Tuesday, 7 November

Dull

British and American broadcasts paid great attention to Stalin’s reference to Japan as an aggressive country in his speech.

Yesterday the British representative in the near East, Lord Moyne, was assassinated in Cairo. The two assassins have been arrested. Probably it was because of the conflict of rights between the Arabs and the Jews. Britain would be in increasing difficult maintaining its colossal empire. During wartime Churchill has been a good leader, but I am afraid that he absolutely doesn’t understand the change in the world and Britain needs to amend its past policy. It is a great pity.

At 6.00 p.m. Molotov received foreign guests in the guest hostel. As routine the Soviet Union would invite the embassy staff but this year it only invited First-Class Secretary or above, as well as their families. At this time the Soviet Union scored many victories but it reduced the scale. What Soviet government did puzzled me. Mrs.Maisky introduced me to the wife of the Vice Chairman Shvernik. The old lady was very friendly, as she could not speak English, I had no choice but to speak to her in my limited Russian. She smiled and said that I could count this as another Russian lesson. It just happened that the Norwegian Foreign Minister Trygve Lie arrived here at 4.00 this afternoon so he came to the party as well. His counsellor introduced me to him and he said he would visit me soon. I also talked to Ambassador Panyushkin. I urged him to return to his post earlier, because recently global political changes have been enormous and Sino-Soviet relations will be influenced by them. I could do nothing in this regard because this type of matter should be handled direct by the leaders of both sides. I certainly could represent Generalissimo Chiang, but here I had no way to be directly in contact with Mr.Stalin. He could represent Mr. Stalin, and he could have the chance to be directly in touch with Generalissimo Chiang. He showed sympathy towards the difficulty of my job here, and said I should talk more with Deputy Foreign Minister Lozovsky as Lozovsky was very nice and treated me quite well. I replied that for a meeting both sides should have conversations and a certain level of friendship, then we could speak frankly. Other than official business, we could talk about whatever we wanted, only in this way it could lead to good results. For example when he (Panyushkin) was in Chongqing, even though he had no official matter, he could drop in at my place to talk. He agreed with what I said. He told me that whether he would resume his post in Chongqing his personal health was the only consideration. There was no other reason. I also told him that the Chinese Government strived so hard to replace the xinjiang Chairman which was absolutely a gesture of Chinese friendliness towards the Soviet Union. It was also a friendly gesture that Minister Song wanted to visit the Soviet Union, but until now I still had received no reply. It was really a great pity. He said that probably the authority was still considering, and there might be a satisfactory answer soon. Based on what he said he would return to his post in Chongqing soon. Tonight was the first time I wore my tuxedo with my medal. It was not very comfortable. Canadian Minister Wilgress asked me the grades of my medal. I told him it was First Class Order of Brilliant Star, which is quite a big honour. On New Year’s Day this year, the Chinese Government announced that it would bestow this medal on me but I absolutely did not know it. I only learnt about it in May when the Chinese newspapers were brought here. I only received it recently. To me I have never paid any attention to medals.

Yesterday American Ambassador Harriman said in the broadcast that at the Tehran Conference Stalin proposed that the Allied Army would invade from Northern Europe while Churchill proposed the Mediterranean. Only Roosevelt insisted that it should not affect the landing in France. In the end all three people reached agreement.