Beschreibung:

EISENHOWER, DWIGHT DAVID, President . Typed letter signed ("Dwight D Eisenhower") as President, to Major George Fielding Eliot in New York; Washington, D.C., 30 May 1956. One page, 4to, on White House stationery, matted with a copy of a typed letter from Eliot and a photograph of Eisenhower . An interesting exchange of letters that on the Eisenhower administration's defense policy which throws light on the Eisenhower Doctrine, formulated in 1957. Six months before being reelected to his second term, Eisenhower responds to Major Eliot's suggestion that he publicly elucidate his defense policy in a "TV-radio 'fireside chat,'" to put an end to what the Major perceives as a "growing bewilderment...as to the basic objectives of the defense program" and to avoid "further distortion of public opinion." Eisenhower replies: "...it is evident that for some time you and I have been preoccupied with the same concern -- and....I have touched on the subject recently at several press conferences. Moreover, I agree that due both to the complexities of the subject and to the constantly changing factors in it, we should have a better method for keeping the fundamentals before the public. One difficulty with the method you suggest is that, regardless of the sincerity of my personal effort to keep this subject on a non-partisan basis, election year tensions and ambitions make any purely educational effort almost an impossiblity. Since this particular subject is so delicate, with the slightest mishandling apt to create complacency on one side or incipient hysteria on the other, the basic problem is truly a difficult one to solve...."