700.5 MAP/10–1851
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Lucius D. Battle, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State
The Secretary on his return from NSC yesterday discussed the meeting with Messrs. Matthews, Bohlen and Ohly.1 He said that the Council had adopted the recommendations of the staff for referral back to the senior staff.2
He said that he had taken the memorandum which Mr. Nitze and Mr. Tufts prepared for him3 and made that the basis of his remarks, [Page 239] with the exception of a portion on page 2, which I believe was the last paragraph. Following this, Mr. Lovett spoke on the necessity for lead time in scheduling deliveries. He said this was a major difficulty. He then said that none of the European countries were complaining about the deliveries that were made and, in fact, the Danes were not able to take all that was being sent to them.
Mr. Wilson4 said that it would be possible for us to meet the program which we had set out to meet, but the consequences as far as our domestic economy is concerned were very grave.
Mr. Keyserling said he thought there would be no real danger in doing what we had originally set out to do. He said we had a strong industrial system and could adjust as required.
The Secretary then said that he thought the problem fell into two parts. One was consideration of what we had done to date and the other was what we do from here on. He said we had gotten together a series of delivery dates and had communicated this schedule to other countries concerned. These countries had in turn keyed what they were able to do to the delivery schedules which we had furnished them. He pointed out that we had understood all about lead time when we prepared these figures and had figured it in our computations. He said he realized that Korea and Indochina had both resulted in heavier demands on us than we had anticipated. However, deliveries are now going at a rate of about 100 million per month. In order to do what we planned, we would have to jump deliveries to a rate of 400 million per month. He said he thought it apparent that we could not do what we had planned to do when we had asked for the funds to be appropriated.
The Secretary then said that we must adjust our foreign policy to this fact. He said that we could not continue trying to force European nations to continue to do as they had promised if we were not able to do what we set out to do. He said our foreign policy must be consistent with this fact.
Mr. Wilson then said that we could do a great deal more if we would stop changing designs and prepare one design and stick to it. He said that would result in materiel coming off the assembly line at a greatly increased rate.
The general difficulty of obtaining adequate figures on which to base conclusions as to what we would be able to do was discussed. As I understand it, this difficulty was appreciated and an effort is being made to get together more realistic schedules. I assume, although [Page 240] I am not clear on this point, that this stems from Mr. Harriman’s5 recent letter to the Secretary of Defense in which he requested certain studies.
- John H. Ohly, Assistant Director for Policy and Program Development, Office of International Security Affairs.↩
- Regarding the action taken by the National Security Council, see Record of Actions by the National Security Council at its 105th Meeting, October 17, p. 235.↩
- Dated October 17, p. 232.↩
- Charles E. Wilson, Director, Office of Defense Mobilization.↩
- W. Averell Harriman, Director-Designate for Mutual Security. Harriman was confirmed by the Senate on October 19. The Mutual Security Agency came into existence formally on December 30. For information on United States organization for military assistance, see pp. 266 ff.↩