<--PREV Doc #778  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #780 Document #779; March 16, 1954 To John Foster Dulles Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series ; Category: Memorandum The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part IV: "Pushing ahead along the broad center"; December 1953 to March 1954 Chapter 9: Fending off "the reactionary fringe"   A man visited me this morning whose cousin has lived for many years in Italy.1 His cousin is a woman who is married to a member of one of the old and rich Italian families. His authority for the following statement is this Italian--whose name I could get if you thought desirable. (a). This Italian gentleman believes that one of the big troubles in Italy is that the rich are not paying their taxes. It has been the custom for many years to bribe tax collectors. He insists that no rich family in Italy pays more than one-third of their just taxes. He believes that if this matter were attacked vigorously and insistently that a very fine result would occur. (b). He believes also that the land holdings of the rich families and of the church must be broken up and that parts of them, at least, should be practically confiscated in order to give small farms to peasants desiring them. He feels that these two reforms would keep Italy solidly in the Western column; without them he believes it almost certain that it will go Communistic within a very few years.2 1 Robert Phillips Burroughs, a life insurance executive from Manchester, New Hampshire, had met with Eisenhower at eleven o'clock. A committed Republican and special adviser to Eisenhower during the 1952 political campaign, Burroughs would later discuss another matter with the President; see the following document. 2 Dulles, who would acknowledge Eisenhower's letter on the following day, said that he suspected there was a "good deal of truth" in the observations (Mar. 17, 1954, AWF/D-H). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Memorandum To John Foster Dulles, 16 March 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 779. 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/779.cfm <--PREV Doc #778  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #780

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