Tuesday, 26 October

At 7.00 p.m. I went to see Secretary of State Cordell Hull again. He was full of smiles, saying that the Big Four Declaration has already been passed in the conference. The revisions were as follows.

1. Art 1. Add “against their respective enemies” after “prosecuting the war”.
2. Art 2. Delete the last phrase, viz “and to any occupation of enemy territory & of territory of other states held by that enemy—reason—may not be possible to carry out, as it may be necessary to occupy enemy territory in the process of war while to act together may not be practicable.”
3. Use “Terms” instead of “requirements” in Art.3 to give it a wider scope & use “the enemy” instead of “their present enemies”.
4. Art 4. Instead of “of all nations” use “of all peace-loving states”& instead of “by all nations” use “by such states”—Reason—to exclude Germany, Japan & other such like aggressive states.
5. The last part of the sentence reads “a system of general security they will consult with one another & as occasion requires with other members of the United Nations with a view to joint action on behalf of the community of nations” instead of “of a general system of security they will consult & act jointly on behalf of the community of nations” reason—so as to avoid the fear of the small states that the 4 nations will decide in everything without this having a chance to participate on matters even relating to them.

Art 6, The whole article regarded as unnecessary & so deleted. It reads that : in connection with the foregoing purpose they will establish a technical commission to advise them on the military problem involved, including the composition & strength if the forces available in an emergency arising from a threat to the peace.”

Naturally such a commission can easily be set up even without this article. On the other hand, if provision is made only for this commission the question of other commissions will come up & also the problem of the composition will have to be discussed. So it is better to omit the Art. now.

Art.7, The wording of this article entirely changed to the following “That they will confer & cooperate with one another and with other members of the United Nations to bring about a practicable general agreement with respect to the regulation of armaments in the post war period.” The original draft read, “That they will cooperate with each other in bringing about a practicable lightening of the burden of armaments for themselves & for the world.”

Reason same as Art.5.

Art.8. Now new Art.6 The first phrase reads, “That after the termination of hostilities they will…”and delete the two words “and agreement” at end of article.

The revisions were unimportant, so all agreed. However, whether or not China should be admitted to sign was one of the most difficult problems. As this conference was a conference of three countries, if China was added, then it would be contrary to the original idea of opening the conference. So the Soviet Union tried it best to advocate that only Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union could sign. Hull fought hard to get China to sign as well, and the process was difficult. Also someone asked who would sign to represent China, so he tried his best to propose that I could sign on behalf of China, on the condition that I was given plenipotentiary powers by my Government. The conference will end within this week, so if my plenipotentiary can not be conferred to me before Friday, China will be unable to sign on Friday or Saturday, then even though he fought hard it would be of no avail, and it would be signed by the three states. He advised me to cable Chongqing immediately. In fear that something wrong would happen, he advised me to send a telegram via Washington, and he also sent a telegram to the American Ambassador to Chongqing, asking him to contact our Government. I then dashed back to the Embassy and sent the telegrams to the Generalissimo and Minister Song accordingly.

In the evening, Military Attaché Guo just happened to invite Admiral Duncan, Commander Allen and others to dinner at the Embassy. After dinner I prepared telegrams and so on, and retired to bed at 3.00 a.m. Counsellors Liu and Chen and Retinue Liu all worked extremely hard.