611.41/6–2454
No. 462
Memorandum by the Director of
the Office of British Commonwealth and Northern European
Affairs (Raynor) to the Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs (Merchant)1
top
secret
Washington, June 24,
1954.
Subject:
- Background on UK Talks
Ambassador Aldrich holds the following views which I am summarizing for you and sending copies which you may want to give to others as he may not have had the opportunity to mention these generally:
- 1)
- He is convinced that the Locarno idea and doubtless other troublesome matters originate with Churchill and not with Eden.
- 2)
- He believes Eden is O.K. and that if he were on his own we would have much less difficulty.
- 3)
- He thinks we should take advantage extremely carefully of opportunities, if they present themselves during the talks, to support reasonable positions Eden may assume contrary to more extreme positions which Churchill may take.
- 4)
- Real danger in the situation lies with Churchill and his repetition of old ideas which don’t have the support of Eden or basically of the Cabinet.
- 5)
- Ambassador Aldrich is convinced that the Cabinet doesn’t fully support Churchill’s extreme views.
- 6)
- However, there are forces at work (Beaverbrook in particular) trying to convince Churchill that Butler rather than Eden should be the successor. Under the circumstances Eden has to buckle under to Churchill’s views.
- 7)
- Finally, our attitude in these talks may determine to a considerable extent whether Eden would be forced to continue to buckle under or whether he will emerge in a position which will permit him to take independent positions which Ambassador Aldrich believes would be considerably closer to our own than those of Mr. Churchill on many matters.
- The source text bears the handwritten notation by Merchant: “This is very helpful—was discussed with the Secy. LTM”↩