Friday, 11 September
Fairly hot
The French Government has asked the United States to underwrite the deficit in her Vietnam military budget for 1954. This morning the U.S. National Security Council recommended that another US$385,000,000 be given to her. This amount will meet what she needs. The French people will be better off.
Jessie Tan and her son called and we invited them for dinner at the restaurant. She told us that Ernest To had set up his own practice because Coxan To did not treat him fairly ever since Mrs. Coxan To passed away and Miss Fox had her hold on the old man. She also told Kitty about how Professor Nixon had helped Cheng Pun to get a scholarship and of his disappointment when Pun failed this term. She will take a trip back to Hong Kong soon.
Dulles, Casey, and Clifton Webb issued a communique today at the end of their two-day meeting in which they said:
1) ANZUS [Australia, New Zealand and US Treaty signed in 1951] will not enlarge its membership.
2) Agreed to recognize the existing Pacific treaties between the United States and the Philippines, and the United States and Japan, as well as the pact recently agreed to between the United States and Korea and the disposition of defence taken with the Chinese Nationalist Government.
3) Not to recognize Communist China, nor to admit its representative to the United Nations under present circumstances. This will be a great comfort to our Taipei friends.
There is an article entitled “Europe Between Two H-Bombs” by Robert Boul in Le Monde this evening. The main points are:
1) Last year, the U.S. authorities declared that she possesses an advance of nearly four years over the Soviet Union in atomic arms. Facts now show that this is far from the truth. American experts now estimate that the Soviet Union has over one hundred A-Bombs, and some of them have four or five times the explosive power of that used in Hiroshima.
2) The Soviet Union had abandoned her former policy of building up her fighter planes first and now she has nearly two thousand heavy bombers.
3) According to the strength of the present American air force, even in the most favourable of conditions, they could intercept only 15 to 20 per cent of the enemy forces. Also, according to the Kelly Report, a surprise attack by Soviet atomic bombers could destroy, in one raid alone, about forty per cent of the American industrial potential and leave 13 million people dead. Such an estimation was made before the appearance of the Russian H-Bomb.
4) The H-bomb is about five hundred times more powerful than the A-Bomb used in Hiroshima.
5) Eighty per cent of Soviet and American bombers would be able to cut through enemy defences and only one H-Bomb they carry would be sufficient to destroy a whole city such as New York, Moscow, or Paris.
6) Immediately after the explosion of the Russian H-Bomb, President Eisenhower called a meeting of the National Security Council. Most of the departments asked the President to make a declaration to the nation about the actual danger. But the President preferred to wait until he could give certain assurance to the nation at the same time. Six committees were set up to study the question, but thus far no plan has been worked out.
7) It is found to be impossible to establish an impenetrable protection even financially.
8) Before he left SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), General [Matthew] Ridgway declared that the actual value of the European army remains dangerously insufficient. It is still unable to stand a Soviet attack. The armaments are composed of the American aide with these types which are already outdated at the time of their delivery like the Sherman tanks constructed in 1943-1944.
9) While seven bombers carrying H-Bombs would be able to destroy the whole of France by dropping each H-Bomb on Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lille, Rombaux, Tourcoing and Le Havre, it makes no sense to debate in Parliament whether the contribution of twelve German divisions would strengthen the defence of Europe.
10) As to the intermediary powers, since they cannot contribute to military decision-making, they naturally take steps to disarm and reduce their heavy military burden. They can no longer serve as a rampart of security for any of the two great Powers.
11) Since the beginning of this century, the policy of the Great Powers was to arm the small Powers for their own selfish ends. Such a policy has proved to be dangerous and even disastrous.
12) The destructive power of scientific armaments nowadays would finish the victor as well as the conquered.
13) The fear of the intermediary Powers is that one of the two great Powers would start a surprise attack and the other retaliate. They are hoping only for a longer period of peace and try to be out of any conflict. It is a very interesting article and reveals plainly the sentiment of the people of Western Europe. It confirms my belief that there will be no war, at least, for some time to come.