Letter from McGeorge Bundy to Dean Acheson

rage- HARVARD UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES OFFICE OF THE DEAN 5 UNIVERSITY HALL CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS S. March 8, 1954 is Dear Dean: March is the budget season in Cambridge, and I'm sorry to say that I simply cannot get away for the coming weekend. This annoys me very much, because I would particularly like to hear the discussion of Korea and other Pacific affairs. I had hoped also to take part in the discussion of your memorandum of February 17. I offer herewith the few comments which I had it in mind to put forward. First, I think that all of the matters which you set forth deserve discussion. I also think that all of them, with the exception of the Korean matter, the can properly be treated more in terms of theme and less in terms of chronology in which you have been mainly occupied thus far. Especially when the themes are foreshadowed as they are in your memo it should be possible for you to sketch your general position at the outset in the discussion of each new topic, and then the others, forewarned, may wish to test the proposition with reference to specific episodes. This would be a particularly serviceable technique if in fact each subject can be discussed in the presence of the man who was most concerned with its details - Eddie Miller for Latin America, Dean Rusk and Phil Jessup for the U. N., etc. As to omissions, I find it hard to comment, since I have missed a number of meetings, and I know that the discussions have ranged much more broadly than the skeleton list of topics would indicate. The subject which I personally have not heard discussed as much as I should have liked is one that you may well have treated in a meeting at which I was not present. It wag/Sthe one, I think, that will much concern historians: It is, of course, the question of the battle of public opinion. In what measure, if the job were to be done over again, would there be ways and means, in your view, of lessening the impact of partisan and crackpot criticism? In what measure, if you look back on it, do you see