Hickerson–Murphy–Key files, lot 58 D 33, “Amb Lodge—1954”
Memorandum by the United States Representative at the United Nations (Lodge) to the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Key)
I called on Hammarskjold Saturday p.m. (October 16) and told him that the United States did not want to promote a showdown on the question of his circulating documents coming from the Chinese communists. I said that it was clear to us that his office must have leaked to the papers the story which was printed in yesterday’s New York Times about our not being willing to receive the Chinese communist document and that we had noted that he, himself, had given out a [Page 799] formal interview Friday which had been printed in the press Saturday morning. Under these circumstances we were considering the issuance of a Press Release, the text of which I handed to him as follows:
“Secretary General Hammarskjold saw fit to issue a press release on October 15 concerning past procedure in circulation of communications from Communist China by the United Nations secretariat.
“The United States has no desire to prolong this issue which, of course, the United States did not raise in the first place. But in all fairness it should be made clear that the procedures referred to are neither “firm” nor “well established”. The United States has protested similar occurrences in the past. In fact, this procedure would appear to place the Secretary General in conflict with the General Assembly, which has convicted Communist China as an aggressor. It has the effect of providing a gratuitous service to a regime which has shown only contempt for the United Nations and for its proceedings. It is also questionable whether the Secretary General should circulate any documents at the request of non-members.
“The Secretary General also saw fit to characterize the attitude of the United States toward the delivery of this communication. When he said that the United States returned it without comment he failed to set forth our position in its true light. This position, however, was revealed to him in a letter dated October 12, the text of which is as follows:
“‘Dear Mr. Secretary General:
“‘It is my understanding that you are in receipt of a communication from the Chinese communist regime making serious charges against the United States, and that you have been requested to circulate the text of this communication to the Delegations of the United Nations General Assembly with the exception of the Delegation of the Republic of China.
“‘the communication to which I refer is another in a series of false and malicious charges against a Member of the United Nations by an aggressor regime which is a non-Member of the United Nations and which has been branded an aggressor by the United Nations.
“‘the fact that this regime is a convicted aggressor is, in our opinion, enough justification for you to disregard all their communications.
“‘In the opinion of the United States Delegation the Secretary General is under no obligation either to release or to circulate such a communication. It is, in fact, not conducive to the cooperation which is so necessary between the Secretary General and the Members of the Organization for the Secretary-General’s office to be the instrument through which false charges can be made and published.
“‘I am confident that you will share this opinion and will not permit the abuse of your high office intended by the Chinese communist regime.
Sincerely,
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.’”
He said that that would be very bad and would help nobody and would raise issues which we all should want to avoid having raised.
[Page 800]I said that we did not want to promote a showdown but that when he or his office continually put these matters into the press, we had to think of our own record and our own position and that I would try to persuade my associates not to insist on the publication of this release.
He then said that he was in a dilemma because this policy of distributing Chinese communist documents had been followed for so long that he didn’t see how he could change it. I said that when one has done a wrong thing for thirty times then the time has come to stop doing it. He said that he thought study ought to be given to his devising a formulary or rationale for handling the distribution of these communications. He said that he had complaints from the British because he had circulated a Greek statement containing the views of the Archbishop of Cyprus who is a British subject and the thing was in a terrible mess and that his idea was to develop a set of rules which he would then publish and then let anyone object who wanted to.
I said that this looked to me like a very promising procedure and I hoped he would go ahead with it.
As I told you, I have no intention whatever of publishing the release but I did hope to achieve precisely the result which was obtained.1
- Notation by Deputy Assistant Secretary Wainhouse on routing and reference slip dated Oct. 19: “We should encourage the SYG to get up a set of ground rules on this problem.”↩