Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, Volume XX

203. Letter From the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Whitney) to the President¹

London, May 24, 1957.

Dear Mr. President: Yesterday I called on Harold Macmillan at his request “just to chat”. We had a most friendly and interesting conversation, lasting over an hour, and covering a wide scale of subjects. He was relaxed and amiably disposed toward friend and foe, even though Salisbury² was at that moment reviving antagonisms which should have been left to die long since. He said that he was “more comfortable” now, having passed successfully through a trying period. At the end, he invited me to see him whenever I had anything important. “Selwyn will understand”, he added. I’m pleased about that, because obviously his door had to be opened by him.

The chief thing he had on his mind was suggested to him by your letter on his Bulganin reply.³ He thought he caught from you a glimmer that maybe the Soviet leaders are beginning to think seriously about disarmament. If they are, he reasoned, no good will come out of it at the present conference level; it will take a discussion among the leaders of States.

For awhile, as you know, the Government here has been toying with the idea of talking to the Soviet in the U.N. over the Middle East. I opposed this very strongly with Selwyn Lloyd and the P.M. said he became convinced this was wrong. But what does interest him now is the idea of a “Summit” meeting limited to the one subject of disarmament and he said he would be interested to know your thinking about this. The timing would be to “start to begin” discussions about it a year or eighteen months from now.

There is a strong feeling here that the Russians do have a real economic problem, and an awakening fear of tightening atomic pressure. This is tied to a belief that the Committee direction of internal communism is not working and that either the cult of Stalin must be restored, or Khrushchev must build himself into a figure of worshipful size. A meeting at the top level on this most dramatic of all issues would, of course, be a fine piece of personal promotion for him.

I guess that this is discussed with me because it is so tentative, and so fraught with wild hopes and bottomless traps that it is not the time to put anything on paper. What Macmillan wanted was the trend of your thinking on this subject. I have addressed this privately to you rather than through telegraphic channels, in view of its combustible nature.

I cannot evaluate the seriousness of this approach: how spur-of-the-moment, or how politically motivated. I simply pass it along with my own thought that he would probably be quite satisfied if I were to report that you were not thinking along this line at the moment.⁴

I hear from travellers—and from Cliff—that your health is excellent again, for which I am thankful. I can imagine that these days are not very elevating for the spirit, however!

With warm regards and respect, I am

Very sincerely yours,

Jock

1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Administration Series, Whitney. Top Secret.
2. The Marquis of Salisbury, Lord President of the Council, resigned from the Macmillan government on March 29 because of his opposition to Macmillan’s decision to release from detention the Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios. He was also critical of the government for its decision to accept Nasser’s terms for the use by British shipping of the Suez Canal, and he introduced a motion in the House of Lords on May 23 censuring the Macmillan government on this issue.
3. Reference presumably is to Eisenhower’s letter to Macmillan, May 10, scheduled for publication in volume XXVII.
4. Whitney sent a copy of this letter to Dulles and attached to it a personal note, which reads in part: “I think I can guess at the answer. However, there is a lot of pressure here, as you know, for ‘talks’ and this business will crop up from time to time.” (Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda)

   On June 5, Dulles replied as follows: “I have your letter of May 24th. Thank you for sending me this copy of your letter to the President. We talked it over briefly yesterday evening. The time may come when some ‘Summit’ meeting on disarmament would be appropriate, but not, I think, until much more preparatory work has been done. As the President and I were saying, such a meeting must be a success, for a failure would have very grave consequences indeed.” (Ibid.) For Eisenhower’s reply, see Document 234.