Confidential report from John J. Hearne to Frederick H. Boland (Dublin)

Conversation with the Chief Justice of the United States.¹
President Truman and the Atomic Bomb.

I have the honour to report as follows:-

I called upon Chief Justice Vinson² on Wednesday the 5th July by appointment. He received me in his Chamber in the Supreme Court Building. He introduced me to Mr. Justice Black who was leaving when I arrived. When Judge Black had left the Chief Justice asked me whether I recalled Judge Black's appointment to the Supreme Court. I said that I remembered that he had been appointed by President Roosevelt. 'Yes,' Chief Justice Vinson said, very judicially, 'there was a good deal of criticism at the time, but all that has passed now, and Judge Black is regarded as one of the soundest men on the Court.' He praised Judge Black's honesty in public life before he was appointed a Judge and gave me instances of his integrity from the Hoover-Al Smith election campaign.³ Don't believe anything anyone tells you about Black having been Roosevelt's stooge (said the Chief Justice in effect) to gate-crash the New Deal into the Supreme Court of the United States. 'Black is a fine lawyer and a rock of sense.'

'I suppose', the Chief Justice broke off, 'you have been studying the Korean business.' 'Yes, Sir,' I replied, 'who has not? I have been to the Department of State and they very kindly gave me their views. It is a grave enough situation, but I gather, not inevitably, the beginning of World War III.'

The Chief Justice smoked Camel after Camel.⁴ He had a packet in his hand all the time and a carton on the table. With every other breath he blew a cloud of smoke into the air-conditioned chamber. I was expecting, so adept he was, that he would, every minute or so, blow rings out through the window and across 2nd Street like that philosophical looking sailor in the advertisement for Camel cigarettes in Philadelphia.

'Korea,' he said, 'is, in a sense, an end of the Cold War; and it could be a beginning of World War III. Who knows where shooting, once begun, may end?' Then the Chief Justice told me that he had been consulted by the Speaker of the House before Mr. Truman made his public announcement last week and that he had given it as his view that Korea should be held at whatever cost.

He then recalled Mr. Truman's request to him in 1948 to go to Moscow to talk things over with Stalin. The President had said: 'I have ordered the throwing of atomic bombs twice. I don't want to do it ever again. I am going to exhaust every possible peaceful means before I am faced with that terrible responsibility again.'

Vinson Chief Justice became very judicial, looking every inch the great judge he is. He leaned towards me from his chair. 'The President,' he went on, 'looked at me very straight in the eyes: "You are," he said, "the Chief Justice of the United States. I want you to go to Moscow and plead with Stalin for a just and equitable solution of all our problems, and for a new approach to some sort of decent international life. Will you go?"'

The Chief Justice related to me his reaction to President Truman's request: He prefaced this by saying that he had been very close to the President ever since Franklin Roosevelt's death. He had been beside Mr. Truman when he was sworn in, and had greatly admired the unaffected personal humility which had made him, viewed in the light of his call to the Presidency at a moment when the power and wealth of the United States were unprecedented, one of the noblest men and one of the greatest Americans he had ever known. 'Truman,' he said 'is a true man'. 'Well,' he went on, 'I told the President that if I went to Moscow there would be sharp criticism of the Supreme Court and all sorts of slander of myself as Chief Justice. And I respectfully declined to go.' '"Think it over, Fred," the President said as I left the White House.'

The Chief Justice thought the matter over for twenty-four hours or so then returned to the White House. He gave me a graphic account of his thoughts and feelings during his consideration of Mr. Truman's request. 'I came to the conclusion,' he said, 'that if I did not do what the President asked me to do I could never live with myself again. He had asked me to go. He had chosen me out of hundreds of men any one of whom could have done the job. And he had said that he would use every means possible to get Stalin to adopt a new approach and that he wanted a just and equitable solution of all outstanding problems. I decided I had not the right to refuse the President's request and when I came back to him I said: "Mr. President, I will go to Moscow".'

Judge Vinson added to me that, after all, it might have been appropriate for the Chief Justice of the United States, whoever he might be, to make the approach to Stalin for a just and equitable solution of outstanding problems.

'Then,' he went on, 'there was the leakage and, in a few days, they were all off the idea.'

(I recall that the leakage came before the Department of State was informed of the President's proposal, and I remember hearing that General Marshall was furious. The General was very popular in the country at the time.)

The Chief Justice expressed the hope that I would keep close to Mr. Acheson. 'He is a much maligned man,' he said, 'but the soul of honour. You can trust everything he says.'

We then spoke about our housing problem and so on. 'Let me know the moment you get settled in your new house. I want to be amongst your first guests.'

I thanked Judge Vinson for his gracious and kindly reception of me. He spoke in such glowing terms of Mr. Nunan that I realised more than ever how difficult it is for anyone to be Mr. Nunan's successor in Washington. 'The functions in Mr. Nunan's honour on his leaving us,' the Chief Justice said, 'are amongst the sweetest memories I have of my life as Chief Justice. They were sad occasions because parting is sweet sorrow. But I told one of the groups who honoured Mr. Nunan that sad as the occasion was it was a happy occasion also because Seán Nunan was going home to Ireland with a wealth of knowledge of our country and our people which would make him an unique informant and counsellor on American affairs in the Irish Foreign Office and that our friendship would grow around his great experience and his good offices into, if possible, a closer intimacy than we had ever known.' Of Mr. Nunan's farewell speech the Chief Justice said 'I never heard a better speech in my life'.