123 Bowles, Chester

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State 1

confidential

I remarked to the President that in a cable Bowles had suggested that, if the President made any speech on the 4th of July, he might include in it the support of our Government and people in the struggle for independence by dependent peoples. I said that, if any such suggestion were made to the President—which I doubted, since I had spoken to Ambassador Bowles about the matter—I hoped that the President would reject it, since this would cause us grave difficulty in connection with the Tunisian matter.2 The President said that he would not in any circumstances get involved in this matter.

Ambassador Bowles was with the President when I arrived,3 and the President asked me to be present. Ambassador Bowles was pressing the President to request additional funds for India at this session. The President was obviously reluctant. Ambassador Bowles thought that there was a chance that the funds might be obtained (with which I did not agree and so stated), or that even if they were not obtained, the record should be clear that the Administration had tried and failed.

The President said that the matter would be referred to the Budget Bureau.4 Ambassador Bowles’ views would be considered there. I said that I thought the Administration’s position would be made clear, first, by the fact that the funds which we had requested had been cut and, second, by the President’s stressing Point 4 and India in his State of the Union and Budget Messages in January 1953.

  1. Secretary of State Acheson did not draft this memorandum of conversation until the following day, June 13.
  2. For documentation regarding the issue of Tunisia, see pp. 665 ff.
  3. No record has been found in the Department of State files of a conversation on June 12 between Ambassador Bowles and the President prior to the Secretary’s arrival.
  4. On June 16, President Truman sent a memorandum to the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Frederick J. Lawton, requesting that Lawton examine enclosed copies of New Delhi telegram 4356 of May 22, not printed, and the memorandum of June 5 from Director for Mutual Security Harriman and Secretary of State Acheson (p. 1646), and make whatever recommendations he, Lawton, thought were necessary (Truman Library, Truman papers, PSF–Subject file).