April 28, 1950
Memorandum of Conversation with Ambassador Harriman
To the best of my recollection, aside from personal matters, Mr. Harriman and I discussed only the following during his call on April 21:
\(1\) I asked Mr. Harriman whether he would be willing to assist me both in Paris and in London in my talks with the Ministers. He said that he would be very glad indeed to do so but only on the condition that I would consult him when I wished to do so and would not feel under any obligation to have him either at staff meetings or at any other meetings unless I specifically believed that his presence would be helpful. He asked me to be quite ruthless about this and that I could offend him only by not being entirely so. On this understanding he will be available.
\(2\) He told me that he thought the British were softening on the European payments matter and upon my requesting him to bring me up to date he thought that this could be much better accomplished when I got on the other side since the matter changed from day to day and it would only be a waste of time to go into the present standing of the matter.
\(3\) I believe that we had a brief discussion of the paper which is now NSC 68. He expressed his enthusiastic agreement with the paper and his pleasure that the Government was thinking on such broad and constructive lines.
I cannot now recall anything else.
SDA:ma