Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Volume V, Part 2

501.BB Palestine/3–2248

Memorandum by the Director of the Executive Secretariat (Humelsine) to the Secretary of State

[Washington,] March 22, 1948.

Mr. Secretary: Mr. Lovett gave me the following statement on Palestine this morning. He asked that a copy of it be passed along to you for your information.

When Clifford called me he took the line that the President said he had never approved the so-called “Mandate Speech” of Austin’s,¹ which was submitted to the President and which carried at the end the recommendation for the trusteeship. Actually that document was taken over to Clifford (to be given to the President) by McClintock on March 6, the day after the President returned from his trip. That same day the President called me to come over around noon, and I asked him at that time if he had received the document which we had sent over earlier that morning. He said he had the document and would read it.

Then, as I recall, on Monday the 8th the Secretary took me to the White House to report on two things, ERP and Palestine. At that time I outlined the situation as follows: That on the 5th the Security Council had considered our no. 1 proposal (which was to accept the plan and implement it) and had voted that down. The Security Council then had moved to the remainder of our motion to take up paragraphs 2 and 3 (the consultation part of the thing), but although paragraph 1 had been voted down, that I (Lovett) would not consider this vote-down as a complete rejection. At that time the President asked me what the outlook was, and I said it was bad because we had only gotten 5 votes for implementation of the GA proposal, and our people in New York thought we could not get the 7 votes to pass it. I said that we would have to have an alternative and that was the trusteeship proposal contained in the latter part of the draft statement. The President said we were to go though and attempt to get approval of implementation of the GA resolution but if we did not get it we could take the alternative step. That was perfectly clear.² He said it to General Marshall and to me. I came back to the office, and then went to lunch.

When I got back from lunch I told McClintock the President had approved the mandate speech as a second step after we had gotten licked on the other. There is absolutely no question but what the President approved it.

There was a definite clearance there. I stress it because Clifford told me the President said he did not know anything about it.³

C[arlisle] Humelsine

1. Ambassador Austin’s statement before the Security Council on March 19; see p. 742.
2. Underscoring here and in the two places later in this memorandum appear in the original.

3. In a memorandum of March 22 to Mr. Bohlen, the Secretary of State wrote:

   “In my discussion of Palestine with the President today, he said that the reason he was so much exercised in the matter was the fact that Austin made his statement without the President having been advised that he was going to make it at that particular time. He had agreed to the statement but said that if he had known when it was going to be made he could have taken certain measures to have avoided the political blast of the press.” (501.BB Palestine/3–2248)