At ten orclock this morning we went over to the White House to meeting the President had called to discuss the Philippine military and naval bases.. To begin with Forrestal, Grew, Tydings and myself were there. I then found that the Navy had accepted our statement of principles as perfectly satisfactory to them for themselves, and so the two reports of the two Services were consolidated into a single statement of principles for both as well as the list of the localities where the bases would be placed for both. Then after this had been done President Osmena came in and he accepted the statement of the Arny and Navy as acceptable to the Philippine government. President Truman then signed it and the job was done, Tydings suggested an addition to the statement of principles to the effect that the United States should have jurisdiction to follow up espionage cases outside of the bases and throughout the Islands This was made verbally and was accepted by Osmena. The statement of principles as accepted by everybody is annexed to this day’s . diary.
Then I spent the rest of the time in the morning reading dispatches until at twelve o clock Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Minister, came In. I had about forty-five, minutes with him on general matters but especially S-1. He brought me messages of congratulation from the Prime Minister and said that he would be very glad to convey to him anything that I wanted to tell him about S-1 In which he was deeply interested. I then outlined to him the progress which we have made and the timetable as It stood now, and told him my own feeling as to its bearing upon our present problems of an international character. After that we had luch with Marshall and MoCloy coming in to share it with us. There we had a talk In general about matters in Europe and particularly Germany and the complications which are being made by Russia’s difficulties. Roger Waking and Mr. Balfour of the British Embassy had come over with Anthony Eden but had gone off with Harvey Bindy while Eden was with me.
I talked over with Marshall the list of questions which the State Department had fired at me and which I enumerated in my yesterday’s diary and we both decided that they were rather impractical to discuss now with anyone. I had a talk with McCloy about them. I told him to look them over and see what he thought of them; if he thought there was anything serious to answer. I told him that my own opinion was that the time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words. The Russians will understand them better than anything else. It is a case where we have got to regain the lead and perhaps I do It in a pretty rough and realistic way. They have rather taken it away from us because we have talked too much and have been too lavish with our beneficences to them, I told him this was a place where we really held all the cards. I called it a royal straight flush and we mustn’t be a fool about the way we play it. They can’t get along without our help and Industries and we have coming into action a weapon which will be unique. Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much and not to indicate any weakness by talking too much; let our actions speak for themselves.
Secretary Forrestal had very kindly invited me to join a dinner that he was giving on the “Sequoia” in honor of Anthony Eden, But by the end of the afternoon I felt very tired and General Kirk came in and reported to me
the verdict of the group of officers in the Medical Corps who had examined me up at the house the other day. They told me that I was all right but that I was still in danger of drawing on ay reserves, the reserves of my heart; and they wanted me to take a week’s rest and let them see how that acted on my heart action. So I went home instead and rested and spent the evening quietly with Mabel and I think we shall probably go off either to White Sulphur Springs where the Army has a fine place to stay or go quietly up to Highhold.