310.2/6–953: Telegram
The United States Representative at the United Nations (Lodge) to the Department of State
781. Re Chinese representation. Lunched today with Jebb and Hoppenot at Hoppenot’s invitation. Jebb immediately opened up by saying that he thought it was highly illogical for us to oppose the membership of Communist China in the UN when the Soviet Union was also a member. He said he could not see the difference. I said to him: “There is just this difference. In the Korean war, the Chinese Communists have inflicted more than 130,000 casualties on us and the Soviets haven’t. To us this is quite a difference.” I said that from our viewpoint it was utterly out of the question to bring this matter up. It was a matter involving deep feelings and we could not even consider raising it in the UN.
Hoppenot asked whether sometime in the future it could come up and I simply said that we would have to let time take care of that and cross that bridge when we came to it. I said that we would never ask the French to get into bed with the Germans after a Franco-German war had ended, and that our friends should not ask us to get into bed with the Chinese Communists. Hoppenot asked whether it would make any difference to American opinion if as a condition of membership in the UN the Chinese Communists were to agree to desist from their aggressive tactics in Indochina.1 I said that of course the American public would take note of such a development with great interest.
[Here follows discussion of procedure in the United Nations attendant upon the signing of an armistice in Korea.]
- For documentation on Indochina, see volume xiii.↩