740.00119 FEAC/11–145
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Acheson)
Dr. Evatt called at his request. He handed me the document evidencing the Australian ratification of the United Nations Charter.91 He remarked that he had hoped that this would be the document which brought the Charter into effect but that the Russians had beaten him to the draw.
Dr. Evatt then raised the matter of the Far Eastern Advisory Commission and in particular the revised draft of terms of reference. He complained bitterly at the provision under which it was necessary, in order to have an effective majority, to have three of the four Potsdam powers in agreement. He said that this created on the face of the document discriminatory treatment of powers involved and that from San Francisco on Australia had been opposed to such treatment. He then went into a somewhat belligerent and lengthy recital of the large part which Australia had played in the war and the comparatively small part which the Soviet Union had played. He said that the result of our action seemed to be that we were not, as the President had said to him this morning, acting in partnership with Australia [Page 813] but were excluding Australia and were turning to powers which had taken no important part in the Far Eastern war.
I said to Dr. Evatt that it seemed to me that he was overlooking one of the fundamental realities of the situation which was that no arrangement would bring about a settlement of the Far Eastern questions unless we could reach an accommodation with the Soviet Union. This led to a discussion of what the realities were. I ventured to state that there were three important objectives to be achieved. The first was to achieve real allied participation in the making of the fundamental decisions. The second was to assure that a majority of the nations on the Council which did not have the responsibility of enforcing actions should not in effect order the United States what should be done. The third was that the arrangement should go sufficiently far in the direction of the Soviet position to achieve the result of Soviet participation. Dr. Evatt said that he agreed entirely with all of these propositions. He became far less belligerent and discussed the question calmly and quite helpfully. He said he agreed entirely that the United States had the preeminent position and the preeminent responsibility and that, therefore, no results should be reached which would result in other powers telling us what to do. He also agreed that notwithstanding all that he had said about the smallness of Soviet participation, the fact was that the Soviet Union had to be drawn into the arrangement to make it a success. He then said that he would be entirely willing to go along with the proposal that the Commission should be in effect advisory rather than determinative since this was what the realities of the matter called for. This would avoid an affront to any nation and would enable all of them, in his opinion, to join in the Commission. He said that the proposal as drawn amounted to this except that we had through diplomatic maneuvering either to get a majority to agree with us or get at least one of the Potsdam powers to agree in a veto. He thought that it would be much more frank and much more acceptable to have the United States make the final decision. He said that he could readily understand that Mr. Bevin’s proposal by which only two of the Potsdam powers joining in a majority could decide the matter, was wholly unacceptable to us.
Dr. Evatt went on to state that the Australian view, which he thought had made very considerable headway, was that Australia should be the spokesman for the Commonwealth on Pacific matters. This he said had been recognized in the recent communication to us under which an Australian general was to command all Commonwealth forces which they had asked us to accept in Japan. He said that throughout the war Commonwealth forces had acted entirely in MacArthur’s command and they would have no difficulty in doing so in Japan but that the important matter so far as intra Commonwealth [Page 814] discussions were concerned was that the primary position had been accorded Australia. He felt that it would be utterly incompatible with this result to have the United Kingdom singled out as one of the Potsdam powers with special prerogatives on the Far Eastern Commission or as one of the powers to be represented on a Control or other Commission to be set up in Japan.
Mr. Evatt then turned to other matters. He instanced Mr. Clayton’s discussions with the British on modifications of imperial preference92 as another occasion when we had talked to the British rather than the Australians about a matter of common interest to both of them. However, he did not dwell on this but went on to say that he was most anxious that all outstanding questions between the United States and Australia, such as the settlement of lend-lease, commercial policy matters, agreement on bases, et cetera, should be taken up at one time rather than treated as parts of a number of negotiations taken up first with the British. He believed that if we would write down a list of all the questions outstanding we could reach a settlement with him on all of them in one afternoon. I suggested that this might be an optimistic time estimate in view of some of our previous differences over such matters as commercial policy. He replied that they had their troubles just as we had ours over the wool tariff but that nevertheless agreement could be reached promptly.
I was impressed by the moderation of his talk after the first burst of belligerency which seemed to disappear entirely when I suggested that we discuss the fundamental points rather than matters of prestige. I recommend that Dr. Evatt’s suggestion about an amendment of our terms of reference deserves very careful consideration in the light of Harriman’s suggestion that Stalin would be willing to go along with almost the same plan. I also gathered the impression that Dr. Evatt attaches great importance to our acceptance of Australian commonwealth troops under Australian command in Japan.