Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file
No. 564
Prime Minister Churchill to President
Eisenhower1
I am sure that everyone will want to know whether you still contemplate a meeting with the Soviets. I remember our talk at Bernie’s2 when you told me I was welcome to meet Stalin if I thought fit and that you intended to offer to do so. I understood this as meaning that you did not want us to go together, but now there is no more Stalin I wonder whether this makes any difference to your view about separate approaches to the new regime or whether there is a possibility of collective action. When I know how you feel [Page 1116] now that the personalities are altered I can make up my own mind on what to advise the Cabinet.
I have the feeling that we might both of us together or separately be called to account if no attempt were made to turn over a leaf so that a new page would be started with something more coherent on it than a series of casual and dangerous incidents at the many points of contact between the two divisions of the world. I cannot doubt you are thinking deeply on this which holds the first place in my thoughts. I do not think I met Malenkov but Anthony and I have done a lot of business with Molotov.
I am so glad we have reached an agreement about joint negotiations in Egypt.
Kindest regards.
- Tansmitted in a letter of Mar. 11 from British Ambassador Sir Roger Makins to President Eisenhower.↩
- Presumably reference is to Bernard Baruch, financial expert and sometime adviser to various U.S. Presidents. Prime Minister Churchill visited the United States in January 1953. In the course of that visit, Churchill met with then President-elect Eisenhower at Baruch’s home. A general recollection of that meeting appears in Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, p. 97. No official record of the conversation has been found.↩