THE 1954 ASIAN CONFERENCE From April to July 1954, at the time of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the Asian conference of foreign ministers was held at the Palais des Nations. No doubt a number of AFICS members remember the occasion and were working at the Palais at the time. Security measures required the ground floor between Doors 2 and 6 to be closed off- and that was about the limit of the security measures! As the foreign ministers arrived for the first plenary session on 9 May, staff members and journalists mingled by the entrance door, no checks (or very minor ones) having been made as far as I can remember. I had a pre-World War I Brownie Box camera, given to me by my uncle for my sixth birthday and I posted myself among the journalists, to record this historic event. As a 21year-old secretary with WHO I had limited knowledge of world events and realised that I might not recognize the world leaders as they arrived. (There was no TV in Geneva at the time.) I asked the person beside me if he would recognize them and tell me who they were. It turned out that he was a journalist with a wellknown daily paper. He gave an amused look at my camera and promised to announce their names, warning me at the same time to watch out as he might knock me over in order to get the best position for his photos. This being agreed upon, we saw that the cars were drawing up and their occupants getting out. My companion announced: Anthony Eden, Mr. Molotov, Mr. Chou En-lai, General Nam-il (of North Korea), John Foster Dulles, M. Bidault. We clicked away, at a distance of only a few metres. The results produced by my Brownie Box camera are attached. It had a very small viewfinder, making it difficult to be sure that you had actually got what you were aiming at, particularly when the target was moving. It is hard to believe today that we could approach so close to world leaders. Quite an experience. I was not even knocked over by my journalist neighbour. The events of the conference are described in Sir Anthony Eden's «Full Circle », page 117). Anglo-American relations were not always smooth but Eden appears to have got on surprisingly well with Molotov. On one occasion, at dinner, Molotov «remarked that he had read in the papers that we and the U. S. were having differences, and he did not believe that. I said that he was right not to, because allies often have to argue their respective points of view. 42 Molotov said: “That is right, we have to do that amongst ourselves, too”, and he emphasized to me once again that China was very much her own master in these matters » (page 121). Molotov must have seen the Sino-Soviet split coming. In June, Mendes France became Prime Minister of France. Eden said of him: « M. Mendes France had an intensive driving power and a ruthlessness which were necessary for the straits we were in » (page 130). The final plenary session took place on 21 July, at 3.0 p.m. The previous night, discussions had continued until 2.0 a.m. of that same day, and all the participants were exhausted. In his closing statement, Eden said that «The result was not completely satisfactory, but we had stopped an eight-year-old war and reduced international tension at a point of instant danger to world peace ».Book One, Chapter VI, pages 107-145. He calls it the Geneva conference but we, on the spot, referred to it as the Asian conference. At the time, Chiang Kai-shek's regime was still recognized as representing China at the United Nations, so Chou En-lai, representing that of Mao Tse-toung, was not the officially recognized representative of China. Discussing that with Sir Anthony, Mr. Molotov, who co-chaired the conference with him, said that the Americans must be brought to face the truth of the situation, adding «with a frosty smile» that he had observed that Mr. Dulles had succeeded during his stay in Geneva in never once acknowledging Mr. Chou En-lai's existence. Anglo-American relations were not always smooth but Eden appears to have got on surprisingly well with Molotov. On one occasion, at dinner, Molotov «remarked that he had read in the papers that we and the U. S. were having differences, and he did not believe that. I said that he was right not to, because allies often have to argue their respective points of view. Molotov said: “That is right, we have to do that amongst ourselves, too”, and he emphasized to me once again that China was very much her own master in these matters » (page 121). Molotov must have seen the Sino-Soviet split coming. In June, Mendes France became Prime Minister of France. Eden said of him: « M. Mendes France had an intensive driving power and a ruthlessness which were necessary for the straits we were in » (page 130).
The final plenary session took place on 21 July, at 3.0 p.m. The previous night, discussions had continued until 2.0 a.m. of that same day, and all the participants were exhausted. In his closing statement, Eden said that «The result was not completely satisfactory, but we had stopped an eight-year-old war and reduced international tension at a point of instant danger to world peace Margaret Webb 43
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