OTTAWA, 30 December 1948 I saw Riddell (Head of United Nations
Division, Canadian Department of External Affairs) today in his
office and subsequently had lunch with him.

He made known to me, on an unofficial basis, the contents of two
telegrams recently despatched by his Department.

The first was addressed to the Canadian High Commissioner in
Australia and repeated to New Delhi and The Hague. It was a
personal telegram from Mr. Pearson and contained a resume of his
conversations with yourself, Sirdar Malik (High Commissioner for
India) and Beelaerts van Blokland (Netherlands Charge d'Affaires
during the absence at Paris of the Ambassador, J. H. van Roijen).

The resume of the conversation with yourself appeared to coincide
generally with your own impressions of the discussion except that
greater stress was, perhaps, laid by Mr. Pearson on his
disagreement with the form and content of Colonel Hodgson's speech
before the Security Council. Otherwise, the Minister appears to
have fully appreciated the firmness of the Australian approach and
to be disturbed by the divergence between Australian and Canadian
points of view. He referred, in some detail, to your Aide Memoire
[1] and appears to have grasped fully the points you made.

There were one or two rather surprising features of the telegram
in references to his subsequent conversations. For example, the
Minister stated that Sirdar Malik had agreed with him that any
form of sanctions against Holland was impossible. So far as we
know, this question has not arisen. On the other hand, I presume
we can be fairly certain of Indian support for expulsion of the
Netherlands but there was no mention of this in reporting the
conversation with Sirdar Malik. In fact, the telegram made his
representations appear very mild. it seems to me highly unlikely
that so experienced a diplomatist as Mr. Malik would have diverged
very far from the line adopted by his Government; therefore, his
agreement that 'sanctions' were impossible must be construed
strictly and his statement could not extend to other drastic
action against the Dutch. Mr. Malik had emphasized especially to
Mr. Pearson the extremely deleterious effect of the Dutch action
on Asian sympathies and had expressed an earnest hope that Canada
would take firm action on this occasion.

The discussions reported with Mr. van Blokland contained one even
more surprising feature. The latter had apparently contented
himself, in his interview with Mr. Pearson, with presenting a list
of the acts of provocation and terrorism alleged by the Dutch and
with a general statement of their reasons for their recent action.

He had then, however, had an interview with Mr. Riddell which had
opened by his expressing the thanks of the Dutch Government for
Canadian support in the Security Council. Mr. Riddell, in answer
to my question on this, stated that he had denied any support and
had emphasized to Mr. van Blokland the fact that Canada was
seriously disturbed by the Dutch action. The mere fact, however,
that Van Blokland could make such a statement and that Mr. Pearson
did not see fit to comment on it in his cable appears to me to be
rather significant. It is apparent that the Dutch are under the
impression that they have, in broad terms at least, the support of
Canada before the Security Council and that very little has been
done to disabuse them of this notion.

The second telegram was addressed to The Hague. It outlined some
of the reactions of the Canadian Government to the Dutch
aggression which have already been indicated to you by Mr. Escott
Reid and by Mr. Pearson himself, but it requested the Canadian
Ambassador at The Hague to take up with the Dutch Government the
Canadian disappointment at Dutch action and to urge that the
Netherlands take steps to undo as much as possible of the harm
they have done. This section, however, was far from firm and
consisted largely of the detailed suggestions made by Mr. Ritchie
in Paris (see next paragraph).

The telegram outlined a discussion between Mr. Ritchie in Paris
and Mr. van Roijen in which the former had suggested that Holland
should take immediate steps to implement its undertaking to
introduce democratic forms of government in the area which it had
occupied and to expedite the self-government of this area at the
earliest possible date. Mr. Ritchie had suggested that the Dutch
should invite United Nations observers to the area to report on
the carrying out of these steps. According to Mr. Ritchie, Mr. van
Roijen had been impressed by the suggestion and had communicated
it to his Government indicating, however, that the attitude which
he had so far taken before the Security Council was as far as his
Government was prepared to go at present and that his instructions
did not allow him at the present time to put forward the
suggestions made by Mr. Ritchie. The Canadian Ambassador at The
Hague was, therefore, to urge these steps.

The Canadian telegram to The Hague, while it instructed the
Ambassador to bring before the Dutch Government Canadian concern
at the turn of events, did not appear in its general terms to be
at all a strong document. The instructions were certainly not such
as to lead to real Canadian pressure on the Dutch Government, at
least at this stage. Nor was there any indication in the telegram
which I saw by which the Canadian Ambassador might gain the
impression (which was given to you by Mr. Pearson) that if the
Netherlands remained obdurate, the Canadian Government might be
forced to take a stronger line.

I had a long discussion with Mr. Riddell on the question. I told
him that it seemed that the Canadian attitude at the present
moment appeared to boil down to two features:

(A) No action should be taken of a stringent kind, partly because
the United Nations lacked power to enforce it and partly because
no stringent action had been attempted in earlier cases, such as
Kashmir, Palestine or Greece. It appeared that neither ground was
really tenable. The first reason was not correct because the
solution advocated by Australia (the expulsion of the Netherlands
from the United Nations) could perfectly well be carried out
without any use of force and that, therefore, no question of lack
of power arose. Secondly, the suggestion arising from lack of
strong reaction in the past amounted merely to an attempt to make
one right out of two wrongs and seemed to us unworthy of Canadian
external policy.

(B) In these circumstances, it seemed that the only positive
suggestion made by Canada was that the Canadian Ambassador at The
Hague should approach the Dutch Government on the lines set out in
the second telegram. I said that it appeared obvious that the
telegram did not instruct the Ambassador to make any really strong
representations and I asked if Mr. Riddell felt at all optimistic
of the result. I said that unless Canada felt very optimistic,
that she really could secure some change in the Dutch attitude, it
seemed that her line of conduct amounted largely to a polite 'Tut-
tut'. Mr. Riddell said that he could not honestly say that he was
very optimistic of the result of actions at The Hague but that his
Government felt that stringent action at this point would produce
more harm than good.

He based this argument, as before, on the inability of the U.N.,
as at present constituted, to carry out any really drastic steps
against the Netherlands and stated that the attempt to do so might
well wreck the United Nations itself. I repeated that expulsion
was well within the capabilities of the United Nations and
required no sanctions. I asked whether it was his opinion that a
failure to act on this occasion might be just as large a nail in
the coffin of U.N. as the chance of a split caused by more drastic
action. He did not reply directly to this question but indicated
that the series of failures by the United Nations to act in such
crises was having an extremely harmful effect on its future. He
was able to reply to this point only with a tu quoque argument on
the Australian opposition to drastic action in connection with
Yugoslav aggression against Greece. I pointed out that the cases
were by no means on all fours and that the aggression in this
instance was all the more disastrous because it came from a nation
which was normally regarded as a responsible Western power with a
long tradition of diplomatic decency, and which had itself
experienced the horrors of aggression.

Mr. Riddell then stated that in his opinion the Dutch action had
merely served to do two things. First, it had strengthened the
Communist hand. (This he stated may have arisen largely from the
fact that Communist intrigues and terrorism in Indonesia had
contributed to the precipitate action by the Dutch. I was forced
to point out that the emergence of a strong Communist element in
Indonesia was largely due to the fault of the Dutch themselves in
failing to deal with the moderate elements at an earlier stage of
negotiations.)
His second point was that the present Dutch action would merely
serve to hasten the time when they themselves would have to quit
portion at least of Indonesia. Since this was inevitable, it was
better that the Dutch should not be put in a position where they
could claim that outside pressure had compelled their retirement.

I pointed out in this connection that though Dutch anger in the
matter was largely directed at Australia, one of the basic causes
of the renewed attempts since the war by the Indonesians to gain
their complete freedom was the action of the United Kingdom in
granting complete sovereignty to Burma and Dominion status to
India. Fundamentally, it was this example which had buoyed and
given strength to the Indonesian freedom movement and the Dutch
would find it difficult in view of these examples to maintain
their position. The Communist element in the movement was an
incidental one at the moment, though, in the face of Dutch
aggression, it might yet gain control of the movement. Whatever
the cause of their eventual retirement, the Dutch would blame
outside influences.

I reverted to the question of Canadian influence on the Dutch
Government and pointed out that Canada was in a peculiarly
favourable position to bring real moral pressure to bear. First,
there was a favourable field in the more liberal elements of the
Dutch Government and, secondly, Canada's name stood very high with
the Netherlands. Canadian troops had been mainly responsible for
the liberation of Holland. The Dutch Royal family had sought
refuge in Canada and diplomatic relations between the two
countries had been very close since the war, a fact which had been
exemplified by the appointment of Mr. van Roijen to the
Netherlands Mission here and by visits of most leading Canadian
Cabinet Ministers to Holland. I said that it appeared that
Canada's attitude must be merely negative unless his Department
had some real hope (and intention) of bringing strong moral
pressure to bear on the Dutch Government. He replied that pressure
would be resented. I said this would not happen if it were applied
in a reasonable and friendly manner.

It was obvious from his replies and from the telegram which I have
mentioned that the Canadian Government was not prepared to go
further than it had stated and that its only concrete suggestion
so far had been directed towards acceptance of the fait accompli
with the somewhat uncertain safeguards of United Nations observers
to see that the Dutch carried out their stated intention of
introducing democratic government. I formed, however, the same
impression which you gained from Mr. Pearson, that Mr. Riddell was
far from happy about his Government's reaction. He is, as you
know, a man of strong idealism and his arguments appeared 'ready-
made', as though they did not derive from his own convictions.