Dulles, John Foster

I will have no more to do with Dulles, whose great slab of a face I dislike and distrust.

1953, 7 January. (Colville, Fringes II, 320.)

Reconstructed from Colville’s third-person rendition in his diaries. John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), US Secretary of State under Eisenhower 1953-59, took a hard line against new approaches to the Russians advocated by Churchill. Colville added to this note:

W. was really worked up and, as he went to bed, said some very harsh things about the Republican Party in general and Dulles in particular, which Christopher [Soames] and I thought both unjust and dangerous.

Dulles is a terrible influence. Ike now wants to postpone the conference for a fortnight to give the French a chance to settle down after the election. And every day it’s getting hotter in Bermuda.

1953, 16 June. (Moran, 433.)

In the event, the Bermuda summit was postponed until December following Churchill’s stroke a week later.

This fellow preaches like a Methodist Minister, and his bloody text is always the same: That nothing but evil can come out of meeting with Malenkov. Dulles is a terrible handicap. Ten years ago I could have dealt with him. Even as it is I have not been defeated by this bastard. I have been humiliated by my own decay. Ah, no, Charles, you have done all that could be done to slow things down.

1953, 7 December, Bermuda. (Moran, 540-41.)

Moran added: "When I turned round he was in tears. That was the last I heard of Moscow [Churchill’s desire for a summit with the Russians]." Georgy Maximillianovich Malenkov (1902-88), Soviet politician, Premier of the Soviet Union 1953-55.

He is the only case of a bull I know who carries his china closet with him.

1954, 24 June, Washington. (Halle, Irrepressible, 325.)

Not positively verified, and misquoted by Manchester I, 34. Represented only as "ear witness" by Kay Halle. WSC last visited Dulles when the latter was dying of cancer in May 1959, as a characteristically generous gesture; but his thoughts on that occasion are unrecorded.