Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Ambassador of Great Britain Sir Oliver Franks

this INCLASSIFIED (Copy No. 1 of NLT826 Seen by two copies) copyinez DEPARTMENT OF STATE 86 when dictated 566 Lx Battle THE SECRETARY mattheas April 2, 1951. literature MEMORANDUM OF MEETING Between British Ambassador DECLASSIFIED and Secretary Acheson Authority NLT 85-1 9(mm) By DEB NLT Date 8-12-37 Sir Oliver explained the general temper of London. He said that it had been a terrible winter, the wettest weather in eighty years; there had been the bad flu epidemic; the Government had been under unceasing fire and had had to cope with crises about once a week, which they had barely pulled through; everyone was tired; the Foreign Office had been practically leaderless, with the Prime Minister, Mr. Bevin, Mr. Younger, Mr. Strang, all contributing a little, and with Dixon and Makins contributing most of the leadership. Sir Oliver said that so far as the new Foreign Minister is concerned, he thinks there will probably be no really great change. Mr. Bevin has not, in directing foreign affairs, been ruled by the party, but has been trying to do what he thought was right in the great stream of history, of which he had a deep consciousness. Sir Herbert Morrison will have the same general deep interest in the future of England, but less sense of historical continuity. He will have antennaen out for politcal maneuvering. He will be more flexible in both the good and bad sense. He will be easier to deal with, but he will tand to bend a principle without bending it to the crack- ing point. Secretary Acheson asked him whether the long delays in acting on Korean statement and Japanese treaty were due to any deliberate effort to block or obstruct and whether the British had some policy which they were not disclosing to us; and whether Sir Oliver thought we were drifting to real trouble. Sir Oliver said that in a way this question amused him, because he was asked the same question about the United States; that is, whether we had a secret policy. The idea that we might have had been pieced together from the MacArthur statements, from statements made by the President and in Congress, from various rumors about our possibly financing guerrillas and building up Chiang Kai-Shek. All of this seemed to them to point to our possibly building up an aggressive force based on the objective of the overthrow of the Communist Regime in China. Sir Oliver had answered these questions by saying that he did not think that there was anything in these fears. His opinion was that the United States had been groping in the last quarter