Letter from George A. Graham to Dean Acheson

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRINCETON NEW JERSEY Department of Politics August 6, 1953 Mr. Dean Acheson S. Union Trust Building Washington 5, D. C. AND Dear Mr. Acheson: After some reflection on your letter of July 29 and a conference with Professor Sprout, I shall try to set down our ideas on the questions you raise regarding future meetings of the seminar. It is obvious that the period with which we are dealing is one in whi ch the Government faced most serious problems, and was, on the whole, remarkably successful. That makes it a very fruitful period for study. The experience and the lessons that can be learned should be of great value to the public and to public officials, as well as to scholars. The very richness of the period, however, is a problem for us. We may be tempted to get down more hay than we can put up in several years. 1. Our first suggestion would be that the seminar be considered a starting point or foundation for studying the period by other means and for reporting findings in a variety of ways. A general study of the foreign policy of the Government from 1948 to 1952 would obviously be useful, but it will take a prodigious effort to do justice to it. Perhaps, therefore, such a study is properly a longer range objective on which a mature scholar should get to work with ample time at his disposal to do a good job. 2. The second suggestion is that it would probably be unwise to try to compress all of the story into a single, although comprehensive, book. Various parts of the story could be told as separable, reasonably complete and significant episodes in themselves. This is true of the organic as well as of the substantive problems. Some of this experience could be presented in case studies that would be highly revealing and useful. The organic case studies (concerned with how our complex political and adminis- trative institutions operate) might deal with such matters as the following: a. Relations with the President. Two Cases suggest themselves immediately. One is the experience in the Treasury with the President's Gold Purchase Policy, whi ch left you somewhat dis- satisfied with the way you had handled the matter. The other is the system you developed as Secretary of State to keep in touch with the President while abroad at conferences. In these cases the report should cover the problem as you sized it up at the time, the alternatives which seemed to be available, the steps taken, and the main course of events. b. The top management team in the Department of State - how it was built and how it was operated. C. Relations with Congress.