Wednesday, 14 April

At noon, Counsellor Doorman of the American Embassy came to say goodbye. He told me about the rebuttal article of Lin Yutang (林語堂)[1] towards American scholars advocating the unity of Britain and the United States to counter other countries.  Doorman didn’t think Lin Yutang was doing the right thing. He thought that Americans thought that this kind of negative opinion was alright and even beneficial. But if a foreigner tried to give their opinion, this didn’t appear to be appropriate to Americans.

At 5.30 in the afternoon, the Norwegian Ambassador visited me. He said as follows. 1) Today he went to see the Deputy People’s Commissar Lozovsky and asked him about the Soviet’s long speech with regard to the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact last year. This year marked the two-year anniversary of the pact but there was none. He asked Lozovsky if this meant the relationship between the Japanese and Soviet Union wasn’t as friendly as before? He thought about it for a long time, and then said that no remark meant no change. 2) A certain secretary of the Japanese Embassy said that the Japanese Government instructed Satō to make a suggestion to the Soviet Union, strengthening the neutrality pact. Satō replied by telegram, saying he didn’t advocate doing so, as this would make the Soviet Union think Japan feared her. He asked me for my opinion about a possible Japanese attack on the Soviet Union.  I told him that it might be possible and the reasons. He was quite interested to learn about them.

[1] Lin Yutang (1895-1976) had studied at Harvard and Leipzig Universities. He was a renowned scholar of English as well as an essayist.