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Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Ambassador of France Henri Bonnet, and Theodore Achilles
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- इसका हिस्सा Dean Acheson Papers, Secretary of State Files
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ADDRE
COMMUNICATIONS TO
m S_CRETARY OF STATE
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
WASHINGTON 25, D. c.
WASHINGTON
yeorcopy
retained in
private
. NATIONAL AND
January 3, 1949 papers
Dear Dean:
Your request - that I talk with you before
making any decisions about staying or not staying
with the Department - leads me to want to put certain
things to you on paper before we talk. It should
simplify discussion, and save time.
We all have our egos and ambitions, and warm
ourselves on the esteem of others, which we
generally exaggerate. I am no exception. But the
shadows which fall on all of us, these days, are
so huge and dark, and so unmistakable in portent,
that they clearly dwarf all that happens among us
individually, here below; and I really have no
enthusiasm for sharing with people I have known -
Kerensky, Bruening, Dumba, or the King of Jugoslavia-
the wretched consolation of having been particularly
prominent among the parasites on the body of a dying
social order, in the hours of its final agony.
Please ascribe it, therefore, to reason, and
not to an implausible modesty, when I say that I
am really not interested in carrying on in government
service unless I can feel that we have at least a
sporting chance of coping with our problem: - that
we are not just bravely paddling the antiquated raft
of U.S. foreign policy upstream, at a speed of three
miles an hour, against a current which is making four.
The thesis of the X article, you will recall,
was that our main problem was a political one and
that we had a good chance of coping with it by political
means - (at least means short of a full-scale shooting
war) - if we would stop moping, face up to the situation
cheerfully and realistically, and conduct ourselves
rationally, in terms of our own epoch. I still feel
that way.
When
The Honorable
Dean Acheson.
2805 P Street, N.W.,
Washington, D. C.
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