Wednesday, 22 December

At 11.00 a.m. the Acting General Manager of Associate Press, Lloyd Stratton, visited me. He said as follows: 1) He had been to Moscow in 1934. The Soviet Government and people were suspicious of him and didn’t dare talk to him and they were quite cold to him. But he was absolutely not disappointed. When he returned to the United States he still strongly advocated American-Soviet cooperation. The majority of the senior staff was still not supportive of his policy, and he was transferred to an administrative section for three years. Not until then were they awakened. 2) It has been during the past six months that American public opinion has started to change completely, and advocate American-Soviet cooperation. Still there are many anti-Soviet elements, and the ratio is 51:49. If the Soviet Union doesn’t take any action that will make Americans extremely repulsed, American public opinion will move gradually pro-Soviet. 3) The United States has completely changed its isolationist policy regarding world politics and moved towards one of cooperation. The concept of private capitalism is being increasingly weakened, while state-controlled capital will continue after the war. 4) He had met the Generalissimo, Madame Chiang and Wang Chonghui in Cairo. He will go to Chongqing soon and discuss cooperation with the Central News Agency.

At 5.30 p.m. I visited the Swedish Minister Assarson. According to him the Soviet Government asked its Ambassador to Sweden to inform the Swedish Foreign Minister as follows: 1) Though Sweden had urged Finland to ask for peace with the Soviet Union on its own, it was not enough. Sweden should put pressure on Finland, so that it will immediately dispatch people to the Soviet Union to ask for peace. 2) Sweden should express its opposition to Germany again. 3) Sweden should prepare to fight against Germany. 4) As the Swedish Ambassador to the Soviet Union (Assarson) and military officers gave a Soviet military secret to Germany, so the Soviet Government requested they should be sent back to Sweden. Minister Assarson said that he has been here for four years. During this period of time he has tried his best to further Soviet-Sweden friendship. When the Soviet situation was at its most critical time, he tried his best to speak on behalf of the Soviet Union. The Swedish Foreign Office always reprimanded him for being too pro-Soviet. Nevertheless he didn’t expect that he would have such a result as this. He felt really bad and he could not sleep for several days. I tried to comfort him, saying that when we did things we shouldn’t care about criticisms as long as we know what we are doing is the right thing. If I did the wrong thing but someone praised me then I would feel uneasy. Also for those who know him well one would know it was not his fault. If someone didn’t know him well his criticism or praise could be ignored. The Swedish Foreign Office certainly knew what happened so I told him that he should not worry about it. He said thank you. He also mentioned the Finnish question. He said Finland wasn’t unwilling to send people to the Soviet Union, they only wanted to know the terms beforehand. I said with regard to this the Soviet Union had difficulty because when Britain and the United States negotiated peace with Italy, the Soviet side criticised them heavily, saying it was against the terms that were set by the Allies that Axis countries should surrender unconditionally. Now if the Soviet Union wanted to make a peace settlement with Finland, it was hard to reconcile with what it previously rejected. But if Finland could dispatch people to ask for peace in a humble manner, I personally reckoned that the terms wouldn’t be too harsh because the Soviet side wanted to take this chance to express its attitude to various countries in Eastern Europe that are next to it. If the terms embarassed Finland, Bulgaria and Hungary would be scared, they would fight to the end, and this was not to the Soviet Union’s advantage. Also I thought the Soviet Union wanted to take the chance to improve its relations with countries in Eastern Europe after this war, so as to prevent them being manipulated to counter the Soviet Union. Finland could take this situation for its own advantage, and initially it should express its change in attitude towards the Soviet Union to one of friendliness, which would greatly benefit Finland and it shouldn’t miss the chance, because the era to use British and American forces to counter the Soviet Union has gone, and Finland should understand this. Minister Assarson agreed. With regard to the Swedish question, he said Sweden had finished preparing its military devices, but was only lacking an air force. If Germany wanted to invade Sweden, it should relocate thirty divisions from the East Line. But now it was not possible. Therefore Sweden’s attitude was sterner towards Britain than before. Swedish public opinion strongly opposed Germany because of the German atrocities towards Norway and Denmark, but since the air defence of Sweden was still quite poor so it was only natural that Sweden was still worried about Germany. I said Britain and the United States had strong air forces in Western Europe. If Sweden felt it necessary it should ask Britain and the United States for help. It shouldn’t be a big problem. He said if Sweden joined the war, its own force would be sufficient to recover Norway. I said it was even better, because Sweden was within the area which was not very dangerous, therefore it seemed to be appropriate for it to join the war, so as to express Sweden’s genuine attitude, and stand on the same line as its sibling federations like Norway and Denmark. If Sweden didn’t go that way, people would criticise Sweden after the war. He also agreed with what I said. I said if I were him I would try my best to advocate this as the Soviet Union was suspicious of him, he should even advocate this so as to show he is impartial, which makes those who know him well respect him more. He was quite grateful.