Wednesday, 1 September

Second day of the eighth lunar month, Kuiwei year

This morning the British broadcast what seemed to be a reply to the Soviet Union. The main content was as follows.

1) Churchill’s speech yesterday was purely towards European politics because some people said as follows. a) The Soviet Union could make peace with Germany unilaterally. This is an insult to the Soviet Union. It should not be believed. b) People criticised Churchill for not meeting with Stalin, therefore Churchill had to explain. As a matter of fact, Churchill really wanted to meet, but because the diplomatic organisations of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union are not sound enough, the meeting didn’t materialise. As for Britain, the Foreign Office should have long ago reorganised to cope with the needs of war, but due to many political reasons, the reform was not able to be carried out. This kind of diplomatic tactic has many shortcomings, but the main direction of government policy does not change at all. As to the opening of the second war zone Churchill said in the declaration it should be for military convenience, we should not waste people and resources because of political reasons. We totally agreed with this policy. There is rumour that important people in the United States support reactionary governments in order to oppose the Soviet Union. There is no such thing. The Soviet Union has claimed that their army casualties are higher than Britain, and the territory being occupied by Germans is more than Britain, therefore their merit in this war is bigger. We can not calculate in this way. Many British territories are also occupied by Japan, and although the casualties are not as high as the Soviet Union’s, in North Africa the Axis countries’ casualties are over 500,000. And in the war in Sicily, the Axis army also had 400,000 and we also bombed the German headquartera. The effect of the bombing of the German headquarters was even more than a given army group could apply to the enemies. This is a scientific war and one can not merely count how many people or how big an area. I heard the whole broadcast. All were responses to the Soviet criticisms one by one. The Soviet Union has seemed harsh towards Britain and the United States recently, therefore Britain and the United States made these strong answers. The Soviet Union still needed to cooperate with Britain and the United States, if something was against their wish, the Soviet Union would stand firm, and this makes cooperation difficult and arouses hard feelings. It is really not necessary. I used to read Zuozhuan and Zhuangzi and others, feeling that a leader of a country should stay humble even if he scored a victory and then he would be successful. It is a pity the leaders of the world do not seem to understand this type of reasoning.

In the evening, the American Ambassador, Admiral Standley, invited us to a cocktail party, saying that he originally wanted to go back to the United States for a visit, but recently the situation hadn’t permitted him to do so. He also said he heard that yesterday at the border of the Manchurian puppet state there was a conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union. The Soviet casualties numbered several hundred. In Vladivostok, there is a curfew. He asked me if I had heard anything about it. I said I still had not yet received any report. He also said that Eden might not come to the Soviet Union.