Department of State Atomic Energy Files

The Ambassador in Belgium ( Kirk ) to the Under Secretary of State ( Acheson )

personal and top secret

Dear Dean: Many thanks for your most interesting letter of February 5.1 I appreciate the detail you went into about organizational changes and the persons involved. For God’s sake keep things tight.

It is rather difficult to answer your question as to why there has not been heavier pressure here. It has puzzled me considerably. Trying to put myself in the Russians’ place, I would think that their objectives on uranium would be two-fold. One would be termination of the present contract. This would require that its terms be made public and made to appear objectionable to Belgian public opinion. The other would be to have uranium made available to scientists whose work would be made known to the Russians. While they presumably have uranium from internal or Czech deposits for their own research, they would naturally be interested in obtaining the results of nuclear research anywhere and the work of “friendly scientists” such as Joliot-Curie could be important to them. So far they have followed both lines with the emphasis increasingly, for the moment, on the second.

What is more difficult to understand is why neither line has been pushed more actively. On this point the Communists here are, of course, in the Government. They probably realize that a country as small as this, prosperous as it is, could not readily be persuaded to undertake the enormous expense of serious research in this field. Furthermore, the Belgian Communists seem to operate on a fairly loose rein from Moscow and to be permitted for the time being to be more Belgian than Communist. For example, Lalmand, the Communist Minister of Food Supply, who according to our best information is the real as well as the titular leader of the Belgian Communists, advocates retention of the monarchy to tie Belgium’s two linguistic [Page 797] groups together and expresses his opinion that Communism can grow faster in Belgium under a high level of prosperity than under adverse economic conditions. In addition, the Drapeau Rouge has been urging that the way for Belgian workers to get higher real wages is to increase productivity and that strikes at the present time are against their own interest.

All this seems to indicate that Moscow does not currently attach sufficient importance to either objective indicated above to whip up the Belgian Communists over them. Why it is not more interested I frankly cannot answer.

Spaak has more than once expressed amazement to me that the Russians did not try to buy some from Union Minière. He mentioned this in connection with possible nationalization of the deposits, as nationalization would make such requests more difficult to refuse.

I am delighted that you have decided to stay on in the Department and wish you all the best. Lydia joins in warm regards to you and Alice.

Sincerely,

Alan
  1. Not printed.