611.51/7–254
No. 644
Memorandum of Conversation, by the
Secretary of State1
Ambassador Bonnet expressed concern at the statements of Senators Knowland and Johnson and the general trend of Congressional attitude. He said that as far as the French withdrawals in Indochina were concerned, he was sure that our military people had been advised that these were in contemplation. I said that I did not know that we were being kept informed of these developments in advance.
I subsequently spoke alone to Mme. Bonnet. She is probably going back to France for a few days. She expressed herself as very hopeful of Mendès-France. She believed that he would work out some honorable settlement in Indochina and would then complete EDC. She asked us to have confidence of Mendès-France’s intentions to put the EDC through, and particularly urged that he should be given an opportunity without Adenauer rocking the boat. She expressed herself quite vehemently on this latter point.
She will probably be seeing Mendès-France in Paris within the next few days.
- According to a notation on the source text, this conversation took place at the French Embassy residence on the evening of July 2.↩