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The British Prime Minister (Attlee) to President Truman 1
Dear Mr. President: I am grateful to you for your reply to my [Page 73] message of the 8th January with its reassurance as to the intentions of your Government on Korea. This came in very opportunely during our meeting of Prime Ministers, though I did not reveal these exchanges to them. We gave a great deal of our time to discussions of Far Eastern problems and we all feel the deepest anxiety about the intentions of the Chinese Government. There was unanimous agreement that in order to probe Chinese intentions it was wise to make this offer of a meeting to include the big powers through the United Nations, at the same time fully recognising, of course, that talks could not take place whilst fighting was in progress.
I would like to say how deeply impressed I am by the careful attention you have given to the viewpoints of the other nations, and the great effort made to reconcile the views so as to get in the end a common agreement.
We ought even now, perhaps, to be considering the situation that will arise in the near future. It may be that the Chinese will respond to this very fair offer. If that happens no doubt our two Governments will maintain the closest possible touch as to the next steps. But I have no illusions, and fear that we may be faced by a negative attitude on the part of the Chinese. I think that we shall have to consider very carefully what our aims should then be and what steps we should take to achieve them. With Mr. Bevin I have given careful thought to the memorandum transmitted to us by the United States Embassy on the 4th January,2 but I feel that the issues and consequences affect not only our interests but the interests of so many countries so vitally that we should not embark precipitately on a policy which might not sway the Chinese Government, but which would certainly impose serious new strains on us.
The dominating factor is, of course, the military situation in Korea. It is of the greatest importance that we should maintain a stand there if it is militarily possible, and I think that our best means of bringing pressure to bear on the Chinese to abstain from further adventures is to show that their present adventure in Korea does not pay and is on the contrary a constant drain on their resources. It was for this reason that I was so glad to have your reassurances on this point which helped to dispel the doubt in my mind caused by some of the press communiqués issued in Tokyo and by our analysis of the course of the campaign.
With all good wishes,