<--PREV Doc #176  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #178 Document #177; June 1, 1957 To Christian Archibald Herter Series: EM, AWF, DDE Diaries Series ; Category: Secret The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVIII - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part II: Civil Rights; June 1957 to September 1957 Chapter 3: "I am astonished and chagrined"   Memorandum for the Under Secretary of State:1 I send you herewith two documents. The first is a letter from our Ambassador in Britain giving some details of a conversation he had with the Prime Minister.2 The other is a copy of a draft of a letter that the Prime Minister is about to send to Bulganin.3 I presume that this was sent with the thought that we might wish to send some comment, although as you see from Ambassador Caccia's note we would have very little time in which to do it.4 On the other hand, Mr. Macmillan's draft does not seem to me to be of a character to call for any long analysis on our part, at least at this time. Do you not think that on Monday I might just send him a cable saying that I have received it, read it with great interest, agree with its general content, and believe that the whole thing is well presented.5 Please return the documents for my file. 1 Secretary Dulles was vacationing on Duck Island in Lake Ontario. 2 According to Ambassador Whitney, Macmillan had received the impression from Eisenhower’s letter of May 10 (see no. 153) that the Soviet leaders might be ready to talk seriously about disarmament. If this were true, Macmillan told Whitney, discussions would not be successful at the conference level. They might succeed at the level of the heads of state, however, and the Prime Minister, who was interested in organizing such a meeting, wanted Eisenhower’s opinion. According to Whitney, British leaders felt that since the Soviet economy was not doing well, the de facto Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, needed to increase his own prestige to the point where he would become "a figure of worshipful size. A meeting at the top level on this most dramatic of all issues would, of course, be a fine piece of personal promotion for him." Whitney concluded: "I guess that this is discussed with me because it is so tentative, and so fraught with wild hopes and bottomless traps that it is not the time to put anything on paper" (Whitney to Eisenhower, May 24, 1957, AWF/A). Whitney sent a copy of this letter to Secretary Dulles, who replied on June 5 that much preparatory work was necessary before such a meeting would be appropriate (State, Foreign Relations, 1955 - 1957, vol. XX, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, pp. 544 - 45). For Eisenhower’s response to Whitney see no. 191. 3 For background see no. 153. 4 The British ambassador’s note is not in AWF. 5 Herter would agree and on this same day would send the President a suggested response (see no. 180). Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Secret To Christian Archibald Herter, 1 June 1957. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 177. 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/second-term/documents/177.cfm <--PREV Doc #176  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #178

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