Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file
No. 419
Prime Minister Churchill
to President Eisenhower
Please consider at your leisure whether it might not be better for the Four-Power Meeting to begin, as Salisbury urged,1 with a preliminary survey by the heads of Governments of all our troubles in an informal spirit. I am sure that gives a much better chance than if we only come in after a vast new network of detail has been erected. Moreover, Bidault made it pretty clear he wanted this meeting to break down in order to make a better case for E.D.C. before the French Chamber, whereas it would have been a great advantage to go plus E.D.C. with friendly hands in strong array. Above all, I thought that you and I might have formed our own impression of Malenkov, who has never seen anybody outside Russia. After this preliminary meeting we might have been able to set our State Secretaries to work along less ambitious, if more hopeful, easier lines than we now propose. I am very sorry I was not able to make this appeal to you personally as I had hoped.
2. I have made a great deal of progress and can now walk about. The doctors think that I may be well enough to appear in public by September. Meanwhile, I am still conducting business. It was a great disappointment to me not to have my chance of seeing you.2
Kindest regards
- Regarding the Foreign Ministers meeting, held at Washington, July 10–14, and attended by Salisbury as Acting British Foreign Secretary, see the editorial note, supra.↩
- Churchill suffered a stroke at the end of June which partially paralyzed him and forced the postponement of the Bermuda meeting of the Heads of Government.↩