751G.00/7–2154: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Embassy in France1
priority
253. For Ambassador from Secretary. If you think appropriate please orally say to Mendes-France that while many aspects of the Indochina settlement obviously reflect a sense of compulsion rather than of choice, I feel that it is at least a good augury for France that he has demonstrated a capacity to take decisions and carry them out. You may tell him that I hope he feels that our presence through General Smith at the Geneva Conference was helpful to his cause, and that so far as I am concerned, I greatly value the opportunity we had at Paris for an exchange of views, and believe that exchange will be helpful for the future.2
- Drafted by the Secretary of State.↩
- Telegram 364 from Paris, July 27, contained the following reply by Ambassador Dillon: “In accordance with reftel I told Mendès yesterday how much you valued the exchange of views you had with him in Paris, and how impressed you were with the fact that he was showing the capacity to take decisions and carry them out. Mendès seemed very pleased and said that he had found the Paris talks of the greatest personal value to him. He also said that he felt the return of Bedell Smith to Geneva had been an event of the greatest importance and that he thought it was probably impossible for us to realize how important Bedell Smith’s presence had been to achieving a successful result at Geneva.” (751G.00/7–2754)↩