Lord Davies came by. We had a long talk about the current situation. Davies takes quite a sensible view of things. When it comes to his aims for the future, however, he still lives in cloud cuckoo land. He brought me a memorandum where he proposes formulating the ‘war aims’ as the creation of a United States of Europe. He has already handed this memorandum to members of government and is now distributing it among diplomats.

The events of recent weeks have wreaked havoc with people’s minds. Gollancz is in despair: in his view, the Soviet–German pact killed off communism. Strachey, in connection with the same pact, came to Harry [Pollitt] with tears in his eyes. Cummings, writing in the News Chronicle (19 September), simply cannot make sense of things. Duff Cooper published an article in today’s Evening Standard about ‘Two Breeds of Bolshevism’ – communism and fascism. Every day I receive many letters – anonymous and otherwise – which show their authors to be in a quite incredible state of shock. Yes, the general muddle is on a colossal scale. And it is not easy to combat: there’s a lack of information and materials for that purpose. Besides, the entire press, especially on the Labour side, is now against us. The Daily Herald is the worst of all.