Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file
Memorandum by the President to the Secretary of State
Reference: Your memorandum of April first giving me the text of Clark’s note to the Communists and of Eden’s telegram to you.1
I am quite prepared to discuss further with you our position in the matter. I had assumed—possibly erroneously—that the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners could be accomplished with reasonable celerity. Moreover, C. D. Jackson was insistent that unless this business was an accomplished fact before we actually began negotiations on the wider issue, we would encounter the same kind of frustrations that have always characterized our negotiations with the Soviets. This frustration has arisen from the fact that their practice has been to accomplish nothing until every last atom of their own contentions, sometimes in totally unrelated fields, were accepted.
As I understand it, you and I both believe we should take a lesson from these past experiences and before opening up again the long dreary process of negotiations that could easily repeat the whole history of the past year and a half, we should use this business of the sick and wounded as a sort of test of good faith on the part of the Soviets.
I do not believe that we want to put out any public statement in just this way, but if we should, after re-study, adhere to our convictions in this point, it might be well for the State Department to put out a statement in which is the clear assumption that, of course, the exchange of sick and wounded will be an accomplished fact as a preliminary to the broader negotiations.
This matter has some urgency because I am to have a press conference this afternoon. I am rushing it over to you right away, and after you have read this I hope you will give me a ring so as to determine whether or not I should answer any questions whatsover on this subject, or whether it would be wiser for me to remain completely silent.2
[Here follows a brief suggestion by Eisenhower on facilitating the United States decision on the power development aspect of the St. Lawrence Seaway.]