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empowered to offer any proposals, nor to enter into any commitments. I would, however, be most
 
grateful for any views which the Minister might care to express to me, and the Minister could be 
 
confident that any views so expressed would be maintained by me as completely confidential and
 
as solely for the information of the President and of Secretary Hull.
 
     The Minister said that he fully understood the situation, and that he would talk with me
 
with the utmost frankness. And that he proceeded to do. He commenced by saying that he was 
 
glad that I did not intend to offer any proposals, or any set formula as to a possible peace treaty. 
 
He doubted whether the moment was propitious for any effort of that character.
 
     I took occasion at this Juncture to remark that I had been privileged to follow from a 
 
distance his own brilliant career and to estimate with much admiration his own efforts to prevent 
 
war at the end of August, and since that date, to limit the spread of war. I said that I was 
 
particularly interested in knowing whether the. Italian Government was still considering the 
 
possibility of the kind of a meeting between representatives of the belligerents which it had 
 
suggested last August 31.
 
     Count Ciano said that the initiative then taken had been his own idea, taken, of course, 
 
after consultation with Mussolini.
     
     He got up and from a safe took out his famous red diary In which he records in his own
 
 handwriting his daily activities. He read me excerpts from it covering the period in question. It
 
 appeared that during the three days commencing August 31 he had been constantly on the long