65. Letter From the Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (Frankel) to Lionel Trilling1
I am very happy indeed that you will be able to attend our meeting in Washington on November 2.2
I hope you will come to my office a little before noon on that day. We will have lunch here in the State Department and then come back to my office for conversation. The meeting will end at 4 p.m.
My office is Room 6218. I would recommend that you enter the building at the C Street entrance.
The central purpose of our conversation will be to explore ways and means of finding or developing cultural representatives who can represent us with distinction in our embassies abroad. I hope the conversation will provide us with the beginning of a list of the names of people who, over the course of the next two or three years, may be available for such positions. We are, of course, interested in finding distinguished people in private life—in the universities, in literature, the arts or the foundations—and not only in combing the list of people currently in Government service. I hope that our conversation will also help to clarify the nature and conditions of the job of cultural representative and indicate the ways in which it can be made attractive to men of high accomplishment.
At present, we are concentrating on finding men for our larger and most important posts—for example, London, Paris, Rome, Bonn, New Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, etc. In certain of these posts, we now have satisfactory people, but, of course, we cannot count on being able to replace them adequately unless we make careful plans well in advance.
You are probably well enough acquainted with our embassies abroad to know something about the way in which the job of the Cultural Attaché is at present defined, but we shall provide you with detailed information at the time we meet. In thinking about this subject, however, I hope you will not restrict yourself to thinking in terms of [Page 186] what now exists, but will draw up your own description of the position as you think it should be.
I am enclosing a list of the people who are expected to attend the meeting.3
Miss Mary Tsouvalas, in my office, will be in touch with you shortly about travel arrangements. We shall, of course, cover your travel expenses. If you want any further information, do not hesitate to call her (DU 3-2933) or call me directly (DU 3-5235).
I am particularly pleased that you have agreed to come since it suggests that you share my sense of concern about this problem. But I am also pleased because it will give me the chance to see you again. I will feel a little as though I am playing hooky.
Sincerely,
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Files, Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs Subject Files, 1965–1966, Lot 69D260, Entry UD UP 175, Box 19, 1965 T–U–V. No classification marking. Drafted by Frankel on October 20.↩
- No record of this meeting has been found.↩
- Attached but not printed. According to the list, those expected to participate included: Gordon Craig, Professor of History at Stanford University; H. Field Haviland, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institute; August Heckscher, Director of the Twentieth Century Fund; Leonard Marks; Joseph Mazzeo, Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University; George E. Taylor, Director of the Far Eastern and Russian Institute of the University of Washington; Lionel Trilling; Robert E. Ward, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan; Harold E. Howland; and David L. Osborn.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩