Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Western Europe, Volume VII, Part 2

160. Letter From Prime Minister Macmillan to President Eisenhower⁰

London, March 14, 1960.

Dear Friend:

[Here follow Macmillan’s remarks on unrelated subjects.]

I have just come back from a short visit to de Gaulle.¹ We were able to talk alone without any of the paraphernalia of advisers, experts, Ambassadors and the rest. He was relaxed and rather philosophical but nevertheless quite firm in his ideas about the part that France should play in Europe. His main themes remain unchanged. I do not know if you have read the third volume of his book; it is wonderfully written and gives a picture of his rather mystical thinking on these great matters.²

I think he is disappointed that nothing much has followed from our discussions at Rambouillet about tripartite talks, but he accepts the fact that they are really going to take place because of all the meetings round and about the Summit.³ We shall have our meeting on the way up and, no doubt, on the way down. His own approach to things makes him prefer a talk with the heads rather than an elaborate machinery, and I think he accepted that a new piece of mechanism was undesirable. At the same time I think he would like what he called a very small continuing method of carrying further any discussions that we three might have, even if only to name the subjects for the next discussion. This could easily be done by the Ambassadors, without any special staff. For my part, I think that sometimes these discussions on everything leave us all a little vague and it might be better at such a meeting to have one or two matters only on which we could concentrate.⁴

[Here follows the remainder of the letter.]

With warm regard,

Harold

0. Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. Top Secret. This letter was sent to London in telegram 6950, March 16. (Ibid., Central Files, 611.51/3–1660)
1. Macmillan visited Paris March 9–10.
2. Reference is presumably de Gaulle’s Mémoires de Guerre: Le Salut, 1944–1946.
3. Documentation on the Meeting of the Heads of Government (Summit Conference) of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union at Paris May 16–17 is printed in volume IX.
4. In his March 19 reply to Macmillan, Eisenhower wrote: “It has been a source of amazement to me that he seems to be unable to fathom the methods by which our three governments could easily keep in close touch on main issues. I explained to him how you and ourselves used both normal diplomatic exchanges, personal communications and, in acute cases, ad hoc committees to keep together. I think that the difficulty may lie in his memory of the British-American ‘Combined Chiefs of Staff of World War II days, and his resentment that the French staffs were not integrated into that body. In any event, I have always made it clear that I was ready to do anything reasonable to maintain contacts and mutual understandings among us three; I adhere to this policy. But I think I made it also clear to him that it was impractical to have frequent ‘Heads of Government’ conferences and yet, as you say, he seems to prefer this kind of approach to any on our common problems.” (Telegram 7084 to London, March 21 ; Department of State, Central Files, 611.51/3–2160)