Tuesday, 8 May

I received letter from Sun Fo on 2 May, saying his visa was still not ready. He asked me to hurry it locally. He also said that Mrs. Wang Chonghui had gone to Taipei last month. For the Taiwan side, it seemed it was quite stable. The Hong Kong government seems to take a tougher attitude towards the CCP, but for the merchants they still hoped that they could continue to do business with the Mainland. Weng Wenhao had gone to Beijing. But Sun heard that Li Jishen and others were not doing very well.  Many relatives of those important people helping Mao Zedong, whom had stayed in villages, were cleared. Li Jishen’s son was a professor in Lingnan University and has returned from Beijing recently, saying that his father was really very unhappy, but there was no way to help because he was surrounded by Communist spies in Beijing so that he did not dare to talk too much with his son lest he would be reported.

I immediately phoned Duan Guanhai to discuss the visa matter. He said he had been in liaison with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and now he intended to dispatch Xie Dongfa (謝東發) to the French Internal Department, to discuss the issue and ask that it be handled as soon as possible. He would get back to me if he received any news.

President Truman gave a speech last night. He was against the suggestions of the enlargement of the Korean War and fighting the CCP on its own, saying this was exactly like entering the trickery of the Soviet Union, which would cause the massive relocation of the American army to the east. Taking advantage of this the Soviet Union could invade Europe, and it could break the cooperation of the nations in the United Nations.

Following General MacArthur, Marshall made a report in the Senate, saying if the suggestions of MacArthur were implemented, the Soviet side would join and the war would break out.  The free alliance would break up. The bombardment of the CCP’s transportation lines could not end the war, so he advocated the continuation of the current policy. But he stated that if the CCP army invaded other places, the United States would deploy its navy and air force to fight against them. He was optimistic about the Korean War that the CCP now used its 34 divisions to start an offense. They fought for four days, and 26 divisions had been handled. In the future, its offense could be only like this. He also spoke about what happened regarding the dismissal of MacArthur.

General Wedemeyer asked for retirement. This is exactly what I had expected.

The Soviet Union formally suggested that they, the United States and the CCP hold a conference in June or July, to negotiate the peace treaty towards Japan.