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mainanger would arise not from retaliation but from fallout in the earth's atmosphere."

The purpose was to talk over the abnormal situation facing us, to ask for the ideas of the Legislative branch, and to make certain that we were all thinking along the same lines. Allen Dulles briefed the groups on the status of our, the Soviets', and the East Germans' forces.

"How reliable are the East German troops?" "Can our Germans beat their Germans?" were questions posed to Mr. Dulles. He said that in his opinion, the Soviets would not depend on theirs in any serious action.

"Then," said Mr. Halleck, "if there is action, this would of necessity involve Russian participation?"

The answer was "yes."

Neil McElroy stressed the need in all our planning to bring our allies into accord, saying, "This is what necessitates that we be quiet and refrain from committing ourselves to the public, at the risk of giving the false impression we are doing nothing. Though nothing has come to a head," he said, "we are approaching these problems as if a decision were required tomorrow."

Commenting on this point, the legislators agreed that excessive warnings could cause undue alarm not only to our own people but to the Russians as well.

The recurring question was the seeming contradiction between our plans, made much earlier, for reductions in the size of our Armed Forces and our need to be prepared to defend West Berlin. "The Soviets are engaged in confronting the United States with a series of crises," I said. "The United States has the need for an efficient military system. But it has to be realized that if we program for the sum total of all recommendations for increasing military strength, the mounting burden would call for full mobilization," putting our country on a wartime footing. I said that we could not have ground forces to match those that the Soviets could mobilize in middle Europe.

However, a number of the conferees continued to express anxiety about the adequacy of our Armed Forces. I inisted that if we were to respond with frantic haste to every annoying threat of the Soviets we would merely be dancing to the tune they called, with the result that they could destroy effective planning on our part and push us toward bankruptcy. "We are going to live with this type of crisis for years," I warned, "and our great problem will be to prevent the Communists from throwing us off balance." I expressed the conviction that all-out war would not come, but even if we could be miscalculating and it did come, we still had the courage and the means to follow through successfully. I went on

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to say that we had no intention of opposing, with ground troops only, a full-out attack by a couple of hundred Soviet divisions, but that we would take care of the situation.

This disposed, at least for the meeting, of the argument that we were making a mistake, in the midst of a critical period," to reduce the army by thirty thousand men.

As was normal in all meetings between legislators and the Executive branch on security matters, the question of mutual security came up. I was told, as often before, that this was "a most wasteful expenditure of money." I replied that if we wanted to abolish mutual security and provide instead for eighty or ninety divisions deployed around the periphery of the Soviet Union, this would solve any unemployment problem but it would also make certain that we became a garrison state.

Several times I said that I would consult with the Congress insofar as possible if the Berlin situation seemed to intensify. And several times Senator Russell assured me that consultation was appreciated but not necessary—the initiative was mine and the Congress would support me. There was an almost amusing quality of "Don't call us" about it, but I did remark appreciatively on their backing and on the statesmanlike restraint shown by the Congress. As Vice President Nixon said, this was especially helpful while we were trying to draw into an exact alignment with our allies.

Needless to say, the foregoing are only excerpts from the two meetings, but perhaps the quoted exchanges give an insight into the Executive and the Legislative branches working together, a phenomenon that frequently gets less space and attention than it deserves.

* * *

One crucial point remained in my mind, namely, the relationship, in public thinking, between the Berlin crisis and the numerical strength of our Armed Forces. The question came up again at the next press conference and again I tried to explain the fundamentals. But it seemed advisable to expand the answer into a short television talk, which I delivered on the evening of March 16.

Once more I covered much of the ground the leaders and I had gone over. I stressed that history had taught us the grim lesson that no nation had ever been successful in avoiding the terrors of war by refusing to defend its rights, and that we would never negotiate under a dictated time limit, with an agenda imposed on us, or on other unreasonable bases. I expressed the hope that we could reach an agreement on respectable terms and went on to describe the nation's defense structure.

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The next morning in reading the newspapers I was amazed to learn that my remarks of the evening before had been interpreted to mean that I agreed to a summit meeting as long as a foreign ministers' conference was held first. The words referred to were these:

> It is my hope that thereby all of us can reach agreement with the Soviets on an early meeting at the level of foreign ministers.

> Assuming developments that [would] justify a summer meeting at the summit, the United States would be ready to participate in that further effort.

I saw immediately what the difficulty was. Those who were anxious for a summit meeting took my words to mean that no matter what happened at the foreign ministers' meeting I would interpret it in such a way as to justify going ahead at the summit. This was exactly the opposite of what I sought to convey. I was determined to make the Soviets show ahead of time that there would be promise in a summit, before I would attend such a meeting.

We were now preparing for a planned conference with Prime Minister Macmillan, the summit issue seemed to occupy the center of the stage in all the Western capitals. Reports from overseas indicated considerable variance on this question among the British, the French, and the West Germans. Recent statements by Chancellor Adenauer had apparently implied that summit talks might well become routine affairs. This seemed an unlikely eventuality to me. But what did cause concern was a late report that Harold Macmillan was ready to participate in a summit meeting without any sort of promising preliminary sessions with the Soviets. I was disturbed to hear a highly respected British friend of mine quoted as saying "Britain will not be atomized over the stamping of papers," indicating to me a lack of appreciation of the implications of seeming trivialities. Harold, I knew, was soon to be faced with an election, and sentiment in Britain for a summit meeting was strong. Nevertheless I was quite certain that in any showdown he would see to it that Britain could not be belittled. For my part I was in no mind to change our basic position.

We had many other questions to discuss with the British. As always, I wanted them on our side and everything understood between us. Any conference with the British requires the most detailed discussion. They do not like to sign any generalizations in a hurry, no matter how plausible or attractive they may be, but once their signature is affixed to a document complete confidence can be placed in their performance. French negotiators sometimes seem to prefer to sign first and then to begin discussion.

The most thorny question was the unification of Germany. Our govern-

ment believed that the problem of Berlin could be solved only in the context of German unification and that, until success in this matter had been achieved, the rights of the Western allies in Berlin must not be violated.

On this matter Chancellor Adenauer's problem was particularly difficult. He had staked his political career on West Germany's individual sovereignty, association with the West, and eventual reunification of Germany. For this reason any negotiation with the Soviets that involved even the slightest kind of indirect recognition of the East German government was anathema to him. He feared that minor operational dealings with the East Germans would spell political disaster to his Christian Democratic Union. Thus, in advance, he refused to accede to any arrangements whatsoever that might be made with the East Germans, despite the fact that some of these could appear to the other Western allies to be logical. Herein lay one source of rift between Adenauer and the British.¹²

But regardless of difficulties, it was at least essential that we do what we could to bring the British and West Germans closer together. We also had to insure that the West German viewpoint would be represented in either a foreign ministers' or a summit meeting. At the Geneva Conference of 1955 Adenauer had taken residence in the vicinity and we had kept in close touch with him; it was obvious that some arrangement of like nature would have to be made if a later summit conference should ever take place.

Other matters that we expected to discuss with the British would be European security and nuclear test negotiations. Regarding the first issue, support for the Rapacki "thinning-out" of forces plan was reported to be widespread in Britain. However, this sympathy could hardly be

12 Adenauer, however, had recently been talking of a "federation" between West and East Germany. He would not, by any means, accord to the East Germans a status equal to that of the Federal Republic, and, according to the East Germans, was adamant against any veto power over his own actions. However, Germans on both sides of the fence were apparently working at lower levels to find a solution whereby a federation of German states might be initiated, beginning with some unification at lower staff levels, without involving the two governments.

Other obstacles to coordinating a "Western position" existed in Germany itself. It was possible that Adenauer's party could be defeated if elections were one day held throughout East and West Germany, a possibility that did nothing to bring the two major political parties in Germany together in developing a solid German position on unification. Khrushchev once told me categorically that Adenauer's support of unification was nothing but a show; in Khrushchev's opinion it was merely a ruse on Adenauer's part to stay in power. However, Khrushchev made no reply when I asked him why he did not put his theory to the test by holding free elections throughout Germany.

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shared by the West Germans and French, particularly in view of their never-ending concern that United States military forces might be withdrawn from Europe.

On nuclear testing, my goal was modest. I hoped it would be possible to reach at least a small, enforceable agreement between West and East which might generate confidence for more ambitious plans in this or related fields. I was convinced that the Soviets would not sign a comprehensive self-enforcing agreement respecting armaments, even one on nuclear testing, unless they gained confidence through experience and minor successes in first operating under treaties that were limited initially, practically to trivialities.

Concerned by a reported increase of Free World anxiety about nuclear fallout, I was beginning to feel that we should for the time being strive for a treaty involving only tests within the earth's atmosphere, ignoring those tests of small weapons below ground or sufficiently far into space to preclude fallout. Our concern, however, was that Prime Minister Macmillan might be willing to enter into a treaty with the Soviets which was not realistically enforceable.¹³

On March 20, 1959, the day of the Prime Minister's arrival, he and I, after a short word of greeting, set out for Walter Reed Army Hospital to visit Foster Dulles, who was undergoing treatment for a malignancy.

On the way I thought again of how good it was to have as the leader of our closest and strongest ally a man with whom my acquaintance had been cordial and intimate since the days when we were together in North Africa in 1942. True, we had a troubling difference of opinion on Berlin policy, but he was a statesman upon whose integrity and friendship I could depend.

At Walter Reed we went up the back elevator to Ward 8, a trip which was becoming all too familiar to me. There we met the Secretary of State and the four of us (Selwyn Lloyd joined us) engaged in an hour's conversation that turned out to be anything but casual. The meeting gave Foster full opportunity to express the views we had developed in our

¹³ There were other less earth-shaking matters which we might discuss with our friends. One, strangely enough, concerned a wool tariff quota which was currently under study in the State Department. Since wool was a large industry in Britain, the tariff which the United States put on this commodity while subsidizing our own sheep herders with portions of the proceeds, was a matter of concern to the British. (I would not ordinarily have expected to be discussing a subject such as this in such a meeting, were it not for the fact that when unhappiness develops among friends on one monumental subject it's always good to make sure that some other smoldering minor resentment does not complicate communications.)

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many conversations together. Whatever treatment he had been given in the hospital had done nothing to dull his mind.

The British attitude toward the Berlin situation was the main topic. Foster made a forceful plea that we avoid giving the people of the world the impression that we were frightened of the Soviets or that the Soviets were in the "driver's seat." Foster asked wryly why we spent $40 billion a year or more to create deterrent and defensive power if, whenever the Soviets threatened us, our only answer would be to buy peace by compromise. "If appeasement and partial surrender are to be our attitude," Foster said, "we had better save our money." In some parts of the world —notably Asia, Africa, and Latin America—people were watching closely to see whether they thought the Soviet Union or the Western allies would be the more powerful. He admitted that we could not prevent Khrushchev from strutting across the stage and making grandiloquent speeches; but we could avoid the impression that whenever he sounded conciliatory we would rejoice, and whenever he sounded threatening we would become "fearful as though he were the Lord of Creation."

Finally, after an incomplete discussion of the nuclear test issue, we found that time had run out and it was necessary to depart via helicopter for the retreat in the Catoctin Mountains known as Camp David.

At Camp David Prime Minister Macmillan, Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd, Acting Secretary Herter, Ambassador Whitney, and our respective advisers met for a lengthy joint discussion. The Prime Minister gave us a complete account of his trip to Moscow. It had, he said, three phases: "the honeymoon, the cold spell, and the final resurrection of courtesy by the Russians." No business could be done with the Russians, he observed, except with Khrushchev. The trip had been extremely useful and he hoped it had served to change the Soviet tactic from one of unilateral action to one of negotiation. The Prime Minister reported that there seemed to be renewed Soviet interest in test ban ideas, particularly in a spot-check system of inspection.

Somewhat flabbergasting, in view of his earlier bombast, was Khrushchev's statement to Macmillan that the May 27 deadline on Berlin was in no sense an ultimatum.

Selwyn Lloyd believed that the Soviet bosses would like to ease the burdens which their military establishment made on their own economy and that the Soviet government had no intention of going to war. This statement did not seem to me to square well with Harold's previously expressed anxiety about a nuclear attack on Britain.

The Prime Minister referred sketchily to the views of President de Gaulle, whom he had visited. But his news about Adenauer was of interest. The German Chancellor was beginning to favor a five-year

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"standoff," an agreement between East and West that the status quo between the two Germanys would not be disturbed. He was also willing to discuss—although he made stipulations which practically negated the offer—the possibility of limitation on armaments in specific areas within Germany. It further appeared that Adenauer was relaxing somewhat in the rigidity of his refusal to deal with the East Germans, a change which, he hastened to add, was not to be confused with de facto recognition.

The Prime Minister's report was not nearly so pessimistic as I had anticipated. However, our discussion exposed an important disagreement between the British and ourselves on a summit conference. Selwyn Lloyd, in particular, seemed to feel that a foreign ministers' meeting would be meaningless if it were not designed to point toward a prearranged summit meeting. My stand was that the basic purpose of the ministers' meeting was to determine the desirability of a later one at the summit, and I could not agree to participate personally unless there was evidence of good faith and some progress that promised results from a summit.

Before our conversation ended, we talked about such details as the best place for a possible summit meeting. Harold made a tongue-in-cheek proposal that Newport, Rhode Island, would be splendid because the luxurious surroundings might appeal to the Soviet taste. The site was a matter of indifference to me. A good place might be San Francisco, where the United Nations Charter was signed in 1945, I suggested. At this point, with the conversation moving into minutia, Harold and I left the meeting to drive over to Gettysburg to look around the farm.

When we returned to Camp David, we again met with our associates and on this occasion our differences and convictions were expressed emphatically—and at times emotionally. It now became abundantly clear that the gravest question before us was that of a summit meeting. Harold said that we were dealing here with a matter which affected the whole future of mankind. "World War I—the war which nobody wanted—came because of the failure of the leaders at that time to meet at the summit. Grey [Sir Harold Grey, British Foreign Minister at the time] went fishing and the war came in which the United Kingdom lost two million young men."

I reminded Harold that World War II had been preceded by a summit meeting attended by Neville Chamberlain, and I intended to be associated with nothing of the kind.

The Prime Minister said that he could not take his people into war without "trying the summit first." Eight bombs, he said, would mean

twenty or thirty million Englishmen dead and would destroy their country.

We were not without sympathy for our friends' position but I said that in the event of war, the United States would probably have losses many times those of Britain, and the American people had strong convictions, too. I had put the matter to the British on the premise that I would go to a summit only if developments justified the trip. "We do not escape war by surrendering on the installment plan; one way to prevent war is to be willing to stand on solid ground." I would "not be dragooned into a summit meeting."

"I owe a duty to my people," Harold said. "This question of agreement now to a summit meeting is probably the most fateful decision I will ever have to make." We could only speculate on Harold's insistence upon a promise to attend such a meeting regardless of preparatory measures, but we had no question of his sincerity or the visible depth of his feelings. Without personal animosity, we agreed to think things over during dinner and overnight.

The next morning, when we met at 9:30, Harold told me that his assistants had been working with our advisers and that he thought they were close to an agreement on a formula for a note to the Soviets. Momentarily, I suspected that somebody had come up with clever or ambiguous phrasing which would result in our using the same words but with different meanings in our minds. However, when Mr. Macmillan read the text, I was pleasantly surprised. The formula was to propose a foreign ministers' meeting on a specific date and then to state the purpose of the foreign ministers' meeting, following which these words would be used: "On this understanding and as soon as developments justify the holding of a summit meeting." We promptly agreed on the language of a note to be dispatched to the Soviets [see Appendix S].

Throughout that day advisers from the Department of Defense, Atomic Energy Commission, and other agencies came and went hourly by helicopter. Harold and I, and our closest aides, never left the premises—indeed hardly left the spacious living room of Aspen cottage, whose picture window overlooks a beautiful valley to the east.

Our work on the foreign ministers' conference, the summit, and other questions completed, Harold and I attended church at Trinity United Church of Christ in Thurmont, Maryland, on Sunday morning, March 22, and then returned to Camp David. That afternoon, on the way back to Washington, we made another call on Foster Dulles, who happily had been moved temporarily from the hospital to his own home.

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On March 30 Khrushchev accepted the Western proposal for foreign ministers' talks to begin on May 11.¹⁴ But this did not mean that everything was calm and serene. Petty harassments and difficulties were continually cropping up. For example, a Soviet trawler was detected off Newfoundland cutting transatlantic telephone cables which connected the United States and Europe. This act, while conceivably an accident in the process of deep-sea fishing, was suspicious. The trawler was boarded by the United States Navy and taken to port for questioning of the personnel before being released.

At the end of March a more serious annoyance occurred. As a matter of habit, United States aircraft flying from Western Germany to Templehof Airport in West Berlin had observed a 10,000-foot ceiling because there had never been reason to go higher. However, with the advent of new equipment, which performed better at higher altitudes, it had become apparent that, in the remote possibility that an airlift became necessary, higher altitudes might well be used. Therefore, despite Soviet objections, we sent a flight to Templehof at a high altitude on March 27. The Soviets officially protested, and on April 11 I sent the following message:

The United States Government rejects the Soviet contention that flights above 10,000 feet are precluded by regulations covering flights in the corridors, and that the flight of the C-130 aircraft in question, duly notified to the Soviet Element in accordance with established practice, constituted a violation of presently existing rules. . . . Flights by aircraft of the United States do not require any prior agreement from the Soviet Element [of Berlin Command], and the United States never has recognized and does not recognize any limitation to the right to fly at any altitude in the corridors. As has been previously pointed out, the altitude at which aircraft fly is determined in accordance with the meteorological conditions prevailing at the time and the operational characteristics of the aircraft. . . .

The flight by Soviet aircraft in dangerous proximity to the United States C-130 on March 27, as witnessed by thousands of persons in the Berlin area, constituted not only a serious violation of the flight regula-

¹⁴ At the same time a press report came in to the effect that in mid-March Khrushchev had told West Germany's Socialist Democratic leader, Karlo Schmidt, that nothing would happen regarding Berlin before a summit meeting. While ordinarily we would place little confidence in a story on such a subject this conversation did seem consistent with the estimates we held of Khrushchev's real intentions.

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tions that obtain in the air corridors and the Berlin Control Zone but intentionally created the very hazard to flight safety about which the Soviet representatives have professed concern. . . .

The United States expects the Soviet Government promptly to issue instructions to its personnel in Germany to ensure fullfillment of their responsibility for flight safety in the air corridors to Berlin.

That same day, Allen Dulles and Jerry Green, personal assistant to the Secretary of State, came in, their faces sober. They told me that Foster (then recuperating in Florida) was experiencing considerable pain in his neck and shoulders and was becoming weaker. He had made up his mind that it would no longer be possible for him to continue as Secretary of State. In the meantime he intended to go back to Walter Reed for further checkups. I insisted that Allen tell the Secretary that there was no need to make a change hurriedly. While I would comply with Foster's desires I did not want to rush. I sent the *Columbine* to Florida to return him to the hospital.

Two days later I asked Acting Secretary of State Herter and General Goodpaster to visit me. I told Mr. Herter that at a reasonably early date I would like him to take the post of Secretary of State. No announcement would be made immediately; in the meantime I requested Mr. Herter to submit to a thorough physical examination, so that a group of doctors could determine his physical capacity for performing the arduous tasks of the position. Secretary Herter suffered from arthritis, but his experience and character were such that if he were physically able, his would be, in my judgment, a splendid appointment. We made arrangements with my brother Milton, President of the Johns Hopkins University, for Secretary Herter to undergo a complete physical examination at the Hopkins Medical Center.

On April 15, I talked with Foster on the telephone. In view of the new findings of his doctors, he had made up his mind to submit his resignation immediately. I conveyed the unhappy news at a press conference that morning and announced my intention to appoint Foster as a consultant so that he might continue his service to both the State Department and to me. I said that while his physical incapacity would prevent his carrying out the arduous duties of Secretary of State, I was determined to keep him close where he could be useful in considering everything that might affect our foreign relations.