Editorial Note

The editors responsible for finishing Lester Pearson’s second volume of memoirs after his death recount a discussion at a meeting between Acheson and Pearson on Sunday morning, November 9, by publishing extracts of a diary which Pearson kept while President of the United Nations General Assembly. No record of this meeting has been found in Department of State files; for an account of that meeting, see Pearson, Memoirs, volume 2, page 322. Pearson wrote in his diary that Acheson was “not unsympathetic” to Menon’s proposal and, if Washington agreed, he was willing to accept the Indian ideas in principle, although he stated that changes in the draft resolution would be required. Pearson urged Acheson to convince policymakers in Washington that Menon’s proposal, or something close to it, would emerge from the First Committee and would probably pass in the Assembly, and emphasized the advantages of the Indians putting forward a proposal which the rest of those nations participating in the United Nations effort in Korea could accept. Even if the Communists rejected it, Pearson continued, its passage would be “a step forward” and would prevent the [Page 594] Indians from later charging that the United States had sabotaged their efforts to solve the prisoner-of-war impasse.