138. Letter From Prime Minister Macmillan to President Eisenhower0
Dear Friend: I am most grateful for your message of September 11 about your talks with General de Gaulle.1 Your visit to Paris was evidently a great success. I feel sure that your journey to Europe has had the effect of strengthening the unity of the West. Of course, no member of a democratic alliance thinks exactly like every other member on every point. But your journey will have made people realize that any difference ought to be reconciled in view of the great issues at stake. By all accounts the French people gave you a most enthusiastic reception. I was confident that they would because I have never believed the tales of French hostility.
What you tell me about General de Gaulle’s attitude towards the Algerian and African problems supports my belief that he has a fundamentally liberal outlook and that we must do all we can to help him. I am very glad that you encouraged him to have his representatives speak in defense of the French case in the United Nations. But, as you say, we must wait for his public statement before we can decide our tactics in the United Nations.
What you told me about the General’s attitude towards N.A.T.O. interested but did not surprise me. Although he may have what seem to us to be rather old-fashioned ideas on such matters as the integration of forces I do not doubt his attachment to the alliance as such. If your visit has put him into a more relaxed frame of mind, we may perhaps meet with rather fewer difficulties from the French in the future on the day-to-day affairs of N.A.T.O.
Of course we are ready, like you, to take part in informal tripartite consultations with the French on any matters which lie beyond N.A.T.O. in which the three of us can be said to have a particular interest. Since these may include military matters I quite agree that the consultations might from time to time be between military experts, always provided that no new formal institutions are created. After all, our Governments are free to have private discussion with what other Governments they choose, on an informal basis.
The General can hardly have hoped that you would be more generous than you were on the point about the decision to use atomic weapons. I did not expect, any more than I believe you did, that he would [Page 283] press you for help with France’s own programme of development at this stage. But this is a problem which remains to be faced.
You must surely feel very encouraged by your journey to Europe. As you know your visit to this country gave the greatest pleasure not only to my colleagues and myself but to the whole British people. We all of us send you our best wishes for the success of your discussions with Mr. Khrushchev.
Yours ever,
- Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. Secret.↩
- See Document 136.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩