<--PREV Doc #223  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #225 Document #224; June 2, 1953 To John Foster Dulles Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series ; Category: Secret The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part II: Settling into "the long pull"; May 1953 to August 1953 Chapter 4: Striving for Unity   Memorandum to the Secretary of State: As you have probably been told, we had a conference this morning with the Congressional leaders on the amendment added by the Senate Appropriations Committee to the bill for the support of the United Nations.1 It was agreed that the Senate leaders would remove this particular amendment, but that the Administration would seek assurances from our allies, through diplomatic channels, that those allies would not use a Korean truce as an excuse for urging the acceptance of Red China in the United Nations. I stated that I would make it perfectly clear in these representations that the Congress of the United States would be badly shaken by any such development; that the temper of Congress was such that any determined attempt on the part of our allies of this kind could have the most unfortunate results. I further stated that so long as Red China was constituted on its present basis, under its present leaders, and so obviously serving the ends of Soviet Russia, that I would never be a party to its recognition and its acceptance in the United Nations. I understand also that your Appropriations bill has been so badly slashed in the House that it appears you may have to close more than thirty consulates in Europe.2 Isn't this something we should prepare to make a real fight on? I am all for reduction in budget in personnel, but I do think that by and large our consulates have performed for us a most useful service. 1 See the preceding document. 2 On June 4 the Senate passed a State-Commerce-Justice appropriations measure that cut $367 million from the amount Truman earlier had proposed for those departmental budgets. That same day the State Department announced that budgetary cuts had forced the closing of five foreign consulates and that "for economy reasons forty-one to forty-six more might be shut down," twenty-five in European or British Commonwealth countries (U.S. Department of State Bulletin 28, no. 727 [June 1, 1953], 792, 859; New York Times, June 5, 1953). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Secret To John Foster Dulles, 2 June 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 224. 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/224.cfm <--PREV Doc #223  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #225

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