<--PREV Doc #2128  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #2130 Document #2129; December 5, 1956 To James Bryant Conant Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVII - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part XI: The free world's "sad mess"; October 1956 to January 1957 Chapter 23: What is needed is "a calming influence"   Dear Jim: I was deeply interested in the attitudes and the thinking of German university students as reported in your excellent letter.1 There is much that is truly heartening in your account--particularly the evidence of a strongly-held attachment to a moral basis for the conduct of international affairs. After reading your letter, I sent it on to Secretary Hoover so that he might also have the benefit of your observations.2 With warm regard, As ever 1 Conant, U.S. Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, had written the President on November 21 (AWF/A) to report on the sentiment among German students in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Hungary (see nos. 2044, 2055, and 2067). Conant had reported that while the wrath of German students against the Russians was to be expected, what was surprising was the "equal indignation" directed against the British and the French. The Ambassador stated that he believed student sentiment arose from "a deep-seated moral conviction." "It is evident," he wrote, "that the lessons of history had made a deep impression on them and the knowledge of the Nazi atrocities, the Hitler aggression, and the results of this aggression as seen by their ruined cities, had turned them into idealists in regard to a moral basis for international order." On British and French action in Suez see nos. 2068, 2071, and 2073. 2 The State Department prepared a draft reply to Conant; it was later redrafted in the White House (Howe to Goodpaster, Dec. 3, 1956, AWF/A, Conant Corr.). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To James Bryant Conant, 5 December 1956. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 2129. 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/2129.cfm <--PREV Doc #2128  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #2130

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