Wednesday, 17 November

Chairman Lin’s state funeral was held in Chongqing.  The ceremony was simple.  Here we only informed the Soviet Government and also lowered our flag at the Embassy. We did not have any other ceremony. Last night the Turkish broadcast said Romania already showed signs of unrest. People wanted to escape to neutral countries. The government and people of Hungary expressed their wish to be neutral.  The Finnish Government heard that the Germans wanted to retreat their army from Finland and had already asked Germany about this. Based on all this, it proves that the vassal states of the Axis are centrifugal, and collapse is very likely.

Today, all the cinemas here showed documentaries about the Moscow Conference.  Counsellor Liu went to see them and said the documentary that showed me signing the Four Powers Declaration was quite good.

At noon, the Greek Ambassador Politis visited me and he said he came especially to congratulate me on the success of the Four Powers Declaration.  He said he should have come earlier, but his car was being repaired so he could not come. The repairing finished today and so he came immediately. I felt very honoured at his words. He said as follows.1) The Diplomatic Corps are extremely satisfied with Litvinov’s. As this is evidence big countries can open up all the details of the conference to all the Allied countries.This kind of frankness and openness was unprecedented in previous conferences. From this one can see the Soviet attitude and it made the Balkan states feel safe. 2) China became one of the Four Powers to maintain post-war peace. For small countries which love peace, they felt satisfactory, and Greece was particularly delighted. 3) People of the French Committee didn’t realise their status, and regretted they couldn’t join the European committee. But as a matter of fact, after France surrendered to Germany, the said committee didn’t represent many people in France, and its contribution and sacrifice to the war has been less than Greece. It is meaningless that it still assumes itself a first-class country as before the war. For their own good, they should really try to work harder and do their best to help fighting for the Allies, and rekindle their national spirit, then first-class country status can be resumed. It can not be attained through the struggle of two or three French. His opinion is quite reasonable. 4) Turkey and Greece have entered a defence pact. This time Turkey was against the pact and didn’t act, not only Britain and the Soviet Union were dissatisfied, Greece also felt very unhappy. If Turkey doesn’t join the war now, then when the Soviet Union asks Turkey to co-rule the Dardanelles Channel in the future, Britain and the United States will be sympathetic. The loss of Turkey will be substantial.

Generalissimo Chiang sent a telegram to Chairman Kalinin to congratulate him on the Soviet Union National Day on 6 November. But I only received it today. There must be something wrong. So I sent a telegram back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for thorough investigation. The telegram was immediately transferred. I then asked Counsellor Liu to explain this to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also asked him to find out why the telegram was delayed.

Committee Member Hu Shijie reported to me that he suddenly received a phone call from a Russian whom he didn’t know, who asked him to go to room 206 of the hotel for a talk. He first asked the person in charge, and he was informed that it was the manager’s room. He thought it must be a mistake. Then he received a phone call from the manager, saying that someone invited him to have a talk, and he then went to the room. On arrival, a certain Russian was there who called himself Barkov. He said he originally worked in Khabarovsk and went to Moscow for official matters. He had a Chinese friend called Liu Renshou (劉仁壽). Liu Renshou always mentioned the name of Hu Sjijie, and he saw Hu’s name in the hotel guestbook, so asked him for a talk. He said that the last time he saw Liu Renshou was two years ago. Hu was then very suspicious about his words.1) Liu studied in the first class of Zhongshan University[1], and was Hu’s classmate but in the second class, students wouldn’t call each other by their real names, so it was not possible that Liu had told him the name of Hu Shijie. 2) Liu was imprisoned, and was sentenced to hard labour for several years. After the War of Resistance began he was released, and he went back to China immediately and lived in Shanghai. His family was quite well-off, and he was originally not in good health. After several years of hard labour, his health had deteriorated further, so it was impossible for him to leave his home. Now more than six years has passed, so when he said he met with Liu two years ago he was lying. But Hu felt that since he was there he might as well have a chat. Barkov said he worried most about China because the country was not united and still breaking up. He actually referred to a matter relating to the CCP. Hu said that this disunity was a trivial matter, and wouldn’t pose any harm to the overall situation. In the past, the Soviet Union also had this situation. Hu studied this matter with me, we assumed this was done by the Soviet Internal Ministry, and it seemed that they wanted to find out the Government’s attitude towards the CCP. If this is the case then it is not quite what as Mr. Litvinov said. Can I assume there is a difference between the Internal Ministry and its policy?

[1] In Moscow.