Wednesday, 6 October

Military Attaché Guo said the Yugoslavian Ambassador has recently changed from pro-Soviet to pro-British. He didn’t really dare to be close to the British Ambassador before, but recently he has visited him frequently. Military Attaché Guo heard the rumour that he will soon leave. The Yugoslavian Military Attaché recently even proposed that the British and American armies should attack the Balkans from Italy, which is different to his previous attitude. Probably it is possible that the British and American armies will invade from the Balkans. But it is uncertain.

The current issue of War and the Working Class magazine published two articles. (Two points) were worthy of attention. 1) Criticised (name unclear) of the United States that the war should drag on four more years, and only then could Japan and Germany be defeated at the same time. The article’s main idea was that if the war dragged on, it would arouse internal political chaos. So from the standpoints of both Britain and the United States, it shouldn’t go on for too long. 2) the President of Czechoslovakia, Benes, originally planned to come to Moscow to sign a treaty with the Soviet Union, but Eden stopped him, saying that Britain and the Soviet Union agreed that during the war they would not sign treaties with other European countries unilaterally. Therefore, Benes didn’t go to Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, during Molotov’s visit to Britain, Eden had raised this issue. The Soviet Union agreed in principle but repeatedly asked Britain to provide concrete proposals. But Britain didn’t provide them, therefore one couldn’t assume that the Soviet Union was working against the treaty. Also, the understanding between Eden and Molotov was that they both disagreed with signing the treaty with the third country. It didn’t mean they had to stop doing this completely. If both sides agreed it could still be done. In the end it welcomed Benes coming to the Soviet Union. I immediately made a summary of these two articles to send back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The relations between the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States are very worrying.

In the afternoon, I went to see an exhibition with Counsellor Chen and Attaché Hu, I didn’t learn anything special.