The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

In reply to Churchill’s appeal at the conference’s opening session for a real effort to strike a deal with the new leaders of the Soviet Union, Eisenhower delivered a vulgar tirade in front of all the diplomats and officials of the three national delegations. Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville, recorded the scene: “[Eisenhower] said that as regards the prime minister’s belief that there was a New Look in Soviet policy, Russia was a woman of the streets and whether her dress was new, or just the old one patched, it was certainly the same whore underneath. America intended to drive her off her present ‘beat’ into the back streets.” Colville noted “pained looks all round.”