741.13/7–2854
No. 449
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of
State (Smith) to the Secretary of
State1
Subject:
- Report of Conversation with Prime Minister Churchill, Thursday, July 22, 1954.
I stopped in London for dinner with the Prime Minister at the private suggestion of Mr. Eden, who is gravely concerned regarding the “solitary pilgrimage”…
I met the Prime Minister and Lady Churchill at Number 10 Downing Street, at 7: 45 p.m. Mr. Eden and Ambassador Aldrich, with their wives, were also present. The Prime Minister and I talked privately before dinner. After some personal exchange, I asked him again what he expected to accomplish by talking with Malenkov at this time, and he again said that he hoped at least to get an Austrian Treaty. He repeated his theme of the importance of a final try for peaceful co-existence. He then added that “these people” must be convinced that while we could not make a surprise attack on them, and they could, and would, make a surprise attack on us, it was inevitable that “even though they should slaughter ten million of us in Britain and the United States, they could not prevent the devastating counterstroke.” He went on to say that this meant that we must have “many bases, more and more of them—some camouflaged and concealed—all over the world”, and that we must reduce the size of “these frightful things” so that they can be carried on smaller planes which can take off from any airfield or from any of our carriers.
I said I thought he was making a mistake to seek so urgently an interview with Malenkov, citing my own views and those of others that Malenkov was not actually filling Stalin’s shoes. I said it seemed to me that the Russians were trying to get along without a supreme “boss” and that actually Molotov was possibly more important at the moment than Malenkov. I told him the story of Molotov’s toast at our first dinner, when he had mentioned “the Chiefs of our two States, General Eisenhower, the President of the United States, and Marshal Voroshilov, the President of the Supreme Soviet.”2 I said that this was the first time I had heard the [Page 1050] President of the Supreme Soviet mentioned by name in such a toast, and that it had never been done while Stalin was alive.… I asked if the Prime Minister would go to Moscow in case the Russians declined to meet elsewhere. He said he did not know, that this would have to be thought over, and repeated the importance of making a final try for co-existence.
During this talk and during the dinner which followed, the Prime Minister was quite as usual when discussing events of the war and the individuals with whom he had been associated, but he was unable to realize that I had come from Geneva and not from Washington. Four or five times during the conversation he mentioned the fact that I had “made a very quick trip from Washington”, or that it “was very good of me to have come all the way from Washington to have this talk and dinner”, etcetera. He mentioned again, as he had stated to me in our final talk when he was in Washington, that he “would like to die in harness, but that Anthony had been his loyal lieutenant, was connected with him by marriage, and was entitled to a long, straight run at the jump”—meaning by this a period of preparation for the next general election. He mentioned again that Harold Macmillan would be Eden’s successor as Foreign Minister.
In a brief period before this dinner, Macmillan, Portal, Tedder, and a number of other former senior officers of SHAEF, stopped by Ambassador Aldrich’s residence and sent personal messages of greeting and affection to the President. I spoke privately to Macmillan of his probable new assignment, and suggested that as soon as it became effective he should seize the first opportunity to visit the United States.
It is possible that the President might be interested in reading the above.
- The source text was attached to a memorandum from Dulles to President Eisenhower, dated July 28, in which Dulles stated that he understood that the Under Secretary had already briefed the President orally along these lines, but that he might perhaps be interested in a more complete account.↩
- Presumably the reference here is to a dinner during the Geneva Conference.↩