711.00/3–347
Minutes of an Executive Session of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate 29
The committee met at 10:30 o’clock, pursuant to call, in the Committee Room, the Capitol, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Chairman, presiding.
Present: Senators Vandenberg (chairman), Capper, White, Wiley, Smith, Hickenlooper, Lodge, Connally, Thomas of Utah, and Hatch.
The Chairman. We have an excellent quorum, gentlemen. I think we will come to order.
Mr. Secretary, you have been here before under other circumstances and auspices. You have always been welcome before, and you certainly are now. We are entirely at your service in any way we can be helpful to you—when we happen to agree with you. We will be very delighted to have you say anything you please to us this morning.
statement of the honorable george c. marshall secretary of state
Secretary Marshall . Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would appreciate it if you would give me some idea of the particular things in which you are interested at the moment. I know, of course, you are interested in the German and Austrian settlements, but other than that?
The Chairman. I think, Mr. Secretary, if rather quickly, without dwelling on the points, you can give us a bird’s eye view of what the situation is in South America and what the immediate situation is in China as a result of the recent developments, and where we go from here with respect to these things, it would be very helpful.
Secretary Marshall . I will start with China.
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[Page 167]Secretary Marshall . Now, as to the situation regarding Moscow: Aside from the various factors, the character of the Government to be set up in Germany, the matter of boundaries, the possibility of getting the Austrian Treaty handled first, and those matters, I think the Chairman and Senator Connally can give you more definite views and more well founded views than I can at the present moment, but all of those I am having analyzed for me in every detail as to the possibilities and particularly what are the fundamentals regarding which we must be implacable, which we just must have. I presume you other gentlemen are familiar with the difference between the situations regarding the Austrian Treaty and the German situation. They are attempting to draft a treaty for Austria. As to Germany, they are not at that phase at all. They are trying to get down to the principles which will guide the representatives in drafting such a treaty.
So, as I understand it, when we go to Moscow, we have two levels there. We have whatever progress has been made in London toward the draft of an Austrian Treaty, and on the other hand we have whatever progress has been made or not made in London as to the principles which will guide the deputies in drafting a treaty regarding Germany.
Now, the view as to the prospects of an accord in regard to the second item, the German treaty, vary from some who say three to six weeks and some, I think, like Senator Vandenberg, would translate weeks into months—three to six months, probably. But it would appear at the present moment that if you got a reasonable acceptance of certain guiding principles for the deputies regarding a German treaty, and then adjourned to have them work on that, you would have made very good progress.
The possibilities apparently are, as I gather from the advice I have received, that if we got that far with the thing on this first meeting, we are lucky.
The Chairman. That is certainly true.
Secretary Marshall . That we will have to probably move on from there.
Senator Smith . Do you mean an agreement on the Austrian Treaty, and dispose of that, and then these principles on the German Treaty?
Secretary Marshall . The Austrian Treaty is a separate transaction, and the anticipation is that the Soviets would be rather opposed to treating that ahead of the German thing, although we would desire to do that. The possibilities of managing that remain to be seen, but it looks like the prospects are not too good.
Anyway, if we could secure an agreement on certain guiding principles for the deputies to work on for the treaty regarding Germany in [Page 168] this meeting, the consensus of opinion seems to be that we will have made pretty good progress.
The Chairman. Do you think there is any significance in the change of attitude regarding the admission of correspondents to Moscow?30
Secretary Marshall . Smith has not given us the reaction to that particular thing. He is working on the increase in numbers. My guess is that in the first place they have limited accommodations. In the next place they want to hold the number down as much as they can, because it certainly is a bitter pill for them to have a swarm of correspondents in the country, and there is going to be a great collection if you get the British and French and the others. It is going to be a very disturbing element, and it is going to be a very difficult thing for them to hold within the narrow confines. My own guess is that I am going to be more concerned with the incidents [incidence?] of correspondents than with the aspects of the treaty.
The Chairman. You are going to have one difficult time!
Secretary Marshall . I anticipate that.
I think they have a problem in accommodations, and they have a deep-rooted desire not to have too many of these people. Twenty does not seem much to us, but twenty plus the British and French and others seems a lot to them. That is the battle.
I suppose, too, quite naturally, that any increase on our side is an automatic increase all around the circle, which is the precedent involved, so there are a good many different points of view there. My own thought is that if you have twenty Americans in there the news of the thing will go all over the world. As a matter of fact, if you had three in there they would do a pretty good job of it, but there will be no suppression of the facts of life with twenty there. It is a question of each one of our own press industries back here getting a fair break. It is more that than it is the news. I have no thought at all in my mind that these twenty would not be able to tell the world pretty well what is happening.
[Page 169]The Chairman. But it is a default in Mr. Molotov’s guarantee.
Secretary Marshall . You would know that.
The Chairman. I think that is very definite.
Secretary Marshall . We are going very hard for the fifty-two we started with.
Senator Hatch . Yesterday one of the overseas news agencies issued a statement demanding, in effect, that either the additional correspondents be allowed to go to Moscow, or that the place of meeting be changed.
The Chairman. The New York Times demanded that in an editorial yesterday.
Senator Hatch . I was asked to comment on that yesterday, and I refused to give it my approval. I thought it was impossible to change the place of meeting.
Secretary Marshall . I read those things, and my own thought was that they did not do any harm. It was pressure to increase the number without my saying anything.
The Chairman. Is there any significance in the fact that you are bringing Ambassador Lane home?
(The discussion was continued off the record.)
Senator Connally . General, you spoke about these general principles on which we will agree with regard to Germany. Will not one of those be the question as to whether Germany should be preserved as a unit or whether it will be a federated state?
Secretary Marshall . Oh, yes. All of those things—the Ruhr area and all those various things—are involved in there. They are trying to boil down for me what I characterize as the Ten Commandments. I want to have clearly settled in my mind certain fundamental things that we must insist upon, and then a classification of those that you might say we will negotiate with regard to. I have to get that clear in my mind to my own satisfaction, and I have not reached that point yet. I have gone over the whole thing, all of the desires and all of those things, but it is still a general affair in my mind. I had about three hours of the Ruhr yesterday.
I might tell you gentlemen here—I would not advertise this—that I had Mr. Boland [ Bohlen ], Mr. Cohen, and Mr. Matthews and the head of the European Section and about three others make these regular presentations to me about an hour or two hours or three hours at a time, for my education. I am just sort of listening in. I have gotten through that. Now I have to go back and get it boiled down in detail where I can get my fingers on each specific thing and, of course, there are a great many. Then I have to go to the President.
But there are so many pros and cons to this thing in our relations [Page 170] with the French and our relations with the British, and the great problem of the Ruhr, which, of course, is a thing that is a pretty hard nut to crack. In some respects I found it not quite so complicated as I anticipated. There seem to be certain things in the condition of affairs that were not great issues at the moment, which rather surprised me. But, goodness knows, it is difficult enough as it stands.
I am not prepared at all on the Austrian end of the thing.
Senator Connally . Is it pretty clear in your own mind that this problem that you have, this preliminary session, this preparatory session, will then recess to give the deputies the intervening time to work on the matter?
Secretary Marshall . That would appear to be a hopeful prospect, and something we would be rather pleased with if it came out that way.
The Chairman. That is the way Paris worked.
Secretary Marshall . If we could work faster than that it would be a miracle.
The Chairman. It would be a miracle if it worked that fast!
Senator Connally . I think this conference in Moscow is going to be a long, tough struggle.
[Here follow comments by the Secretary regarding the international implications of reductions in the defense budget, a discussion of universal military training and a further consideration of the question of relations with China.]
- This transcript was prepared by stenotype reporter Franklin A. Steinko. A memorandum by Marshall S. Carter, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, attached to source text, indicates that the only other copy of this transcript was in the Top Secret file of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.↩
- Despite the continuing efforts of the United States to increase the number, the Soviet Government was at this time reluctant to grant more than twenty visas for American correspondents to travel to Moscow to report on the forthcoming meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers. In the negotiations between the two governments on this subject during January and February 1947, the United States took the position that such a restricted allocation was entirely inadequate. These negotiations are described in Walter Bedell Smith, Moscow Mission 1946–1949 (Melbourne, London, Toronto, William Heinemann Limited, 1950), pp. 204–205. The Secretary of State discussed the issue during his press conference on February 7, 1947 (see Department of State Bulletin, February 16, 1947, p. 286) and again at his press conference on February 25, 1947. The position of the American correspondents in the matter was set forth in a statement by a committee of correspondents made public on February 8, 1947, and printed ibid., p. 286, footnote 1. On March 1, the Soviet Government agreed to increase the number of visas it would grant to thirty-six.↩