75. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Tyler) to Secretary of State Rusk1
Here are some brief impressions of a very frank luncheon discussion with Patrick Gordon Walker in a small group at the Council on Foreign Relations today:
1. ANF/MLF. GW dismissed any prospects of reaching agreement. He said that we had killed and buried not only the MLF but the ANF by [Page 189] the position we had taken since December. He said the only hope would have been for us to continue to press the Germans, instead of which we had told the Europeans that they should work things out among themselves. This they were incapable of doing, and it was clear that Erhard was not about to do anything which would expose him to pressure from De Gaulle. He said that Germany would finally have to choose between De Gaulle and the United States, and that unless we held the German feet to the fire on this issue, we would be conceding the victory to De Gaulle. He said that the current Wilson-Erhard talks in Bonn would lead nowhere.
[Here follows numbered paragraph 2, in which Tyler recorded Gordon Walker’s comments on U.S. efforts to preserve order in Africa.]
3. BAOR. GW said that there was no doubt that HMG was going to reduce the UK troops in Germany. He developed a purely military rationale for this in terms of free world security requirements east of Suez. I raised the political factor, which he evidently found inconvenient and brushed aside. In general, his comments about the UK role with regard to Europe were (to me at least) disconcertingly irresponsible: “We are certainly not going to go on keeping huge forces on the continent of Europe,” he said, and added by way of explanation that to do so would be in conflict with British policy over the last four hundred years.
Comment: I had the impression that the other people present at lunch (including Bob Murphy, Dick Neustadt, Ben Moore, Phil Mosely and Bob Blum) were rather put out by a certain overtone of sarcasm and flipness in GW’s approach to these rather weighty matters.
GW told me how much he had enjoyed and appreciated his talk with you in Cleveland, and I wonder whether he talked to you at all in the same vein as he did today. I rather fancy that today may have been a case of misjudging his audience, but if he reflected the inwardness of the Labor Government attitude on foreign affairs it is rather depressing.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, DEF(ANF). Confidential; Limit Distribution. Drafted by Tyler. A copy was sent to Ball.↩