131. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation Between the President and the Secretary of State, Washington, October 29, 1956, 8 a.m.1
8:00 A.M. Secretary Dulles called the President. [Here follows a reference to developments in the Middle East.]
The President said at least things on both fronts—Hungary and Israel—seemed a little better this morning than last evening. Dulles replied that at least “we have gained 24 hours.”
Dulles said he was wondering if it would be desirable to try to find occasion for Bohlen to bring to the attention of the Soviet Government at as high a level as possible, the statement he made in his Dallas speech,2 saying that he had made it with full approval of the President.
President agreed, and said it might be a good thing to try to draw Nehru into it—cited letter that he had dictated to Dulles just a few minutes before3 —that Nehru must have some feelings that perhaps he ought to strengthen his ties with the West, if some face-saving device could be found by which he could do so. Dulles had been thinking along same lines, and had dictated on plane coming back from Dallas something (directed toward the Soviets) of the same nature.
The President said that they might be willing to talk sense now more than at any time since Administration has been in power. Said approach might be that things are not going the way any of us want, better have a meeting that recognizes these points.
At this point President questioned Shepilov, but Dulles said he was pretty far down in the Soviet hierarchy.
Dulles said that undoubtedly there was a battle on in the Presidium—some of the people probably would want to go back to the old Stalinistic policies—but Dulles said, that was now too late. He said [Page 322] they were “up against a tough problem.” The President agreed, and said we had to take advantage of that. Now is the time to talk (more) about reducing tensions in the world. Dulles agreed, but said we would have to be very careful not to do anything that would look to the satellite world as though we were selling them out.
The President of course agreed, said nothing could be done until present thing had settled down, but went back to Nehru and said that he might now be thinking about Soviet colonialism and imperialism in slightly different terms.
The President was leaving on political trip to Miami, Jacksonville and Richmond, and said that the Secretary could reach him within a matter of minutes at any time.
[Here follows reference to two other telephone calls.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Eisenhower Diaries. Prepared in the Office of the President.↩
- See Document 128.↩
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It reads, in part, as follows:
“For some days I have been wondering whether the present situations in Eastern Europe and in the Mid East might not be creating in Nehru the feeling that he might, very wisely, begin to strengthen his ties with the West and separate himself more distinctly from the Communists. If he has any such feeling, of course, we would want to nurture and promote it. Incidentally, we should be anxious, also, to find him some face-saving device.
“It just might be possible that by writing to him a very serious letter speaking of our deep regret that so many innocent people had to suffer at the hands of Russian imperialism and so forth, and without asking him to do anything except to counsel with us, we might make some advances in this direction.” (Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers)
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