222. Editorial Note
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Washington with an official party December 16–20, 1956. Nehru discussed relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in conversations with Secretary Dulles at Blair House on December 16, with President Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm on December 17, and again with Eisenhower on December 19 in the President’s office in the White House. A memorandum prepared by Dulles of his conversation on December 16 with Nehru contains a brief section dealing with China:
“We discussed briefly the Chinese Communist situation. I said that before there could be any change in our attitude there would have to be a number of changes on the part of the Chinese Communist regime. At the moment the sticking point was the ten Americans imprisoned. So long as they were imprisoned we could not allow other Americans to visit despite very strong pressures from our news-gathering agencies which have been invited by Communist China.
“Mr. Nehru said that Chou En-lai had indicated that there were failures on our part. I denied this in some detail and suggested that he check with Ambassador Mehta.” (Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, General Memoranda of Conversation)
On December 18, Eisenhower discussed his exchange with Nehru at Gettysburg on the question of China in a telephone conversation with Dulles:
“The Sec asked if they talked re Communist China and the Pres. said yes and at considerable detail. The Pres. said we don’t use the word never but until these things that are going on have been relieved there is no sense talking about it. He said Chou said to him that so many have been released and nothing has been done by us. The Pres. said the hell it hasn’t and explained what had been done. The Sec said he talked to him Sunday and said if they let the 10 go we would take a different position on passports and that might break the logjam. The Pres. also spoke re breaking the Armistice terms in Korea.” (Memorandum of a telephone conversation by Bernau, December 18; ibid., White House Telephone Conversations)
A memorandum of Eisenhower’s conversation with Nehru on December 19 was prepared in the White House, but a note on the source text reads: “Practically impossible to hear the Prime Minister”. The identity of the person who prepared the memorandum is not indicated on the source text. The section of the memorandum dealing with China reads as follows:
“The Prime Minister talked at length, mentioning the name of Chou En-lai. The President said that is number one priority. He spoke of the incident of the invitation for newspapermen to go over there, and our thought that, step by step, we might have been able to reach some kind of modus vivendi.
“The President spoke of his conversations with Chiang Kai-shek. When he visited there right after the War, he was impressed to hear everybody talking perfectly freely, and that they seemed to like ‘having us around.’ They put the President in the most beautiful quarters he has ever been in. There seemed no danger, or no thought of any molestation or interference. The President said that he, for one, was particularly shocked when we saw developing in the country those terrible pictures of United States victims.
“The President said he would like to get our people over their currently very adverse attitude toward Red China. They put Red China at the bottom of the list, even below Russia, which he does not understand—but that it is true. He thinks most of it is about the ten prisoners and the fact, as he had told Nehru the other day, of the casualties suffered in Korea. Our people are sensitive—in World War II, they thought that it was something that had to be fought. He said he never heard discussed so much the theories of World War II as of the casualties of Korea. So the President thinks the main thing from our side is (a) the ten prisoners, and (b) Korea.
“With those things straightened out, we would of course naturally do something with our public opinion here; secondly, we could do something, as the President had said before, about sending newspapermen over there who would begin to find out what they are thinking. There would then be a flow of news coming back that would tend to ameliorate this uneasy state of pandimonium. And [Page 454] there could, out of such a small achievement as this, spring something very fine.
“But the President’s feeling, as of this moment, is that it is impossible for us to take the first step. He said Foster Dulles may have a different view, but that this is his own feeling.” (Ibid., Whitman File, Eisenhower Diaries)