158. Letter From President Eisenhower to Prime Minister Macmillan0
[Here follow the salutation and beginning of the letter.]
Respecting the matter we discussed at Rambouillet, I am quite astonished at the atmosphere of formality with which the French seem to view the matter and the difficulties they see of putting the simple plan into action. You will recall that General De Gaulle wanted to have some way of conducting three-way consultations on any subject of common interest. I suggested that we might have one or two junior but capable staff officers from each country keeping abreast of the questions that might call for such consultation and that when the occasion so demanded, conferees at a higher level could get into the picture. But such consultations would always be so conducted as to avoid even the appearance of venturing unjustifiably into the affairs of others. When our conversation took place, I thought that General De Gaulle was in complete accord and seemed to agree that the scheme could be set afoot without fanfare and without trouble. Just where it jumped the track I do not know.
I quite agree with your statement that we should get away from the arguments about the memorandum and what it did or did not mean, and try to concentrate on practical discussions of current interest.1
[Here follows the remainder of the letter.]
- Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. Secret.↩
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In Macmillan’s February 17 letter to Eisenhower, he wrote:
“I have also been looking into the matter which we discussed at Rambouillet, namely the idea for some secret tripartite machinery in London. There seems to have been a lot of correspondence especially about what we should discuss and Couve de Murville now talks about at least the ‘spirit’ of de Gaulle’s memorandum of 1958. My concept had been that these tripartite talks would be our way of dealing with the memorandum and I had thought that the agenda for particular meetings of the group of officials would form itself as we went along. My own preference would be to get away from arguments about the memorandum and what it did or did not mean and try to concentrate on practical discussion of questions of current interest however wide these might be. As in fact the three of us seem likely to meet pretty often, the officials in this secret group could do a good job doing preparatory and follow-up work. Selwyn is writing to Chris about this.” (Ibid.)
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