PARIS, 4 August 1946, 2.45 p.m.
Many thanks for your telegrams. [1] I am giving them both careful consideration and fully realise your great difficulties. The United Kingdom Government is concerned as well as Australia, and this being the first occasion on which we hold the position in which we are acting for all the British Commonwealth Countries with interests in the Pacific, I am particularly anxious not to embarrass any of these countries apart from Australia. I realise that Atcheson must be proving difficult, but on the other hand from my experience of the Soviet Union at New York and Paris, I am satisfied that they are conducting an offensive of nerves against Western Countries including United States. You know how hard I have struggled to resist mere anti-Russian sentiment but at the same time Soviet’s conduct at International Conferences amounts to tactics well known in Communistic circles of systematic obstruction, sabotage and determination to win by resorting to weapons of fatigue and almost open intimidation. I am sure you will see necessity for discouraging the use of all such methods against which I shall always be ready to fight. If you approve, I would like you to show this cable to MacArthur and obtain his reaction. [2] Also give him my deepest personal regards.
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1 Documents 24 and 34.
2 No record of MacArthur’s reaction has been found.
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[AA:A1838/238, 482/1/7]