Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Germany and Austria, Volume VII, Part 1

662.001/9–952: Telegram

No. 134
The Secretary of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom¹

secret priority
niact

Washington, September 10, 1952—11:57 a.m.

1717. 1. In next foll tel,² Dept is sending redraft of reply to Sov note on Ger. Present it to your Brit and Fr colleagues for consideration with explanation along foll lines:

2. Dept appreciates effort made to meet its views on para re Sov distortion of terms. Nevertheless, Dept is disappointed in draft worked out in Lond. It is true that its substance is not significantly different from Dept’s earlier draft and its cnclusion is similar. But it is strongly felt here that Lond draft is verbose, complicated and unclear in drafting, and tortuous in development of ideas. It delves too much into confused history of various notes. It is weak and defensive in rejoinder to Sov criticism of nat, etc. There is too much genteel hand-wringing where we say we are “shocked”, “at a loss”, “surprised”, etc. In short, Dept feels Lond draft suffers from all defects mentioned in Moscow’s 378 (rptd Lond 34, Paris 96, Bonn 25, Berlin 28)³ and wld have exceptionally weak impact on pub opinion.

3. In effort to improve clarity of phrasing, sequence of ideas and therefore political value and public impact, Dept has prepared redraft, working from Lond draft. You will observe that paras 1, 5 and 7 are virtually same as Lond draft, while first half para 2 and last half para 4 are also practically verbatim from Lond draft. Remainder is mixture from both drafts.⁴

4. Dept’s redraft has great merit of being less than half as long as Lond draft, and we recall desirability of brevity has often been stressed by Brit and Fr. We feel its reasoning is simple and clear and is concentrated almost exclusively on issue of free elections. It goes even further than our first draft in direction of subordinating to this issue all else, including idea of Comm, without, however, in any sense abandoning latter. (See example first sentence of para 7 in which Comm is described as “aid to creation of conditions” etc.) It refuses to be drawn into defensive and irrelevant discussion of NATO, EDC and contractuals. We think it hammers very hard at issue Sovs are trying to avoid (elections as only logical starting point) and does so in manner best calculated to appeal to Ger opinion.

5. Note variation in lang in quotes in para 4. We have used lang as received from Moscow.

6. Dept also hopes draft can be speedily agreed, and we note arguments for this in Moscow’s 455⁵ (not rptd) to effect that if we can burden Kremlin with Eur problems while Chi still there, so much the better. However, we do feel every effort must be made to produce short clear hard-hitting draft.

7. Secy has approved our redraft and shares Eden’s view that it may be possible to reach complete agrmt this week.

Acheson

1. Drafted by Laukhuff and cleared with Calhoun, Jessup, Bonbright, and EE. Repeated to Paris, Moscow, Bonn, and Berlin.
2. Telegram 1718, infra.
3. Document 128.
4. The drafts transmitted in telegrams 1470, Document 129, and 1307, supra.
5. Telegram 455, while approving the draft transmitted in telegram 1307, supra, stated that prompt delivery would help burden the Soviet Union with European problems at the very time that a Chinese Delegation was in Moscow. (662.001/9–952)