Wednesday, 18 October

At noon the Italian representative, Pietro Quaroni, visited me. We talked for two hours. He said as follows: (A) With regard to Italy, 1) the political power still rested on the Democratic Christians’ Party, and there was no tendency towards the Left. Probably it was because firstly talians were more religious, and secondly the Left wing element felt the crisis of their own country so they had to unite to save the country, and thirdly the Italian Communist Party leader stayed in the Soviet Union for l7 years. Quaroni was very friendly with him and knew that he was very unhappy with the Soviet political system and absolutely had no intention of introducing this kind of system to his own country. Therefore, recently the Italian Communist Party has changed its name to the Italian National Communist Party. From this one can see his attitude. As for the Liberal Party, people like Sforza also felt that they must unite. Therefore the coalition of the six political parties will become a fact. 2) The Italian Fascists are different from the Nazis of Germany. Mussolini never dared to adopt a highly repressive policy and there was no concentration camp in Italy. The political prisoners who were shot until now number less than ten. Though there is censorship in the newspapers, Italians are talkative. Quaroni said “You can stop an Italian to do anything except to talk”, so there is still freedom of speech. 3) The economic situation is in difficulty. Though there was a good harvest this year, there were no transportation tools, therefore two months after the arrival of Allied troops in Rome, the lives of people were worse than during the German occupation. Therefore the British and American authorities felt this was a very dangerous situation, and when Churchill went to Italy to see the situation he decided to do his best to change it. First the Americans would send more than 2,000 trucks and trains to Italy and also cancel the severe restriction on its currency. Probably, the overall situation will improve soon. 4) With regard to the issue of dividing Sicily, when the Allied troops landed on that island, because Italy was still at war, they raised this movement as a political tool. But after the truce with Italy the Allies side found that this movement was in difficulty as it was impossible to stop this movement immediately so as to embarass the puppets. The puppets were too young and inexperienced and could not command much support. Recently in the local Sicilian election, the Democratic Christian Party got 82%, and now the Allied side should try to end the movement. 5) On the Italian side, they know that after surrender they will suffer a certain amount of losses. So during the Peace Conference, if the Allies were to take Italy’s colonies, there will not be much Italy could say. But, if the Allies want to take the Italy Proper, then he was afraid that this would not be acceptable to the Italians. Why he said this was feared was that the demand from Yugoslavia was too big because according to the present situation, both Britain and the Soviet Union seemed to be trying to do their best to please Tito and they wanted to give something to him. In this case Italy could well be used as a sacrifice. 6) Italy has promised the British and American sides that when the war is over, the whole Italian navy will not only join the war against Japan but also send several hundred thousand troops to fight in the Far East, because after the war there must be many unemployed people, and Allied Army armaments are more than enough. B) With regard to the Polish issue, he talked to the Polish Foreign Minister Romer as a close friend for three hours. What he learnt was as follows: 1) There was no result following negotiation. The Soviet side definitely did not give way. Romer told Quaroni that when he talked to Stalin regarding the border problem, Romer expressed his hope that Lwow could be given to Poland. But Stalin’s face changed colour suddenly and he refused sternly. Therefore Mikolajczyk and Romer and others will be back in London in the coming few days. Probably they will return to Moscow for negotiations after three weeks. The difficulties of Mikolajczyk and Romer are that on the one hand the Soviet Union absolutely did not give way, and on the other hand the Polish leaders fought with the Allies in Italy and France is extremely anti-Soviet. With both sides going to extremes in this situation, one can only imagine how difficult they were. What could be quite relieving is that with regard to border and various policies of internal reform, leaders of the Polish Committee of National Liberation were the same as him. On this issue representative Quaroni can verify, because when he talked to the Chairman and others of the Polish Committee of National Liberation they were greatly discontented with the Soviet decision with regard to the territory issue. 2) The Soviet side has already proposed that part of Konigsberg in East Prussia should be allocated to the oviet Union, but he allowed that the area around the Oder River which was within the Germany Proper to allocate to Poland, which included Stettin city. (Exactly what I had expected.) Representative Quaroni said in his personal opinion that Poles had no way of coping with the Germans in that area, because if we implemented according to the Soviet plan, there would be more than 4 million Poles moving back to Poland from the Soviet Union, and would have more than ten million Germans moving out of the Polish borders. Whether this type of massive migration was possible, and whether Germans leading their lives in Germany until the German territories were diminished and Germany still having a population of 80 million, and whether future peace would be affected, he was unable to say. C) Representative Quaroni was still worried whether the Soviet Union and United States could fully cooperate and whether both sides would have too many conflicts. D) Quaroni also told me that this time after Germany occupied South Russia, many people in the Crimea were friendly towards the enemy. Even the Chairman of the Autonomous Soviet areas joined the enemy. When the Germans occupied that area, they cancelled the collective farms and revived the system of private land ownership. People welcomed this very much. When the Red Army recovered that area, they forced people back to the collective system, and the people naturally were discontented. Therefore the Soviet Government had to move many of its residents to the Siberian border area. Because of this he was extremely suspicious about the results of any migration policy imposed on Germany by the Soviet Government.

Hu Shijie said that recently the Soviet Union had issued a new stamp which used the name of Lazo. In the civil war of 1921 Lazo was the guerrilla leader in Siberia. He was captured by the Japanese army and they tied him to a train and set fire to it to kill him. Therefore the Soviet Union used this as the biggest tool to publicise the atrocities of the Japanese army. Now the Soviet Union has suddenly issued this stamp, which is for internal mail with a face value of 30 kopeck. It seems to be an indication of propagating antagonism towards Japan. It is worthwhile paying attention to it.

This afternoon I sent Shaozhou to apply to the French representative Garreau for visas for the Vice Military Attachés Shi and Zhou. They talked about other things as well. He told Shaozhou as follows: 1) Zhang Fakui was training the Vietnamese Revolutionary Party in Guilin, originally he was in no position to disagree. But there were still several tens of French soldiers and Vietnamese armies in Vietnam which were waiting for the chance to fight together with the Japanese. At the moment the British and American war plan seemed to have the possibility of landing in Vietnam, because there were not many Japanese troops there, and the Vietnamese hated the Japanese very much, and there were now several tens of thousands of troops there for support. So at this time there was no need to make Japan suspicious of the Vietnamese army which the Japanese would try to get rid of. With regard to this matter the French representative in Chongqing has already informed our Government, Garreau just wanted to let me know. 2) The most difficult part of Churchill’s journey to Moscow was the Polish issue. He heard that the Soviet side suggested Pommerania be given to Poland, and Stettin also included. 3) The Regent of Hungary has dispatched his son to Moscow to ask for peace. But after his son arrived in Moscow, he himself had already been forced to resign, thus nothing was discussed.

Attaché Hu reported that Churchill received British and American reporters today.  He said that the Polish matter was making good progress, and would soon be settled.

Vice Consul Sun Shijia and the Assistant Consul Zhang Lingwen brought their families to go to (place unknown) and Vladivostok via here. Secretary Yan Shurei and Attaché Liu Zhengyu were instructed to be transferred back to the Foreign Ministry, and Vice Military Attachés Shi and Zhou would leave here soon, therefore I gave them a farewell dinner tonight in the Embassy.