34. Letter From Eisenhower to John Foster Dulles1
Herewith a draft of the talk I am planning to make before the Editors on April seventeenth. There is still quite a bit of work to be done on it.
My theme is that we must find ways of reducing the need for armaments. I mention various proposals that we have put forward during the past five years to ease tensions and promote peace—for example disarmament, atoms for peace, science for peace, control of outer space for peaceful purposes, exchanges of students, leaders of thought and so on, and a general diminishing of the barriers between free intercourse of ideas, persons and things. But I have wanted to make a rather startling new proposal.
I wanted to suggest that, if the Soviets were interested, I would recommend to Congress the inviting of several thousand students for one year. Maybe this idea is not completely sound, but we need some vehicle to ride in order to suggest to the world, even if ever so briefly, that we are not stuck in the mud. We realize that the world is asking for something that is almost impossible when it insists that we should [Typeset Page 120] give to all peoples complete assurance that we are not only peaceful and friendly, but that we shall “hold the initiative” in striving for peace.
Our public relations problem almost defies solution. The need always for concerting our views with those of our principal allies, the seductive quality of Soviet promises and pronouncements in spite of their unreliability, the propaganda disadvantage under which we operate because [Facsimile Page 2] of the monolithic character of Soviet news broadcasts, and the readiness of many nations to take a virtual black-mail position as they make more and more urgent requests for aid—all serve to make us appear before the world as something less than persuasive in proclaiming our peaceful purposes and our effectiveness in pursuing them.
I didn’t mean to write at this length. I only want to ask for your comments on the draft as it stands now. Any penciled notes in the margin would be completely satisfactory.
If you could let me have the draft back some time the early part of the week. I would be grateful.
With warm regard,
As ever,
P.S. Your note of this morning, enclosing some comments by your staff, seems to condemn my idea as futile. But I’m not yet certain that, as presented in the accompanying draft, it may not have some value.
- Source: Transmits draft speech with proposal to invite Soviet students to U.S. No classification marking. 2 pp. Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries.↩