Portraits and Miniatures(25)

Acheson was sustained by a fierce loyalty from his President which was important for the buoyancy of his spirits, although Truman in those days did not carry a very thick mantle of prestige or authority that he could throw over the Secretary of State. Ernest Bevin was also a pillar of earthy support. Acheson recorded Bevin as saying on a 1950 occasion when there were Republican congressional demands for his resignation: ‘Don’t give it a thought, me lad. If those blokes don’t want yer, there’s plenty as does.’

In the tangled skein of Anglo-American personal relations in the critical post-war years Bevin and Acheson got on crucially well. There is a general easy belief that after the years of wartime partnership there was a natural camaraderie between American and British leaders and public servants, which by comparison left the French, the Germans and others out in the cold. The position was more complicated than this. Bevin rather admired Marshall, but he did not have easy relations with him, and Marshall in turn, who was in some ways priggish, believed that Bevin was, of all things, unreliable, and in any event rather a crude fellow. With Truman, Bevin’s relations were vitiated by Israel, and by his belief that the President played politics with the issue. Nor were Attlee-Truman relations particularly close, although they once had a convivial evening together, under the surprising aegis of Ambassador Oliver Franks, singing World War I songs. Acheson both failed to understand and discounted Attlee. Furthermore, to underline that this was no special feature of Democrats or Labour ministers, Dulles’s relations with Eden were abysmal, and very little better with Churchill and Macmillan. So the Acheson-Bevin bond of affectionate respect, the more impressive for being across a chasm of dissimilarity, stood out as both valuable and unusual.

Acheson, however, was not Anglo-Saxon-centric. He got on almost as well with Robert Schuman, the ascetic-looking Lorraine lawyer who had been brought up in Metz under the German occupation of 1870-1918 and was the key early architect of Franco-German rapprochement, as he did with Bevin. He was also good with the pointed gothic arches of Konrad Adenauer’s appearance and personality. The Federal Republic of Germany with which he had to deal was immensely weak compared with what subsequently emerged, but he none the less had the foresight to treat its first Chancellor with a respect that laid secure foundations to a Bonn-Washington axis which persisted for thirty years as a salient world feature until Helmut Schmidt became disenchanted with the leadership of Jimmy Carter. Acheson was also crucial to bringing Italy into NATO. Truman was at first against. But the French, influenced by Mediterranean solidarity, persuaded Acheson, who persuaded Truman. There was thus avoided a major misfortune for the Alliance and a disaster for Italy, which with its big Communist Party and ambiguous location needed both Europe and NATO and would have been desperately adrift without either one of them.

Acheson was also at his best at the outbreak of the Korean War. In June 1950 the sudden eruption of a strongly Soviet-backed (so it was thought; Stalin, it subsequently emerged, had given only reluctant acquiescence) North Korean invasion of the South carried with it the clear threat of World War III. Equally clearly the brunt of resistance was certain to fall upon the United States. This combination of circumstances exactly suited Acheson’s capacity for quick decision, his national self-confidence, and his lack of fear at peering into the abyss. By the time that Truman got back to Washington from a brief weekend in Missouri, Acheson had already procured a UN Security Council vote of nine to nil with one abstention (the Soviet union   was luckily and foolishly boycotting the Council) in favour of action. ‘You are a great Secretary of State,’ Truman wrote to him at the end of the week. ‘Your handling of the situation has been superb.’

The Korean War proved a major but necessary defensive undertaking in which the United States suffered 157,000 casualties, including 34,000 dead. Truman and Acheson survived it together, unsubdued but not, at the time, honoured either, with the bond of mutual respect between them growing closer. When the Truman presidency came to an end in January 1953 the brunt in Korea was well over, although the armistice had not been negotiated. The final act of the presidency was a Cabinet luncheon for the Truman family at the Achesons’ Georgetown house. At it Truman thawed from his icy excursion with Eisenhower to the Capitol, and the party was described by his daughter as ‘an absolutely wonderful affair, full of jokes and laughter and a few tears.’ Truman went back to Missouri, and Acheson, once more, to Covington and Burling. Subsequently, such is the role of circumstances in personal relations and in spite of their mutual respect and survival of shared vicissitudes, they did not see much of each other for their remaining two decades, although they exchanged some good letters. Acheson died on 1 October 1971, at the age of seventy-eight, and Truman followed two months later and nearly ten years older.