Another King diary theory

LETTERS

Re: Disappearing diary theory dissected, Jim Bronskill, May 8. As a Cold War historian, I have reviewed these postwar diaries, as well as associated files from External Affairs and National Defence. The author provides some plausible and substantiated reasons for the missing portions of the prime minister’s diaries. While I have no proof to suggest Mackenzie King had removed these diary entries himself, he had reasons to do so.

In light of the shocking revelations by Igor Gouzenko of wartime spying in Ottawa ( and in the US) by the Soviets, the Canadian prime minister agonized over his duty to reveal these facts to the Americans and British. Mackenzie King was even more reluctant to reveal this treachery by a recent wartime ally to the Canadian public. Mackenzie pri- vately feared that postwar agreements to ensure global peace would come to naught with the Gouzenko confessions.

The prime minister wrote in his diary: “The United Nations is as dead after three months as the League of Nations Covenant after fifteen.” He also feared an American response in light of her possession of the atomic bomb. While Mackenzie King traveled to Britain in the late fall of 1945 and briefed Prime Minister Clement Attlee on the Gouzenko file, the reasons for this trip remained secret. In fact, the Gouzenko revelations only became public knowledge when an American journalist printed the story in the spring of 1946 after the Canadian prime minister briefed President Truman. Ray Stouffer, Royal Military College of Canada