Now it seems to me that in regard to Rumania and Bulgaria you are not on very strong ground and that it may be well to leave that with the reference which occurs in your contemporaneous letter and not mention Rumania and Bulgaria as a count in the indictment on pages 898–899. I say this because your complaints against Jimmy Byrnes seem to me to be proved and to be strong when you talk about his failure to keep you advised, resulting in the troubles with Vandenberg and the misunderstanding of what he was doing on atomic energy. They also seem to me strong when you talk about Iran. But the record on Rumania and Bulgaria is not so good. In the first place, it does not seem fair to say that Jimmy had agreed to let the Russians have their way. The Communique establishes a Council of Ministers on which Harriman was to sit, to provide for free elections, civil liberties, and matters of that sort; and the recognition and peace treaties were to come after that. Of course, the Russians did not live up to their agreements, but nevertheless on February 5, 1946, the Government sent a note setting up the substance and procedure for the Council of Ministers (which is reported in Department of State Bulletin, XIV, page 256) and on February 15 we recognized the Rumanian Government, as appears on page 298 of the same volume. Later on notes of protest were sent. While I have not looked up a record on Bulgaria, I imagine it was about the same. So far as the peace treaties were concerned, the Moscow Agreement merely said you would write the peace treaties, not what they should contain.
So I think, with this record of action taken in February, presumably under your direction, Jimmy Byrnes, who is both able and consistent, can tear your account to pieces on this particular item. With this in mind, the paragraph beginning on page 898 and the following paragraph on page 899 should be revised, eliminating Bulgaria and Rumania and making more of Iran and the embarrassments caused to you in connection with atomic energy by your complete lack of information from Moscow.
My congratulations on the book. I hope it isn’t taking too much out of you. Surely, if you need a little more time for polishing, the Life people after they see the text should be so pleased with it that they will be amenable.
I have heard from Charley [Murphy] and Dave [Lloyd] excellent reports about your reception and speech in San Francisco. It is wonderful that everything went so well and it must have made you very happy.
With affectionate regards.
Most sincerely yours,
Dean
Truman refers here to the actual second volume of his manuscript, Years of Trial and Hope.
June 30, 1955
Dear Dean:
I am eternally grateful to you for your comments on the manuscript which we have sent you.
I am sending you the second volume and while the turnover has been made corrections will be possible before the books are published so if you can take time out to get back to me as quickly as possible it will be a very great accommodation.
I am in debt to you eternally, as I said before, and you will have a long “sob sister letter” as soon as I can get around to it.
Sincerely yours,
Harry S. Truman
Truman sends Acheson a copy of a letter he’d sent to Joseph Jones, former State Department official and author of The Fifteen Weeks. Despite earlier problems with Jones, Truman liked the book. “I have only one statement to make,” Truman wrote Jones, “and that is that you are entirely too kind to me.” He was pleased with Jones’s treatment in the book of Acheson and George Marshall—“two wonderful men.”
July 6, 1955
Dear Dean:
I am enclosing you a copy of a letter which I have written to Joseph M. Jones.
As soon as I can manage it, I will sit down and write you a long letter, which you are due to receive, and I hope, in spite of the fact that it may be too long, that you will read it.
Sincerely yours,
Harry
My best to Alice. You’ve no idea how you helped us.
His work on the manuscript finished, Truman celebrates with a few caustic remarks about Eisenhower and Dulles. But Truman still wanted Acheson’s review of the draft of the second volume of the memoirs. Wilmer Waller was treasurer of the Truman Library. “Foster” was President Benjamin Harrison’s Secretary of State, John W. Foster, who was also John Foster Dulles’s grandfather. Wayne Morse’s joke about General Grant was that Eisenhower was such a bad President he made Grant look good, Grant being the notoriously worst President in U.S. history because of venality and corruption in his administration.
July 9, 1955
Dear Dean:
I’m sitting here in this Shah carpeted office in the Federal Reserve Bank Building after finishing an answer to the last accumulated letter. Those letters piled up to three or four feet and they worried me no end and you know that I’m a hard one to worry.
The damned book or the cussed manuscript has been accepted by the contractor (Time, Inc.) and I’ve paid [Wilmer] Waller the note which you witnessed in the National Bank of Washington. Now I’ve employed Peat, Marwick and Mitchell to see that Brownell and Humphrey et al do not send me to Leavenworth or Atlanta. I sort of wish I’d let the history of the period lie dormant because when these two volumes of mine come out, Ike, Stevenson and several others are going into conniption fits and I’m going to Timbuktu or Bali. I really believe I’ll take Bali in spite of my seventy-one years!
I’m eternally grateful to you for your suggestions and corrections. In fact, never can I meet the obligation I owe you for recent actions and for what you did as Asst. Sec. of State, Acting Sec. of State and the greatest Secretary of State of them all. And, Dean, I know the history of every one of them from Jefferson in Washington’s cabinet to date. Even including an old man named Foster, who served nine months & five days with old Ben Harrison. His grandson is having a hard time living up to grandpa’s no reputation with another Ben! I fear that he’ll make a statesman out of old Dan Webster or Jim Buchanan. You know what Wayne Morse said on “Meet the Press” when asked Ike’s most outstanding accomplishment. He said Ike had made a great President out of General Grant. I’m in agreement on both propositions and can make a G.E.D. on either one. I’ve made up my mind to accept Lord Halifax’s invitation to Oxford.
So you’re elected for another U.N. suggestion. Wish you could have been in San Francisco. You’d have thought I’d been nominated by another Democratic Convention. They gave me an ovation when I came in, another one when introduced and wouldn’t quit when I came to the end of the speech. Dulles and Molotov held their hands behind their backs. Mrs. Henry Grady was watching both from the gallery. But Molly came to the U.N. reception for the foreign ministers for me—and Dulles didn’t! Lodge came to the reception but yawned every time he had to stand for me! What a show! I watched both Molly and Dully during the delivery but I couldn’t see ’em when they were supposed to stand. Spectators reported their actions.
I read Joe Jones galley proof. It is a dandy and I so wrote him. I told him he gave me too much house and you not enough. He really gave Hull and Byrnes their comeuppance!
You’ve stood enough. My best to Alice. Wish you both would come and see us again. That was a most pleasant occasion for the Boss & me.
Sincerely,
Harry
Acheson begins his critique of the second volume of the memoirs, titled Years of Trial and Hope. The McMahon Act he refers to is the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which, among other things, forbade the sharing of atomic secrets with other nations and spurred the United Kingdom to develop its own atomic-energy program.
July 11, 1955
Dear Mr. President:
I received last week the first manuscript part of Volume II and this morning the second part. I am putting as much time as I can in on them, but other matters press on me and I am not as free as I should be for so large a task as over 800 typewritten pages. Could you let me know what the time schedule is? Whatever I do will have to be finished, I presume, before the 15th of August, when Alice and I go off for a month or six weeks visiting in Europe. Would it be
useful for you if I send back, say, two hundred pages at a time with some suggestions noted on the manuscript and a covering letter? Or do you want me to wait until I have read through the whole second volume? For instance, in Chapter 1 of Volume II the “I” problem becomes rather acute. I have gone through making suggestions for solving this problem. I could continue doing this in other chapters, which would take a lot of time. Perhaps, with the suggestions I have made, someone in Kansas City could go through, adopting the same technique. What is your wish about this?
I also note in Volume II, Chapter 1, that on page 26 the story of our discussion with the British about cooperation in atomic energy breaks off right in the middle. Perhaps it is resumed later on. If so, I have not come to it. At any rate, it seems to me that at this point it should be carried at least to the point where the matter became more or less settled in accordance with the inhibitions placed upon us by the McMahon Act. This would involve the modus vivendi worked out by Bob Lovett about December ’47 or January ’48, the attempts to carry on cooperative exchanges within the McMahon Act, which broke down in 1948 or early 1949, and the final effort, which I think was in 1949, culminating in the Blair House meeting and the blow-up of the joint Congressional committee to get some amendment to the law to permit real cooperation. The result of our inability was to start the British on their present atomic energy work. Whether this is good or bad from the point of view of the total effort, I don’t know enough to say. It is certainly the direct result of the McMahon Act.
Something along this line should be introduced at the end of Chapter 1, which now leaves the whole matter hanging.
I also have a general comment about Chapter 2 and another about Chapter 3. Both of these chapters seem to me pretty heavy going and in neither case does the heavy going end up by rewarding the reader as much as it might.
For instance, in the last part of Chapter 2 there is a running account of the back and forth battle which you waged for price controls immediately after the war. In and of itself, no one cares much about this, and the text does not give the reader any reason why he should care. But, if it is true, as I think it is, that the greater part of the inflation arising out of World War II came in these postwar years and if it came in whole or in part as a result of your losing this battle with the Congress, then this story is very significant to the average reader, because it explains why his dollar is worth only from one-half to two-thirds of what it was before. I don’t know enough economics to know whether what I say is right or not. But, if it is right, this ought to go in at the beginning of the price control section to make the story much more significant than it now is. If what I say is not true, then this story is not very significant anyway, and it should be greatly cut.
Chapter 3 on the budget, I think, is too long and rambling. I haven’t any specific suggestions as yet and perhaps will not have, because this is not my cup of tea. Somehow I don’t think that a general exposition of budgetary principles adds a great deal to your autobiography. I merely raise a red flag about this chapter now.
I am so glad that you found my earlier comments on Volume I useful.
With warm regards.
Most sincerely,
Dean
Acheson continues his critique of the second volume of the memoirs. This is his most blunt and negative letter about Truman’s memoirs, in particular his comments about Truman’s account of the recognition of Israel. He rebuts Truman’s linkage of the Balfour Declaration, which stated the British government’s support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews, with the principle of self-determination as put forward by Woodrow Wilson. Acheson wanted Truman to eliminate this idea from his memoirs. Truman rejected this recommendation. “I discussed the nature of [Acheson’s] criticisms with the President this morning, July 21st,” Truman’s chief writer, Francis Heller, recorded, “and he confirmed once again his firm belief in the principle of self-determination and in his belief that the Balfour Declaration was a manifestation of this principle.” Heller thought Acheson’s comments reflected a “pro-Arab point of view.”
July 18, 1955
Dear Mr. President:
First of all, thank you very much indeed for your grand letter of July 9th [sic]. It took a little extra time getting to me, and for a rather interesting reason—the special delivery stamp. This short-circuited the Georgetown branch post office, which knew we were not at P Street and has been forwarding mail to the office. So your letter was dropped through the door of an empty house and stayed there for several days. That only increased our pleasure at its contents.
Secondly, the book I have finished the first manuscript volume of Volume II and am mailing it back to you today. In this volume I have written a host of suggestions onto the pages of the manuscript and will here only mention those that don’t lend themselves to this treatment or which need explanation.
The comments, outside the manuscript, on Chapters 1 and 2 are in my letter of July 11. They still seem sound to me. I have only one other minor one.
Page 8. Here there are three numbered paragraphs in your letter to Senator McMahon. These paragraphs are almost identical—the points made in them are identical—with the similar paragraphs on pages 5 and 6, in your memorandum to the Secretaries of War and Navy. A suggestion which you might wish to consider is eliminating the three numbered paragraphs on page 8 and inserting a note reading as follows: “(The letter then set forth in the same order the three points made in the foregoing memorandum to the Secretaries of War and Navy, in approximately the same language. It then continued:)”
Chapter 3. I wish that this could be cut, but don’t feel qualified to try. 22 pages is too much for this material. Much of it seems elementary and does not sustain the reader’s interest. For my own taste the explanation of what a budget is, the procedures, the importance of it, etc., could come out. How you got your special interest as a hobby, almost, is interesting and the actual results of your budgets, important. Couldn’t it be reduced by, say, seven pages and still say everything needful?
Specific suggestions:
Pp. 50–51. The marked sentences I would leave out. It raises the whole question of corruption, influence, mink coats, etc., and contributes nothing. As for “experts” being in charge of law and finance, the Department of Justice was the weakest spot in the Democratic administrations for twenty years, and my guess is that it was under Bob Hannegan in the Bureau of Internal Revenue, that so much of the monkey business, for which you paid later on, got its start. The sentences marked ask for trouble without settling it.
P. 62, first paragraph. I just don’t understand what is meant by this. Other readers may be in the same fix.
P. 69, bottom. This is a puzzling explanation. The Treasury furnished the money to the R.F.C. [Reconstruction Finance Corporation]. If it competed with banks, so did the Treasury regardless of where the R.F.C. was located on the chart of organization. The idea of R.F.C. loans was that it did not compete with the banks because it made loans which were needed but which banks would not and could not risk.
P. 93, bottom. I don’t think this is right. The effect a policy is likely to have is an inherent part in devising and recommending the policy. The C.I.A. is not the Presidential adviser on the effects of policies. This is the State Department. The illustration does not illustrate; it confuses. It ought to come out, leaving the exposition solely on Intelligence.
Pp. 95 and 97–98. The paragraphs are duplicates. The later one can well come out. Anything not in the earlier one can be there.
Pp. 104 and 113. Was the final meeting with Marshall re China on December 14 or 15? My recollection is the latter and the letter handed to him is dated December 15.
There is a story that after this meeting Marshall stayed behind when we had gone and asked you whether his instructions meant that when the chips were down we were for Chiang and would support him, and, so the story goes, you said, “Yes.” Is this true? If so, it is of some significance, possibly that he thought the wri
tten instructions were equivocal. Marshall never mentioned this to me, and I only heard the story a year ago from Herbert Feis. Where he got it, I don’t know.
Somewhere in the chapter on China, perhaps on page 103, where you say, “China appeared now to be headed for more trouble,” it might be helpful and revealing to the reader to bring in General Wedemeyer’s recommendations made in November 1945—shortly after V-J Day. They are, I believe, printed in full in the China White Paper and are summarized on pages 8, 9, and 10 of my little pamphlet, which you have, “American Policy Toward China,” dated June 4, 1951. These bring out very clearly the limitations and conditions of the Generalissimo’s capabilities. It was his failure to realize these which brought about his downfall; and when General Wedemeyer states them, we really have the opposition speaking.
On page 116 I have made some notes on the manuscript which I expand here. The first paragraph is a puzzling one as it is written. The fighting in China was clearly the result of the political differences. To say that Marshall’s view of his mission was to bring the fighting to an end and yet avoid political matters is a non sequitur. Wasn’t his view rather that his best chance of effectiveness was to restrict his mediation to those matters which could be said to have a military aspect? The truce was one of these, so was the vital politico-military question of how the military forces in a united China should be organized; what their size should be, and what should be the Nationalist Communist ratio. This was highly political and went to the very root of power. I think it would be well to spell out the substance of his suggestion here, since it was a most important one. If adopted, it would have carried out vast reduction in men under arms, would have created a military power five-sixths Nationalist in composition, the command of which would have been in a government headed by Chiang Kai-shek. These talks were great and delicate ones, and I believe that General Marshall felt that all of his good will would be used up in accomplishing this and that his best chance for agreement on other political measures was, not through mediation, but through encouraging the two major parties and the independent parties to compromise.
Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971 Page 12