Office of the Historian

3. Letter From the Assistant Under Secretary of State in the British Foreign Office (Shuckburgh) to Francis H. Russell1

London, January 7, 1955.

My Dear Russell: Thank you so much for your letter of December 21,2 which I ought to have answered long ago. I have no doubt that you will have seen the various messages which have passed between the Foreign Office and our Embassy in Washington since then. You will know by now that I propose to turn up in Washington on January 20 bringing with me Mr. G. G. Arthur.3 I hope this will enable me to have a talk with Mr. Johnston before he leaves Washington on the 23rd and to hear from him his estimate of [Page 4] the prospects of his forthcoming tour in the Middle East. I hasten to assure you (in the light of a message which I received through the Embassy here)4 ff. Johnston was to resume his negotiations in January; see the memorandum of December 20, 1954, ibid., pp. 1727–1730. Telegram 3456 to London, January 3, instructed the Embassy to discuss the Johnston mission with Shuckburgh, emphasizing that the Department considered that his efforts complemented the Alpha project and that it believed British support was essential to the plan’s success. (Department of State, Central Files, 684A.86/ 1–355) that I have never thought we ought to delay Mr. Johnston’s further efforts to reach an agreement on the Jordan Waters. When I wrote my paper for Sir Anthony Eden5 I was not aware that Mr. Johnston was about to visit the Middle East again. There is no doubt that if he has a success over his business it will immensely facilitate our own wider task. If he does not achieve the results he hopes, then we may have to fall back on some procedure such as I suggested in my paper.

I suppose I should expect to remain in Washington for about a week or ten days? I hope to arrive with some rather more precise suggestions under the various headings in my paper. No doubt you will have many ideas too for me to look at. I will, of course, stay as long as it seems profitable for the sake of getting our ideas clear.

We must do our best about the secrecy side. I am quite sure it will be no good trying to pretend that we have not discussed the Israel/Arab dispute at all. The right line, I think, is to admit that this is naturally one of the topics which I shall be discussing with my opposite numbers in Washington but to deny absolutely that there is any “joint solution” being worked out between our two Governments.

Yours ever,

Evelyn Shuckburgh

  1. Source: Department of State, NEA Files: Lot 59 D 518, Washington Talks, Jan.–Feb. 1955: Memos, etc. preceding actual meetings (Dated 11/15/54 thru 1/27/55). Top Secret.

    On December 20, 1954, Secretary Dulles assigned Russell responsibility for reviewing Arab-Israeli issues, formulating proposals to facilitate the conclusion of a peace settlement in Palestine, and developing a concerted diplomatic strategy with his British Foreign Office counterpart, Charles Arthur Evelyn Shuckburgh. Russell officially remained Deputy Chief of Mission and Counselor of Embassy in Israel until May 17, 1955.

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  2. For text, see Foreign Relations, 1952–1954, vol. IX, Part 1, p. 1733.↩
  3. Geoffrey George Arthur, British Foreign Service Officer in the Permanent Under-Secretary of State’s Department in the British Foreign Office.↩
  4. For documentation regarding U.S. interest in the development of the water resources of the Near East and the negotiations of Ambassador Eric Johnston, see Foreign Relations, 1952–1954, vol. IX, Part 1, pp. 1345↩
  5. Reference is to Shuckburgh’s memorandum of December 16, 1954, to Eden. See Foreign Relations, 1952–1954, vol. IX, Part 1, p. 1719, footnote 1.↩