Tuesday, 10 October

Dull

From 11.30 to 1.30 in the afternoon I studied Russian.

The draft of the international security organisation that was decided upon in Dumbarton Oaks has been announced by the Big Four simultaneously. The Soviet Union published an editorial in Izvestia today, saying with regard to matters which involved permanent members, the said member should still have voting powers. The reasons were as follows: 1) The principle that the Four Powers were in consensus should be maintained. 2) With regard to normal matters the decisions of the Four Powers should be in unity, and for crucial basic issues it was more important for the Four Powers to be in unity. 3) Prevent the problem of other powers joining together to force out a certain power. Of the three reasons listed, naturally the third one was the real reason because the Soviet Union still feared that Britain and the United States would join together against it. What made us most worried was the Soviet Union. Britain and the United States could not be completely frank and trust each other, and as a matter of fact what both sides did in the past few years meant they could not gain trust from each other. Probably the action of a country is like the behaviour of an individual. The status of the individual is determined by his past actions and how he treats others at the moment. If his past history is already bad and now he treats people the same, even though he shows a friendly attitude towards us, it will be unable to make me trust him. This is natural logic. The past behaviours of the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States have been really bad, now they bully those they can bully respectively, like Britain towards India, the Soviet Union towards Poland, and the United States towards countries in South America and the blacks in their own country, all devoid of good morality. The natural result is that they cannot trust each other. As for the Soviet side insisting that for a permanent member even itself as an aggressor this would not be sanctioned. This would arouse misunderstanding from world public opinion. Probably the Soviet Union feared this would happen from the Polish Incident experience. So when the Polish Incident happened I was deeply worried and feared that it would obstruct the sincere cooperation of the world. It is most unfortunate that it happened.

In the evening people in the Embassy had dinner together, but the Soviet Government refused to supply us with food. If the reason was scarcity in food, then in the past we talked to them with regard to a grand banquet and if they were willing to supply, now we only demanded a small amount of foodstuffs but they refused us. The Soviet Government’s way of managing things is messy which would never happen anywhere else in the world. But, since the Government is powerful so it can do anything it wishes. It only praises for power and is unworthy to learn.