few minutes because firstly he was afraid that the Soviet side might be suspicious and secondly he himself had a very bad impression of the Japanese. This is because when Germany conquered Norway, the Japanese side thought that Sweden would certainly be occupied, so it recalled the Japanese Minister to Sweden and transferred him to Berlin to help the Ambassador to Germany. On leaving Sweden the Japanese Minister had proclaimed that in the future matters relating to Japan and Sweden should be settled in Berlin. The Swedish Government was quite angry about this and asked its Minister to Japan to file a protest to the Japanese Government. The Japanese Government left the matter unattended and did not dispatch a new official to Sweden. But when the war situation changed, and Germany had no hope of winning, only then did Japan send a new Minister to Sweden. The new Japanese Minister also proclaimed that he himself did not think Japanese aggression was bad. As a matter of fact this move by the Japanese only serves to make people look down upon them.

The Afghanistan Ambassador invited us to a banquet. The Yugoslavian Ambassador said that in London, the Prime Minister of the Polish exile government, Mikolajczyk, Foreign Minister Romer, and the Chief of Parliament arrived in Moscow last night, and they will go to Kohm to negotiate with the Polish Committee of National Liberation. The Czechoslovakian Ambassador thought their visit to Moscow was too late and that there is not much hope. The Canadian Military Attaché General Lefebvre said that he had a bet at the rate of 1:15 with the Reuters’ representative Harold King that the European war will end this year, because Harold King thought that the war would not end even by next year. Probably the British look down on the Soviet strength too much, especially the reporters. Probably the British only know their own strength, and if they are to depend only on their own strength, even three years will not be enough to end the war.