<--PREV Doc #903  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #905 Document #904; May 29, 1954 To John Foster Dulles and Herbert Brownell, Jr. Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series ; Category: Confidential The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part V: Maintaining "a united defense"; April 1954 to August 1954 Chapter 10: Losing the war "they could not win"   Memorandum for the Secretary of State [and] the Attorney General: In the note I wrote to you recently about the Bricker Amendment, I did not mean to imply that the Administration should take the initiative in again raising this question in the Senate.1 My purpose is simply to guard against the possibility that the matter is brought up again and under such circumstances that we would have no position to take other than a flat negative. I believe that such a position would damage some of our best friends in the Senate for the simple reason that far too many people believe--erroneously it is true--that some kind of positive action must be taken if the Constitutional provisions are to be rigidly observed in the treaty-making process.2 1 On Eisenhower's recent note to Secretary of State Dulles and to Attorney General Brownell see no. 896. 2 The Eisenhower Administration would not reconsider sponsoring another version of the controversial amendment. Senator Bricker, however, was unwilling to let the issue rest. On August 5 he would introduce a new amendment, S.J. Res. 181; he vowed he would renew the fight for its passage when the Eighty-fourth Congress convened in January 1955 (see New York Times, Aug. 7, 1954; Tananbaum, Bricker Amendment Controversy, pp. 194-95; and Congressional Quarterly Almanac, vol. X, 1954, p. 261). For developments see nos. 1241 and 1255. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Confidential To John Foster Dulles and Herbert Brownell, Jr., 29 May 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 904. 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/904.cfm <--PREV Doc #903  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #905

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