Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Western European Security, Volume V, Part 1

740.5/8–2354

Prime Minister Churchill to the Secretary of State ¹

top secret

London, August 22, 1954.

1. Very many thanks for all your telegrams today. You and I have never been closer together on a live issue. I send you the telegram I sent on Nineteenth to Adenauer which has already been published. Here are the two messages I have just received from him and his circle. They look good.

2. Mendes-France arrives here noon tomorrow (August 23) and I shall urge him to stake his political fame on getting E.D.C. through. I shall make plain the awful consequences which might follow a flop. It is a choice between peace through strength and subjugation through weakness. Anthony returns in time for the meeting. We might all of us be in on a winner. We must keep in closest touch. This is a time for vehement moral action. I suppose you could come over if need be.

3. Give this with all my respects to the President. The climate of opinion he is building makes the best results possible. Code name “Bite” quite like old times.

Winston

1. The source text was transmitted to London in niact telegram 1047, Aug. 23. Telegram 1047 also contained an exchange of messages between Churchill and Adenauer, Aug. 19 and 22, as well as the text of a telegram of Aug. 22 from the British Ambassador at Brussels to the Foreign Office, none printed.