Eisenhower Library, Dulles papers, “Telephone Conversations”
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Secretary of State and Congressman John M. Vorys of Ohio1
V. said he is worried—he is to be interviewed for Capitol Cloakroom this p.m. and knows they will ask about EDC, Indochina etc. V. brought up “guaranteeing”. The Sec. said we would act towards an Armistice in Indochina as towards the one in Korea. We would not go to war, but we are free to work peacefully against it. We will defend the armistice lines in Korea. In IC with others we will defend the line but we won’t break it. If the armistice is not respectable, we will disassociate ourselves from it. V. mentioned Locarno—the Secretary explained what it means.
V. said he can’t understand this last trip. The Sec. said the basis for our position is Article 2 of the UN Charter. We are after SEATO to hold all non-Communist portions of the area. The Sec. said if the French get the result they think they can, we are lucky. V. said he thinks the result of the trip and the trip are not good. The Sec. said if he knew the whole story he would think it is good. The Sec, said he has been very tough on this whole proposition.
V. still wasn’t convinced and the Sec. said we could have run out entirely—then there would have been total disaster in Indochina and [Page 1842] Europe. The Sec. said no to making any guarantee to the Communists for concessions they might make. If France didn’t have something to lean on, our Franco-American relations might have blown up. This that we have done will avoid disastrous results, and the Sec. said it might have good results.
The Sec.’s basis for action is to go to war only to stop aggression—not to remedy every inequity in the world. The Sec. again referred to living up to Article 2 of the Charter—and that is in black and white. The Sec. said not to think he has sold out, because he hasn’t.2
- Drafted by Phyllis D. Bernau of the office of the Secretary of State. The call originated with Vorys.↩
- Secretary Dulles reiterated his position during a telephone conversation with Henry R. Luce, Director of Time, Inc., on the morning of July 17. The record of the Secretary’s remarks during that conversation read in part as follows: “The program is far from a sellout. Our own position is somewhat weakened by the fact that we don’t want to push them in a war where we are not sure we want to stand beside them and fight. We don’t want to guarantee the Commies the fruits of their aggression. It will not be a sellout—but it will be a partial surrender. It is a question of whether the military settlement is so defined that the Communist success is limited to what they gained on the field of battle or whether they are going to gain much more than that through conditions which will undermine the integrity of Laos, Cambodia and Southern Vietnam and the will to go on fighting. The question is whether they are willling to stick to terms that reflect the military situation. The Sec. thinks they will stand on terms so we can move in there and bolster their position.” (Eisenhower Library, Dulles papers, “Telephone Conversations”)↩