Office of the Historian

711.11 EI/4–853

No. 395
President Eisenhower to Prime Minister Churchill1

personal and secret
Washington, April 6, 1953.

Dear Winston: Thank you very much for your cabled message which reached me this morning.2 I feel sure that you will find our thinking on the subject largely paralleling your own. We feel that it is entirely possible that you will realize your hope of exploring further into the sincerity of the Soviet intentions through your impending negotiations with them on fisheries and so on.

I am considering the delivery of a formal speech, with the purpose of setting concretely before the world the peaceful intentions of this country. I would hope to do this in such a way as to delineate, at least in outline, the specific steps or measures that we believe necessary to bring about satisfactory relationships with resultant elimination or lowering of tensions throughout the world. These steps are none other than what our governments have sought in the past. I have been working on such a talk for some days and will soon be in a position to show it to your Ambassador, who will of course communicate with you concerning it. While I do not presume to speak for any government other than our own, it would be useless for me to say anything publicly unless I could feel that our principal allies are in general accord with what I will have to say. I am particularly anxious that this be true of Britain, and I think it also necessary to check with France and, as regards Germany, with Adenauer who arrives here tomorrow.3

This whole field is strewn with very difficult obstacles, as we all know; but I do think it extremely important that the great masses of the world understand that, on our side, we are deadly serious in our search for peace and are ready to prove this with acts and deeds and not merely assert it in glittering phraseology. This presupposes prior assurance of honest intent on the other side.

With warm regard,

Ike
  1. This message was transmitted to London in telegram 6658, Apr. 8.↩
  2. Supra.↩
  3. For documentation on Chancellor Adenauer’s visit to Washington, Apr. 7–9, 1953, see vol. vii, Part 1, pp. 424 ff.↩