501.BB Korea/12–2747
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador in Canada (Atherton)
On Saturday afternoon, December 27, I received an instruction from the Department of State asking me to deliver the following message to the Prime Minister5 from the President:
“I have just learned that the Canadian Government is contemplating withdrawal from the United Nations Korean Commission. In General [Page 881] Marshall’s absence I have asked the Acting Secretary of State to prepare and send you a personal message fully setting forth our views in this respect and explaining our deep concern regarding the possibility of such withdrawal. I earnestly hope you will find it possible not to make any final decision until you have had an opportunity to consider this message. Please accept my very best wishes for the new year. Harry S. Truman”
I called on the Prime Minister by appointment in the evening about seven o’clock and presented him with the message, and he then said he would like to go to his study and talk the situation over. The following is a résumé of the views he gave me:
The Prime Minister began by saying that he had but recently returned from Europe and a survey of conditions on the Continent which exceeded any of his most pessimistic anticipations. He said the basis for world recovery, particularly in which Canada could play an effective role, lay in Western Europe and he felt the outstanding effort of this country had begun there and must continue there without wasting her strength ineffectually in other areas of the world. He said from his trip through Western Europe he could realize the ever-widening gulf between the United States and Soviet Russia and the world ideologies these two nations represented. He did not feel the United Nations was as yet effectively able to deal with this basic conflict of East and West. He had talked with many statesmen in Europe including Bevin and Attlee (to whom he made particular reference) and he continued he could not but feel the handling of the Palestine situation6 was inept, hasty and not well-considered, and he implied English opinion was critical of Lake Success decisions having been influenced by the world of political Jewry. He said in his time as Prime Minister of Canada he had used his weight in the formation of British Government policy to avoid what he considered potential mistakes and he could not now accept for Canada a role in the Korean Commission which he felt would be a mistake for his own country and the role it played in the Commonwealth of Nations. Palestine was a fundamental issue in the world and the nations most interested in its solution should have been the ones to resolve it. The Korean question he felt was another such problem, as he saw it. It was a field of conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Korea might well present a front between the two nations such as existed in Berlin today which ill-considered action might ignite, and yet to meet this the United Nations in unhappy, ill-advised haste and without chance for his own Government even to consider the issues in Ottawa had pressed forward with the naming of the committee and with urgent pleadings due to shortness of time had committed the Canadian [Page 882] delegation to decisions that had not been referred to the Cabinet or himself. Had this been the case, he certainly would never have agreed that Canada should serve on the Korean Commission. He felt that … Canada had been included in an attempt to balance the situation. The suggestion now that a counselor of the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo should lend whatever weight he was able to an already underweighted commission especially for such an important task, which might in an ill-conceived procedure precipitate a crisis, was inconsistent with the role Canada had undertaken in working for the success of the United Nations. He said he could not possibly defend before Parliament Canada’s participation on such a commission and he was unwilling to do it. If against his advice Canada did participate on this commission, it[he?] would leave it to the Minister for External Affairs or some other Cabinet officer to defend this action on the floor of the House of Commons. He said the United Nations had no force, although that was one of the fundamental conceptions in its origin, and he was more and more apprehensive of its dissipating its early and already badly strained strength until shortly it would not amount to much more than the League of Nations. He said his country had made every effort to make the greatest contribution and was anxious to continue to do so, but in the issue between east and west it was an issue for the nations chiefly concerned in the first instance, and if they would not take part in such discussions it was idle to put off the responsibility on such a weak commission as this one that had been named.
The Prime Minister continued that he had no objection to my making very clear to my Government his strong views on this and said he hoped any message that came to them would not be of such a nature that he would appear for the first time to be giving his views in contradiction thereto, since the conversation he had with me for informal and confidential repetition to Washington with his permission clearly enumerated his objections.
The conversation lasted almost an hour. I could see a great deal of what was in the Prime Minister’s mind, particularly as to the United Nations, had grown out of his conversations with Attlee and Bevin. He indicated to me that there were elements in the Canadian scene that did not agree with him in his point of view as set forth above, but he felt he himself was fairly adamant in his resistance. I put forth very clearly yet tactfully the American views, on which I felt I had a good understanding especially after my oral conversations on the telephone with the Department of State. The most assurance [Page 883] I could get from the Prime Minister was that he would make no final decision until he had received the message in question outlined in the President’s message above referred to.
- W. L. MacKenzie King.↩
- For documentation, see vol. v, pp. 999 ff.↩