308. Memorandum of a Conversation Between President Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Eden, Geneva, July 17, 19551
About Quemoy and the Matsus. Eden expressed himself as very much alarmed that this was going to lead into real conflict and stated that [Page 662] it would create a terrible problem for Britain if the United States should get into a war with Red China on this issue. He said the British government would always hope to be on the American side in every quarrel. This is their fixed and firm policy. But the British people as a whole look on the offshore islands as belonging to Red China, and consider that we are foolish to be supporting Chiang even indirectly in possession of those areas.
I tried to explain the United States position to Eden. I told him of the great importance that Chiang attached to these islands as “symbols” to his own forces. Since Eden agrees that we cannot afford to give up Formosa, he had no trouble understanding the importance of morale in Chiang’s army on Formosa. I also brought out the importance of Chiang to other emigre Chinese in the many countries of Southeast Asia. Likewise I pointed out that our people felt that another single backward step in the region would have the gravest effects on all of our Chinese friends.
Finally, I outlined to him the attitude we had taken and the efforts we had made in attempting to get Chiang to be somewhat more flexible with respect to those islands. I told him why we sent Radford and Robertson out to the region and how earnestly we hoped that Chiang would not only change his pronouncements concerning the indispensability of the islands and, militarily, that he would hold them more as strong outposts than as a sine qua non to his government’s existence.
[Here follows discussion under the headings “Mid-East”, “Bicycles and generators”, and “Floating pound”.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries. Secret. The source text, unsigned and dated July 19, bears the heading, “Notes dictated by the President regarding his conversation with Sir Anthony Eden, held Sunday, July 17, in the afternoon. There was no one else present during the talk.” A memorandum of conversation by Dulles, dated July 17, summarizes what the President had told him about the conversation and records a conversation at the same time between Dulles and Macmillan. It is scheduled for publication in the Summit Conference compilation in a forthcoming volume. For Eden’s comments on this conversation and other conversations at Geneva relating to China, see Anthony Eden, Full Circle (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960), pp. 342–345.↩