Office of the Historian

147. Telegram From the Mission at the United Nations to the Delegation at the Foreign Ministers Meetings, at Geneva1

New York, November 7, 1955—midnight.

13. Eyes only Secretary from Lodge. Re membership.

1.
I believe that I can stall off the membership question for a little while because of the fact that neither the French nor the Russians have replied to my inquiry as to abstaining from the use of the veto in the Security Council on the membership question. But this device cannot be used indefinitely.
2.
There is also a considerable amount of preparatory work that has to be done in the time elapsing after you have made your decision and before I make a public statement. I refer to organizing, supporting and following statements by the Italians, Irish and Portuguese and statements by various American politicians. I have in mind Nixon and Joe Martin.2
3.
Wilcox is talking to Hickenlooper3 and I believe that it is greatly preferable for you to communicate with Knowland4 yourself. If not possible, Hoover or I can do it. All this will take time.
4.
I have talked with two men in the Middle West who were extremely active and helpful in the Eisenhower campaign in ’52. One is Charles S. Reed of Omaha, who was the first Eisenhower delegate in Nebraska. His reaction was that a few hardheads wouldn’t like it “but that it would help us a lot around election time.” This is significant coming from Omaha. The other man, whom I am sure you know, is Barak Mattingly of St Louis who is one of the very shrewdest operators. He thinks the minus aspects of it are insignificant and that it will be very well received indeed and do us a lot of good in his area.
5.
It is important that this be done in such a way that we not look as though we were being dragged in by the heels, as a result of pressure from others, and that is where the time element comes in. On general principles, I always prefer a Monday morning release date. If you were to ok a release or Monday, November 14, we could [Page 335] start to organize the follow-up from the proper foreign and domestic quarters now.
Lodge
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 310.2/11–755. Secret; Priority. Repeated to the Department eyes only Hoover and Phillips as Delga 230, which is the source text.↩
  2. Representative Joe Martin (R-Mass.), Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1953; thereafter Minority Leader.↩
  3. Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper (R-Iowa), member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.↩
  4. Senator William F. Knowland (R-Calif.), member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.↩