Letter from Harry S. Truman to Eleanor Roosevelt

NST- 4/8 THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON May 7, 1947 st Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: It was thoughtful of you to write me, as you did in your letter of April 17, telling me of your concern over recent world developments and giving me guidance. The Greek-Turkish matter which you mentioned has, I think, caused me more worry and soul-searching than any matter in these past two years. I felt the grave responsibility of the decision and the drawbacks to any course of action suggested. But it has also brought me, when the decision was made and as the issues have developed here and abroad, a growing feeling of certainty in the rightness of our step. Your own concern and the concern of the sender of the wire you enclosed seem to be mainly, first, that we should not try to stop Communism by throwing our economic weight in at points which are of strategic importance but deficient in democracy, and, second, that we must outsell Communism by offering something bet- ter, that is, a constructive and affirmative program which will be recognized as such by the entire world and which can be effected without resort to the totalitarian methods of the Communist police state. On the first half of this I would argue that if the Greek-Turkish land bridge between the continents is one point at which our democratic forces can stop the advance of Communiam that has flowed steadily through the Baltic countries, Poland, Yugo- slavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, to some extent Hungary, then this is the place to do it, regardless of whether or not the terrain is good. The necessity at this point for formulating and carrying out a detailed operation to improve the situation is urged by Mr. Williams in his wire to you. While the details may differ con- siderably from those outlined by him, I an determined that the instructions to our mission will be worthy of the "support of all democratic nations", and will give no basis for the fear that it may be solely a "futile attempt to stop communism without offering anything better than the strengthening of autocracy and dictatorship."