295. Editorial Note
On September 19, Secretary Dulles addressed the United Nations General Assembly. Much of his speech was on disarmament, especially the recent developments in the Subcommittee of the United Nations Disarmament Commission. On September 16, Dulles had sent a draft of a passage of his proposed speech along with a covering memorandum to the President, who was vacationing in Newport, Rhode Island. In this passage he implied that the United States would be willing to discuss with other free nations the application of some of the principles on regulation of armaments worked out between them in preparing a Western powers’ position at the London disarmament talks. (Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda) In his reply, September 17, telephoned to Dulles from Newport, the President wrote in part:
“I can see that the purposes you are seeking are laudable ones. Entirely aside from the economy you would achieve, you would be serving notice on the Soviets that their refusal to bargain in good faith in the matter of disarmament will result in much closer military and political collaboration between the nations of the free world, and this in turn would bring about a more widespread deployment of nuclear weapons in order that security might be achieved at the lowest possible cost. I think that such warning or implication could be conveyed in not more than a sentence or two, whereas I rather feel your passage could possibly create some misunderstanding, even among our own people.”(Ibid.)
Dulles only briefly alluded to the benefits of collective security arrangements between the United States and its Western European allies in reducing the burden and risks of armaments in his speech, which is printed in Department of State Bulletin, October 7, 1957, pages 555–559.