Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Eastern Europe; Soviet Union; Eastern Mediterranean, Volume VIII

Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file

No. 592
President Eisenhower to Prime Minister Churchill¹

top secret

Washington, May 5, 1953.

Dear Winston: Thank you for yours of May fourth² giving me the lines of a message you are thinking of sending to Molotov. Foster and I have considered it deeply and since you sought my views I must say that we would advise against it.

You will pardon me, I know, if I express a bit of astonishment that you think it appropriate to recommend Moscow to Molotov as a suitable meeting place. Uncle Joe used to plead ill health as an excuse for refusing to leave territory under the Russian flag or controlled by the Kremlin. That excuse no longer applies and while I do not for a minute suggest that progress toward peace should be balked by mere matters of protocol, I do have a suspicion that anything the Kremlin could misinterpret as weakness or overeagerness on our part would militate against success in negotiation.

In my note to you of April twenty-fifth³ I expressed the view that we should not rush things too much and should not permit feeling in our countries for a meeting between heads of states and governments to press us into precipitate initiatives. I feel just as strongly now as I did ten days ago that this is right, and certainly nothing that the Soviet Government has done in the meantime would tend to persuade me differently. I do not feel that the armistice negotiations are going well and this to me has been the first test of the seriousness of Communist intentions. Far from there having been any Communist actions which we could accept as indications of such seriousness of purpose the Pravda editorial repeats all the previous Soviet positions⁴ and we are now faced with new aggression in Laos.

But in my mind the most important considerations are the results which might be expected to flow from such a personal contact and the effect of such a meeting on our allies, the free world in general, and the Russians themselves. It would of course finally become known that you had consulted me, and it would be difficult for me to explain the exact purpose of the visit. Beyond this, failure to consult the French would probably infuriate them, especially when the situation in Indochina is hanging in the balance. If they were consulted in advance, the result would almost certainly be a proposal for a four-party conference, and this, I am convinced, we are not ready for until there is some evidence, in deeds, of a changed Soviet attitude.

Many would expect dramatic and concrete achievements from a personal visit to Moscow by the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Whatever you said publicly about the purposes of your solitary pilgrimage, I suspect that many in the Far East as well as the West would doubt that you would go all the way to Moscow merely for good will. I feel this would be true in this country, and the effects on Congress which is this week taking up consideration of our Mutual Defense Program an extension of our Reciprocal Trade Act, would be unpredictable. It seems to me that in this crucial period when the Soviet peace offensive is raising doubts in people’s minds, the thing we must strive for above all other is to maintain mutual confidence among the members of NATO and other free nations and to avoid any action which could be misinterpreted. Naturally the final decision is yours, but I feel that the above factors are so important that I should in all candor and friendship lay them before you.⁵

As ever,

Ike E.

1. Attached to a memorandum from Eisenhower to Secretary Dulles requesting that this message be transmitted to Churchill. Another draft of this message was also attached to the source text.
2. Supra.
3. Document 589.
4. Reference is presumably to the editorial in Pravda, Apr. 25, responding to Eisenhower’s speech of Apr. 16; see Document 587.
5. In his reply of May 7, Churchill reiterated the utility of a visit to the USSR, recalling his own experience in dealing with the Soviet leadership during World War II. Churchill argued further that none of the existing Soviet leadership, except Molotov, had contacts outside the USSR. While he did express a difficulty in an “attitude of pure negation”, he nevertheless indicated his intention to consider Eisenhower’s “adverse advice” with the Cabinet. (Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file) For complete text of Churchill’s note, see vol. VI, Part 1, p. 980.