Wednesday, 17 September

In the evening, I listened on the radio to Generalissimo Chiang’s National broadcast on 918. The most important theme was to declare that we would absolutely not abandon the four northeast provinces. If enemy armies still remained in our territory, and before the territorial integrity and administration were completely discovered, we would not cease the resistance. The wording of this speech was really good. This was because externally speaking it could show that we would make no accommodating concessions to the enemy, and that even returning to the situation before the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was also unacceptable to us. Internally speaking, it would expel recent gossip circulating widely outside that we would partake in peace negotiations.