<--PREV Doc #1341  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1343 Document #1342; March 12, 1955 Memorandum for Files Series: EM, AWF, Ann Whitman Diary Series ; Category: Top secret The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVI - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part VII: "Nothing could be worse than global war"; January 1955 to May 1955 Chapter 15: Searching "for an honorable peace"   On March 10, 1955, after the Security Council meeting, I had the Secretary of Defense into my office to caution him as to the casual statements he was constantly making in press conferences and elsewhere, and which sometimes cause very definite embarrassment to the Administration. These normally involve subjects touching upon foreign relations. The latest two were a hint that he gave out that he knew something about a bomb that was more horrible than the H-bomb, and his casual statement that the loss or retention of Quemoy and the Matsus would make little difference in the long run.1 While I think that he considers himself a master of public relations, he seems to have no comprehension at all of what embarrassment such remarks can cause the Secretary of State and me in our efforts to keep the tangled international situation from becoming completely impossible. 1 Eisenhower may have been referring to a January 27 statement by Wilson before the House Armed Services Committee--where he said that the situation existing in the Formosa Strait was "just a ripple"--and a February 15 news conference statement--to the effect that there was no atomic stalemate with the Soviet Union because the United States was "out ahead" (New York Times, Jan. 27, Feb. 16, 1955). The Defense Secretary had previously stated in an NSC meeting "the U.S. had to get the Chinese Nationalists off the offshore islands" (NSC meeting minutes, Feb. 18, 1955, AWF/NSC; see also NSC meeting minutes, Jan. 21, 1955, ibid.). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Top secret Memorandum for Files, 12 March 1955. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1342. 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/1342.cfm <--PREV Doc #1341  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #1343

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