295. Letter From Prime Minister Macmillan to President Eisenhower 1
My Dear Friend: Since we parted in Bermuda you have sent me several letters2 and I feel I now owe you one. You remember that you said that you would like to hear from me from time to time, not on some specific problem but just about things in general. I am hoping to get a few days holiday at Easter, so I thought I would try to send you a short letter before leaving.
[Page 769]Since I got back I am happy to say that the strikes in the engineering and shipbuilding industries have been called off. But the position is not very healthy and there are some rather bad forces at work. However, I hope that we can avoid further trouble and that the general atmosphere will improve. To be quite frank, I think there has been a bit of politics mixed up in this.
The Defence paper has gone very well.3 I have done my best to persuade our friends in NATO that our object is two-fold. It is not simply a matter of saving money, manpower, resources—although you know how important this is for us. I remember my talking to George Humphrey about this in Paris and he agreed that our best contribution was to be solvent as well as militarily strong.4 But I think that if we can get back in a few years time to regular forces—what you would call “the career man”, we shall have a very fine contribution to NATO, far better than we have now with this continual movement in and out, and so many of our trained officers and N.C.O.s engaged in teaching. We are also fighting the battle of the nuclear deterrent and we are determined to see that our forces shall be armed with the best weapons. Here your help over Corporal for the tactical weapon and over the rockets for the strategic is tremendously appreciated. Don’t take any notice of the foolish people who talk about our humiliation because we have drawn upon your generosity and the work of your technicians. All this talk comes from the folk who would like everybody to be humiliated. I do not know whether you have any fellow-travellers still. We have a few here. You used to call them in Algiers “the long haired starry eyed boys”. Some of ours are a survival of the old pacifist tradition, and to that extent I respect their opinions; Quakerism for instance is a very honourable creed. But I am afraid that others are rather more sinister and hang about the Soviet Embassy more than I would wish. However, they do not amount to much and we shall be all right on all this.
It was a great grief that Bobbety Salisbury felt unable to agree to let out Archbishop Makarios.5 I am bound to say I don’t much like letting him out, and he will be a great nuisance when he gets to Athens, and still more when he comes to London. I expect he will turn up in New York and Washington too. But I don’t quite see how we [Page 770] could have kept him in Seychelles indefinitely, and the break in the EOKA morale seemed a very good moment to throw this fish back in the sea.
As for the long term solution of Cyprus, we are working hard on this, but it is not easy to find just the right thing to do. However I am quite hopeful that we shall be able to have a definite plan and I would like to write to you about it as soon as I can.
In general our economy has survived Suez and the other troubles with extraordinary resilience. We were very grateful for all the help we have had in the fuel-oil sphere from the United States. It has been a splendid example of joint planning.
We have got a good Budget with some remission of taxation, modest but encouraging. We have got good exports and the only thing that worries me is this perpetual battle against the inflationary wage-price spiral. It is one of the penalties of full employment, for it gives tremendous power to the Unions.
I know how glad you will be to see that Anthony has stood the operation very well.6 I spoke to him just before it and he seemed in good heart. When I took his job on I knew it would be pretty tricky with lots of hurdles ahead, rather like our Grand National Steeplechase. We have managed to scramble over the first hurdles well enough, but now we are approaching what I call the water jump, i.e. the Canal. I do not honestly think that we can make a very glorious showing over this. Indeed we may well fall in; but I think we can pull the horse out all right on the other side, struggle somehow into the saddle, and ride on. This leads me to say how grateful we all are for the really close consultation and co-operation which has been reestablished between FOSTER and his people and Harold Caccia and our Foreign Office. This has worked very well during these rather anxious days. As I told you frankly at Bermuda I think our public realise that they will be rather humiliated over this. The only thing is to tell them the facts, however unpalatable, and to make them realise that if we may have to eat a bit of dirt in the short term, there is still the long term to come. I feel more and more convinced that Nasser and his regime are leading that country and the whole Middle East to disaster and there will be no peace until that system falls. It was the same thing with Mussolini. These people start off with good intentions and mean to help their countries; but after the first few months or years they fall into all the temptations of dictatorship. It makes one realise that our democratic processes, although always tedious and sometimes somewhat absurd, are really the best thing after all.
[Page 771]I do hope that you are feeling better and that your cough has gone. What I would like most of all would be if you could pay us a visit here, and have a private holiday in your own home in Scotland. Would this ever be possible? I am pretty well but looking forward to a few days’ rest at Easter.
Ever yours
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, International File. No classification marking.↩
- Reference is presumably to the President’s letter of March 29 regarding the British decision to release Archbishop Makarios and the letter of April 2 regarding cooperation within the Western European Union in armament research, development, and production. (Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, Eisenhower to Macmillan Correspondence 1957–1958)↩
- Reference is to the White Paper entitled “Outline of Future Policy,” published on April 4; see footnote 3, Document 260.↩
- According to the chronology in Department of State files of the NATO Council of Ministers meeting in Paris, December 11–14, 1956, which was attended by both Secretary Humphrey and Foreign Secretary Macmillan, no record was kept of their conversation of 3:30 p.m. on December 11. (Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 62 D 181, CF 825)↩
- When the British Cabinet decided to release Makarios from detention in the Seychelles and allow him to go anywhere but Cyprus, Lord Salisbury resigned as Lord President of the Council on March 29, 1957.↩
- Eden underwent surgery in Boston on April 13, 1957.↩