Dear C. D.: I have just read the draft of the memorandum that you wrote to the Secretary of State.1 Shooting from the hip, I say with scarcely a reservation "I agree with it all." However, there is one paragraph on which I should like some further explanation. I quote:
"The details of what might be done already exist in many minds and in innumerable studies, memos and reports. What is needed is not another report, but an imaginative synthesis of much that already exists, to which should be added a large number of action items which up to now Washington has either shied away from or which have become lost in the mass of papers."
Where are those data and ideas? Who would get them together, and what would be his status while he was doing so, in order that the raw material, in useable form, could be presented to the conference? Would not the conference be just another love feast unless there was some preliminary staff work done to have all these bits and pieces analyzed in advance, and possibly even so arranged that there were two or three main themes or courses of action that would immediately become obvious?
I am not asking for a long and exhaustive analysis of the subject--the kind the conference would be expected to make. What I should like is merely the simple answer to each of the questions I have asked above.
A couple of other questions occur to me. Who would call the conference? How could we make certain that in the public mind it does not appear to be a mere repetition of the Randall Committee, and therefore practically asserting dissatisfaction with that Committee's work?2
Possibly you and Foster already have worked these things out, but if I could have a few simple statements of the kind indicated, I would be in a better position to make my own decisions in the matter.3
With warm personal regard, As ever
P.S. Thank the Lord you are still thinking on our problems and on a truly international basis.4
