Editorial Note
From its inception in February 1953, the Bruce Mission at Paris collected and maintained an extensive file of materials relating to general European military (EDC), political (EPC), and economic (Coal and Steel Community) integration. Files of incoming and outgoing telegrams, memoranda of conversations, briefing papers, and background memoranda, drafts of the EDC, EPC, and Coal and Steel Community treaties, records of EDC Interim Committee meetings on the proposed French protocols to the EDC Treaty introduced in 1953, et cetera, were all carefully kept. In addition, files of telegrams and memoranda of various sorts were maintained on the Saar problem during 1953 and 1954. Finally, the Bruce Mission files also contain materials relating to various international conferences concerned with various aspects of European integration such as the EDC Council of Ministers meetings at Rome in February 1953, the meeting of United States Ambassadors at London in June 1954, the meeting of EDC Foreign Ministers at Brussels in August of 1954 which terminated efforts to secure ratification of the European Defense Community Treaty, and the Nine-Power and Four-Power Conferences at London and Paris, September and October 1954 which led to the adherence of the Federal Republic of Germany to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, et cetera.
Ambassador Bruce also added to this file his own personal records pertaining to the Tripartite Foreign Ministers meetings at London and the Ninth Session of the North Atlantic Council at Lisbon in February 1952. Other materials added to the Bruce Mission files from the years 1951 and 1952 include fragmentary records of the meetings of the Steering Committee of the Conference for the Organization of a European Defense Community for February and March 1952 and materials relating to ongoing efforts to secure ratification of the EDC Treaty in the various member countries after May 1952. The Bruce Mission files, 27 feet in all, comprise lot 57 M 38.