<--PREV Doc #42  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #44 Document #43; February 19, 1953 To Sherman Adams Series: EM, AWF, International Series: India ; Category: Memorandum. Secret The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part I: Charting a New Course; January 1953 to April 1953 Chapter 1: Developing a spirit of teamwork   I have read this letter and both its attachments.1 In general, the situation as outlined by the Ambassador conforms to the picture presented to me in the past by American businessmen, government officials, and others travelling through or acquainted with that country.2 The only way in which this presentation is more somber and threatening than others I have seen is in its insistence that the siuation is immediately critical, particularly in the rapidly growing influence of the Communist Party in rural areas.3 Please ask the Secretary of State to have a qualified staff officer of his make brief summaries of these documents for me to keep in my own desk. Request also that he provide me with the general estimate of State Department conclusions respecting the accuracy and soundness of these communications.4 It would appear to me that, if we want to get real support for the kind of recommendations to our Congress that would necessarily follow upon complete acceptance of the Ambassador's conclusions, we should send to India a Special Mission (with Indian consent) composed of businessmen and scholars who could bring back an unbiased, outside-of-government conclusion and recommendation.5 1 See no. 38. 2 Chester Bowles, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to India and Nepal. 3 "According to recent information," Bowles had reported, "many Indian Communists now freely state that it is difficult or impossible for them to make rapid progress in India in the absence of military assistance from outside. A Chinese Communist invasion of South Asia would bring the hoped-for pressure to bear in a most direct and dangerous manner. Chinese military prestige would be at a high point and the subverting conviction that world Communism is the `wave of the future' would undermine the will of tens of millions of Indians who have never known anything but poverty and ill health" (AWF/I). 4 Responding to a request for information on the 1954 U.S. aid package for India, State Department specialists on March 3 sent Dulles a memorandum surveying the political and economic situation in India. The paper made no reference to Bowles but agreed in substance with his view of India (see State, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, vol. XI, Africa and South Asia, 2 pts. [1983], pt. 2, pp. 1691-92). 5 While the Eisenhower Administration apparently dispatched no such group to India, see nos. 104 and 161. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Memorandum. Secret To Sherman Adams, 19 February 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 43. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/43.cfm <--PREV Doc #42  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #44

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