Office of the Historian

180. Letter From the President’s Special Assistant (Stassen) to the Secretary of State1

London, April 2, 1957.

Dear Foster: I trust you have been able to get a bit of rest after the strenuous schedule of SEATO and Bermuda.2 Best wishes to you and to Janet.

[Page 468]

The first two weeks of this session have been quite different than the preceding Subcommittee series. There has been a lack of recriminations from the Soviet and a more sensible approach to procedures than before.

The nuclear testing issue has been a very active one and has tended to be much more intense outside the Subcommittee than inside. The Bermuda communiqué, the Japanese interventions, and the House of Commons debate have all spotlighted this subject.3 Their proposal for a cessation of tests appears to be motivated in part by a real concern over the prospective spreading of the nuclear weapons into the control of additional governments, and the consequent danger that developments not initiated by either the US or USSR might involve the USSR in a nuclear war in which they would suffer great devastation.

I have spent considerable time with the British in developing more general understanding and support for the US position on nuclear testing. The Labor Attaché of the Embassy requested that I talk to George Brown, the Minister of Defense of the shadow cabinet,4 and after I cleared with Commander Noble and found that he wished me to do so, I met with Brown and the Labor Attaché and answered his questions about US nuclear testing policy. He has advocated within the Labor Party a position more in the direction of the governmental policy, and is in opposition to the position of Bevan,5 et al. His consultation with me, for his own sake, should be kept confidential.

We are now working over a cable which will go forward in the next few days asking consideration for certain USDEL recommendations in this nuclear testing area.6

The next item on our agenda is the field of non-nuclear armaments and armed forces, and this may give us the best indication of the current Soviet intentions.

We are maintaining a regular liaison in London with the missions of the Disarmament Commission countries, and of those that have manifested a special interest, including the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Japan, Yugoslavia, India, Sweden, Iraq, Norway, Colombia and the Philippines. We have asked the Department in Washington [Page 469] to cover China since the Nationalist Government, of course, has no mission here in London. We made an agreed Western Four report to NATO during the first week.

The essential Western unity has been maintained very well thus far, although there have been difficult moments stemming in part from the fact that Moch does not personally support the position of his government on some of the key items, and some of the Foreign Office personnel below Noble were at first in considerable disagreement with the position of the UK Government on testing at the time of Bermuda.

Sincerely yours,

Harold
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 600.0012/4–257. Secret; Personal.↩
  2. Dulles attended the Council of Ministers of SEATO in Canberra, Australia, March 11–13, and accompanied President Eisenhower to Bermuda for his meeting with British Prime Minister Macmillan, March 21–23.↩
  3. Regarding the Bermuda communiqué, see the editorial note, Supra. The Japanese “interventions” presumably refer to longstanding opposition to nuclear testing in Japan and to the joint resolution submitted to the First Committee of the U.N. General Assembly by Canada, Norway, and Japan on January 18 (A/C.1/L.162 and rev 1) and referred to the Subcommittee of the U.N. Disarmament Commission calling for the registration of atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. This draft resolution is printed in Documents on Disarmament, 1945–1959, vol. II, p. 738. Regarding the House of Commons debate on nuclear testing, see Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, vol. 566, cols. 178–181, 321–325, 1135, and 1144–1147. See also footnote 3, Document 152.↩
  4. George A. Brown was also Labour member of Parliament.↩
  5. Aneurin Bevan, Labour member of Parliament.↩
  6. See infra.↩