Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file
No. 405
President Eisenhower
to Prime Minister Churchill
1
Dear Winston : Thank you for yours of May 4th2 giving me the lines of a message you are thinking of sending to Molotov. Foster and I have considered it deeply and since you sought my views I must say that we would advise against it.
You will pardon me, I know, if I express a bit of astonishment that you think it appropriate to recommend Moscow to Molotov as a suitable meeting place. Uncle Joe used to plead ill health as an excuse for refusing to leave territory under the Russian flag or controlled by the Kremlin. That excuse no longer applies and while I do not for a minute suggest that progress toward peace should be balked by mere matters of protocol, I do have a suspicion that anything the Kremlin could misinterpret as weakness or overeagerness on our part would militate against success in negotiation.
In my note to you of April 25th3 I expressed the view that we should not rush things too much and should not permit feeling in our countries for a meeting between heads of states and government to press us into precipitate initiatives. I feel just as strongly now as I did ten days ago that this is right, and certainly nothing that the Soviet Government has done in the meantime would tend [Page 979] to persuade me differently. I do not feel that the armistice negotiations are going well and this to me has been the first test of the seriousness of Communist intentions.4 Far from there having been any Communist actions which we could accept as indications of such seriousness of purpose the Pravda editorial repeats all the previous Soviet positions5 and we are now faced with new aggression in Laos.
But in my mind the most important considerations are the results which might be expected to flow from such a personal contact and the effect of such a meeting on our allies, the free world in general, and the Russians themselves. It would of course finally become known that you had consulted me, and it would be difficult for me to explain the exact purpose of the visit. Beyond this, failure to consult the French would probably infuriate them, especially when the situation in Indochina is hanging in the balance. If they were consulted in advance, the result would almost certainly be a proposal for a four-party conference, and this, I am convinced, we are not ready for until there is some evidence, in deeds, of a changed Soviet attitude.
Many would expect dramatic and concrete achievements from a personal visit to Moscow by the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Whatever you said publicly about the purposes of your solitary pilgrimage, I suspect that many in the Far East as well as the West would doubt that you would go all the way to Moscow merely for good will. I feel this would be true in this country, and the effects on Congress which is this week taking up consideration of our Mutual Defense Program and extension of our Reciprocal Trade Act, would be unpredictable. It seems to me that in this crucial period when the Soviet peace offensive is raising doubts in people’s minds, the thing we must strive for above all other is to maintain mutual confidence among the members of NATO and other free nations and to avoid any action which could be misinterpreted. Naturally the final decision is yours, but I feel that the above factors are so important that I should in all candor and friendship lay them before you.
As ever,
- The source text was attached to a memorandum from President Eisenhower to Secretary Dulles asking that it be dispatched to the Prime Minister. Also attached was slightly different draft, dated May 4.↩
- Supra.↩
- Document 402.↩
- For documentation on the Korean Armistice negotiations, see volume xv .↩
- Presumably this is a reference to the editorial in Pravda, Apr. 25, 1953, which provided a critique of President Eisenhower’s speech on Apr. 16.↩