Office of the Historian

385. Letter From Secretary of State Dulles to Prime Minister Macmillan1

Washington, September 5, 1957.

Dear Harold: As I trust Harold Caccia has made clear your long message to me received August 282 has been an immense help. I went over it with Harold Caccia paragraph by paragraph, indicating with some commentary our large measure of agreement with the analysis.

Since then Loy Henderson has returned. I have asked the Department to prepare a little analysis of alternatives taking into [Page 682] account what Henderson learned. Caccia is getting a copy of this and no doubt will transmit it to you.3 There is nothing that looks particularly attractive and the choice of policy will be hard. We are not completely satisfied with any of the alternatives which have thus far been suggested. There are risks involved in and objection found to all of them. We are continuing to explore other possibilities and I shall let you know if we come across any which might seem to be more promising of success to any of those dealt with in the memorandum. I hope you will reciprocate.

On certain points I feel clear. For example:

We must work together in this matter.

Any positive action, once begun, must, even at great risk, be pushed through to a success.

Speed and simplicity are very important elements.

It is not possible to fit all alternatives into neat slots. Whatever is planned will be different.

I do not by the foregoing mean to suggest that we have reached any conclusion in favor of encouraging positive action. However, Loy Henderson has the impression that the Turks are desperately serious about this situation and I do not think either of our governments wants to try to impose what could be another Munich.

I have not had the benefit of consultation with, or direction from, the President since Loy returned. He is at Newport, but will be back here on Saturday morning when we can confer together at length.

Both he and I have given thought to the possibility of one or the other of us working out a personal meeting with you. We both much share your thought of how good it would be if we could be in the same room and talk all this over as we have done before. However, so far, our ingenuity has proven unequal to overcoming what seemed to be the risks that such a meeting would build up into a public spectacle that would be exaggerated and misinterpreted.

I am delighted that Bishop is staying on for a few days more.

Faithfully yours,

John Foster Dulles4
  1. Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, Dulles to Macmillan Correspondence, 1955–1957. Top Secret. The source text is a carbon copy of the original. Attached to the source text is an earlier draft of the letter with Dulles’ handwritten changes. Dulles sent a copy of the letter to Eisenhower on September 6.↩
  2. Not printed. (Ibid., Macmillan to Dulles Correspondence 1955–1959)↩
  3. Printed as the enclosure to Dulles’ note to Eisenhower.↩
  4. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩