Office of the Historian

247. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom1

Washington, June 23, 1957—2:17 p.m.

9024. Eyes only Ambassador from Secretary. Please deliver following personal message from me to Prime Minister.

“Dear Harold: I have your message with its suggestion of a possible talk here by you with the President and myself with respect to the impact upon the UK of a nuclear weapons cut-off date.2 I have talked to the President about this.3 Both he and I are of course always anxious to talk with you and we wish that we could do so more often. However, we do not yet seem to have invented a way to have informal talks without many complications. If you could make this invention, the President would be most happy.4 As it is, we have to think hard about the reactions of the French and Germans and also of what explanations to give to the public and to our Congress.

Of course we do not think of these complications as encroaching in the slightest on our plan, indeed our strong desire, to talk together about this matter whenever and as soon as it becomes relevant. Perhaps however the right time has not yet arrived, as neither the President nor I in fact consider that matters are moving so fast as to indicate there will be soon any firm, and sufficiently meticulous, agreement with the Russians.

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I have talked this matter over very fully with Harold Caccia this morning (Sunday)5 as he leaves for London and he will give you more intimately our thinking.

Faithfully yours, Foster.”

Dulles
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.4112/6–2357. Secret; Priority. Drafted and approved by Dulles. Cleared by Beam.↩
  2. Not printed. (Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Dulles–Herter Series)↩
  3. A memorandum of Dulles’ telephone conversation with the President, June 23, 12:30 p.m., in which Dulles read and explained to the President his draft cable to Macmillan, is not printed. (Ibid., Dulles Papers, White House Telephone Conversations)↩
  4. According to the telephone conversation cited in footnote 3 above, “The Sec said he would put into the cable a sentence about not being able to have talks be casual as they should be and if a way could be thought of that would be fine.” This sentence in this message is presumably the one Dulles added to his draft.↩
  5. See Supra.↩