Letter to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on the 50th Anniversary of His First Service in the Field of Foreign Affairs

Dear Foster:

I am told that today marks the fiftieth year since you first began your service in the field of foreign affairs, when you served as secretary on the Chinese delegation to the second Peace Conference at The Hague. Apparently, your associates of that early date clearly recognized your ability to carry heavy responsibilities, for heavy they must have been for a young man of nineteen.

In any event, through that experience you were committed to the waging of peace, and your name has been prominently associated with many of the International Conferences, since that date, which have had as their purpose the development of world stability and peace based on justice. In those years of enriching experience, you have gone on to ever increasing responsibility in the field of public service to which you have dedicated yourself, and have established a reputation for meeting every new assignment and challenge with wisdom, imagination, and vigor.

My personal appreciation of your extraordinary ability in the field of international relations has constantly grown since you became Secretary of State in 1953.

Your statesmanship has been demonstrated in countless negotiations and conferences of international import. The beneficial results of your labors can never be accurately measured, but such accomplishments as the conclusion of the Austrian Peace Treaty, the formulation and adoption of the Caracas Resolution against Communist infiltration into this Hemisphere, the development of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Formosa Declaration of 1955, and the Doctrine for the Middle East which the Congress recently approved, bear witness to your competence as our country's chief representative in global relations.

Recitation of these few instances serves at least to give some hint of the broad basis on which rests my personal and official gratitude to you. I am quite certain that as this Administration joins those which are viewed from long historical perspective, your accomplishments will establish you as one of the greatest of our Secretaries of State.

Nevertheless, at this moment, the future must occupy both you and me more than can the past. In extending to you my felicitations on a half century of fruitful service to your country, I also express my profound hope that the nation shall have the benefit of your experience and wisdom for many years to come.

With warm personal regard,

As ever,

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER