Lot 53D444: Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State
Memorandum of Conversation With the President
Item 4. Mr. Dulles
I discussed with the President again the suggestion which I had made that we ask Mr. Dulles to take charge of the work of presenting the Pacific treaties to the Senate for ratification, reporting that I had had a talk with Mr. Dulles who had expressed his willingness to undertake this work provided he could be assured that he understood the President’s mind on two points.
The first point was the importance of presenting these treaties to the Senate upon its return in January and making them the first order of business. I pointed out that if this were not done, the chances of both having the treaties ratified and of achieving our foreign policy objectives in Japan would be greatly endangered, and that Mr. Dulles could not fairly be asked to undertake the proposed responsibility. The President was very clear indeed that the treaties must be presented at the opening of the new session and recalled that he had been in favor of even earlier action.
The second point was that it was essential that the ratification of the treaties should be, as their negotiation was, a bipartisan matter. Mr. Dulles would approach it in this way. It was quite likely that [Page 1380] partisans on both sides would complain about such handling of the matter and that on our side some people might criticize Mr. Dulles to the President. The President assured me that he wished the matter handled as Mr. Dulles proposed to handle it and that he would support him to the limit in doing so.