Presidential Papers, Doc#617 To John Foster Dulles, 21 March 1958. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
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Document #617; March 21, 1958
To John Foster Dulles
Series: Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda Series
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIX - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace
Part IV: Recession and Reform; February 1958 to May 1958
Chapter 8: "To engender confidence"

 

Dear Foster: Herewith a draft of the talk I am planning to make before the Editors on April seventeenth. There is still quite a bit of work to be done on it.1 My theme is that we must find ways of reducing the need for armaments. I mention various proposals that we have put forward during the past five years to ease tensions and promote peace--for example disarmament, atoms for peace, science for peace, control of outer space for peaceful purposes, exchanges of students, leaders of thought and so on, and a general diminishing of the barriers between free intercourse of ideas, persons and things. But I have wanted to make a rather startling new proposal.

I wanted to suggest that, if the Soviets were interested, I would recommend to Congress the inviting of several thousand students for one year.2 Maybe this idea is not completely sound, but we need some vehicle to ride in order to suggest to the world, even if ever so briefly, that we are not stuck in the mud. We realize that the world is asking for something that is almost impossible when it insists that we should give to all peoples complete assurance that we are not only peaceful and friendly, but that we shall "hold the initiative" in striving for peace.3

Our public relations problem almost defies solution. The need always for concerting our views with those of our principal allies, the seductive quality of Soviet promises and pronouncements in spite of their unreliability, the propaganda disadvantage under which we operate because of the monolithic character of Soviet news broadcasts, and the readiness of many nations to take a virtual blackmail position as they make more and more urgent requests for aid--all serve to make us appear before the world as something less than persuasive in proclaiming our peaceful purposes and our effectiveness in pursuing them.

I didn’t mean to write at this length. I only want to ask for your comments on the draft as it stands now. Any penciled notes in the margin would be completely satisfactory.

If you could let me have the draft back some time the early part of the week, I would be grateful.4

With warm regard, As ever

P.S. Your note of this morning, enclosing some comments by your staff, seems to condemn my idea as futile. But I’m not yet certain that, as presented in the accompanying draft, it may not have some value.5

1 For background on Eisenhower's proposed speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors see no. 607.

2 On Eisenhower's plan to invite Soviet students to the United States see no. 552.

3 After Dulles's return from the SEATO conference, he and Eisenhower had discussed the "militaristic image" of the United States as portrayed by newspapers in the Far East (Memorandum of Conversation, Mar. 19, 1958, Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda Series).

4 Dulles would tell Eisenhower that the speech seemed to him "unnecessarily somber." He cited many American foreign policy successes, including the termination of both the Korean and the Indochinese wars, the Austrian State Treaty, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the development of a European community, and the "apparent abandonment by the Soviet leaders of methods of violence." Although arms limitation had eluded them, Dulles was still hopeful. "I am not particularly confident of evolving any complicated, formal agreement with the Soviets," he said, "but I think that there could be perhaps parallel unilateral acts which would slow down the pace consistently with our safety." Dulles also suggested that Eisenhower point out that the United States did not need to develop every military potential, but only that necessary to deter attack. "I suspect that it might draw a positive response from the Russians," he said, "if only because they must be even more burdened than we by the cost of modern weapons" (Dulles to Eisenhower, Mar. 25, 1958, Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda Series).

5 For Dulles's note see the following document; for developments see no. 623.

Bibliographic reference to this document:
Eisenhower, Dwight D. To John Foster Dulles, 21 March 1958. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 617. 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/617.cfm

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