Wednesday, 20 August

At 7.30 a.m. I arrived at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gu Weijun cabled to report his meeting with the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The Prime Minister also agreed that Britain, the United States, the Dutch Indies and others are united to be against Japan, and he said that this is also New Zealand’s intention. However, the United States thought its naval strength in the Pacific did not exceed Japan’s, so this was quite prudent. But he thought that it would take two, three, or even four years to defeat Germany. If the Japan issue is not handled properly now it will become a big problem in the future. Wu Nanru (吳南如) reported that the Danish Government had decided to recognise the puppet government of Wang Jingwei. Denmark is already not an independent state, and is completely under the control of Germany. This type of small country is really woeful. We immediately replied to the telegram and asked him to retract.

At 12.30 I returned home to have lunch. Then I immediately went with Qihui to visit Guo Jinkun (郭錦坤) to discuss Sun Fo’s remittance to pay his daughter’s school fees. Guo was quite helpful. Qihui told me that the matter of Xie Baoqiao had been settled. Miss Qiu was willing to leave and the [severance] money was not too much. The agreement had been signed. We felt really happy for Baoqiao. We went together to Consul Lattimore’s place to talk to Baoqiao. Then we went together to Wang Chonghui’s to talk about international issues. Xie Baoqiao criticised Lattimore’s opinion with regard to Mongolia and Xinjaing, which is the same as mine.

Lin Bin came to talk. Wu Tiecheng wanted him to take the job of tidying up party affairs’ regulations. I agreed with this and proffered my opinion on his job. He accepted all, saying that he would talk to Wu Tiecheng based on it.