244. Message From the Secretary of State to the President1
Dear Mr. President: I am very grateful for your kind message.2 You were good indeed to send it when you must have been so busy with your speech.3 It was not fully reported here, but has been well received.
We made considerable progress today in getting agreement on the details for setting up the Users’ Association. We have agreed [Page 545] that the governments here will have a week or ten days in which to make the ultimate political decision to join or not to join. We are hopeful that the Eastern Bloc of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Ethiopia can be brought along under Turkish leadership. However, this remains to be seen. The Egyptians are exerting the strongest kind of pressure against their joining. The Scandinavians are lukewarm, but may eventually come through under the influence of Norway. Spain continues equivocal. Yesterday afternoon4 there were a series of very weak speeches which put all the emphasis upon the necessity for peace and no emphasis at all upon the need for what the United Nations Charter calls a settlement “in accordance with the principles of justice and international law”. So at the close of the session I launched into a rather strong speech emphasizing that peace was only one side of the coin and that we must all exert as much effort for a just settlement as we would for peace or else all of our postwar structure would collapse. The general impression was that this talk of mine provided a useful tonic and bucked up the conference when it seemed to be sagging rather badly.
It seems almost certain that we will complete our work here tomorrow so that I can get off tomorrow night. Perhaps I shall stop at Bermuda Saturday morning for the swim I missed last time.
Faithfully yours,
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 110.11–DU/9–2056. Secret. Transmitted to the Department of State in Dulte 6 from London, 9 p.m., which is the source text, with the instruction: “Eyes only Acting Secretary for President from Secretary”. Dulte 2 was received at 7:57 p.m. A copy is in the Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Dulles–Herter Series.↩
- On September 19, Eisenhower sent Dulles a message thanking him for his cable of September 19 and commenting that the situation at the London Conference seemed confused and difficult. The message was transmitted in Tedul 10 to London, September 19. (Department of State, Central Files, 110.11–DU/9–1956)↩
- On September 19, President Eisenhower delivered a major address over radio and television to open his reelection campaign. For text, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956, pp. 779–788.↩
- Reference is to the second plenary session of the conference, which began at 4 p.m., September 19; see Document 237.↩
- Dulte 6 bears this typed signature.↩