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7/8/53 - Wire II -- p. 1 Q You were just in the middle of remarks about the discussion of the President, Ministers and Ambassadors. DA Oh yes, the President had been asked to name one F these Purchasing Agents -- there were three of them -- and Ministers, and I gave him a memorandum which dealt with this question of titles and he said he wanted to give these people all the rank they could possibly have, but it seemed to me that the diplomatic titles were being cut into pretty heavily for a lot of purposes, and perhaps there were other categories of titles that might be used such as, for instance in regard to Bill D. instead of giving him the rank of Ambassador, why don't we give him the personal rank of King. That was supposed to be prevented by the Constitution which prevented our giving titles of nobility. And we could move into another field, but I hesitated very much to invade the military area -- certainly I wouldn't suggest that anyone be called General, Colonel or Major, but we might take up a military symbol which was the number of guns that a person could have and we might give people seventben guns to be fired at him when you saw the whites of his eyes. Now I went on with this for a little while and the Presuident was very much amused. He said, "if I had had this a half an hour ago, I wouldn't have done it, but I have given him the rank." Well, now, in regard to this question of one voice, I have picked out an illustration to talk about where I think we really outdid ourselves and I am not sure that I can really is ARCHIVES RECORDS *NATIONAL AND set it down because it is too confusing, even for me, and I am pretty deeply confused. late This has to do with our arrangments in North Africa/in 1942 and in 1943, am this was triumph of organization by Americans who were supposed to be good in organization. After following the military operatidns in North Affica were over, we had the/people who were representing the United States in that area. There was first of all the military G5 which ulti- mately came under the control of Chuck Spoffard who was then a Colonel and later a General in the Army -- that was the whole military civilian operation, military government affairs. Then you had another group of people who in and out of military rank under Bob those were the people who had prepared the invasion and helped the French authorities there. Most of them were State Department people and to whom they report and reported I never knew. I never knew what they said or what their views about it. They may Hull have reported to the President or to Mr. Howell or to Mr. Wells or to the Army. If they