Cablegram 616 CANBERRA, [12 October 1947] [1]
MOST IMMEDIATE PERSONAL
‘I have now been in touch with both President Truman and Secretary of State Marshall about the urgency of preliminaries for the Japanese Treaty. I pointed out that the United States has a simple duty to perform, namely, to call a preliminary conference of the eleven or twelve powers concerned in fighting against Japan, and at that conference to decide on a place for the meeting of the final peace conference and also, where possible, on procedural conditions including two thirds majority rule, which the United States’ State Department proposed in August last.
As you know, that was the unanimous view the British Commonwealth group accepted at the Conference which met in Canberra under my Chairmanship at the end of August.
Both President Truman and Mr. Marshall are still in agreement with this in principle but some additional difficulty has been caused by Chinese claim to exercise a veto which would not only be intolerable in itself but would lead inevitably to the retention of the veto by the United Nations. Despite general acceptance of the views which you and I had, and which the British Commonwealth group accepted in accordance with the United States’ State Department proposal, I think some positive step by yourself would probably clinch any objection and perhaps you might consider desirability of such action.’
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1 Evatt transmitted this message from New York to Burton on 11 October to be forwarded to Shaw. Minor editorial corrections were made to this text before Shaw conveyed it to MacArthur on the 12th.
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[AA : A5104/2, 8/8]