The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

WHEN President Truman dismissed General MacArthur he overrode the counsels of caution which swirled around him. The plan most favored was to bring the Supreme Commander home for a last effort to restore harmony. But the President felt that the writing of a letter to an opposition leader, Joseph W. Martin, Jr., favoring a policy diametrically opposed to that of the Administration was unforgivable.

Whether he also felt that he might be put at a political disadvantage if MacArthur were to resign is a question difficult to answer. But, aside from that, Mr. Truman has a respect for the authority of his august office which cannot be gainsaid.

This is not the picture that the public gets of Mr. Truman. He is portrayed as weak, easygoing, addicted to cronyism. He is all of these things, and it is perhaps because of the very softness of his attributes that on so many occasions he has had to show toughness. There is nothing to the manner born about his authority, and that may be why some important officeholders have treated him, to their own discomfiture, with a touch of contempt.

James F. Byrnes, for example, never could get used to the feeling that his chief was no longer the junior Senator from Missouri. General MacArthur was openly contumelious at Make Island. He did not salute, indulged in familiar half-patting during their visit together, and did not deign to bring either staff or documents to talk over Far Eastern business.

The impression seems to be given that insubordination can get away with it. Then—wham! Off comes a scalp! Harold L. Ickes, Henry A. Wallace, Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, Louis A. Johnson, James F. Byrnes, and a lot of lesser luminaries have felt the Truman axe. General MacArthur is merely the latest, though the most illustrious, to wake up suddenly to the impact of Harry Truman as President of the United States.

Mr. Truman’s predecessor always handled General MacArthur with kid gloves. To be sure, F.D.R. never relaxed his Hitler-first strategy, and kept MacArthur on shorter rations than the Atlantic theater while the military establishment was building up there. But on questions in conflict with the Navy, F.D.R. continually sided with MacArthur.

MacArthur vs. the Navy

Much of the interservice feuding is still hidden in classified documents. Indeed, MacArthur’s war will probably never be objectively written, for he won’t allow historians such as Professor Samuel E. Morison access to his information. But enough is known at least to demonstrate that the Navy got the short end of the deal in controversy with MacArthur.

There was the row over priority in respect to the Philippines or Formosa. The Navy wanted to skip the Philippines in the island hop to Japan. If, it was said, Formosa were captured, then the Philippines would die on the vine. This offended the Supreme Commander mightily; “I shall return” had to be redeemed. The argument was resolved in MacArthur’s favor in the famous ifoosevelt-MacArthur interview at Hawaii.

Then there was the argument over the occupation of Japan. Both the Navy and MacArthur staked out a claim, and MacArthur won. What a lot of history hung upon this dispute! The Navy, which felt that it had brought Japan to its knees long before V-J Day and did not want utterly to destroy Japan, had a more geopolitical approach than MacArthur. It wanted to see Japan restored as an Asiatic power without delay. Admiral Nimitz and his chief of staff, Admiral Forrest Sherman, were conscious of the void that the destruction of Japan would leave in Asia. So they advocated an occupation overseen from the sea.

MacArthur’s rival claim appealed to F.D.R. — perhaps because of MacArthur’s rival policy. He wanted to put Japan through a wringer of renovation. There was to be no more militarism, and Japan would be given one hypodermic needle after another of New Deal medicine which would enable her to grow into an American democracy.

Military decisions

The crisis has turned attention to the weakness of the civilian establishment in our foreign affairs. In wartime the military managed much of our diplomacy. They arranged with the Soviet Union, over John G. Winant’s protests, to leave Berlin as an island in a Soviet sea without insurance of American access. They fixed up the dividing line of Soviet and American occupation of Korea at the 38th parallel. There was not a Far Eastern expert of the State Department at Yalta when Manchuria was virtually handed over to Russia.

This subordination of the civilian in wartime has had ill consequences in peacetime. It has given the civilians a sort of inferiority complex, so that they seem well-content to let our foreign policy be a carbon copy of the strategy worked out by the military.

At the same time the war threw up great military leaders to whom the Administration turned naturally for the tasks of “no peace, no war.” General Clay ran Germany, and ran it well. The State Department man attached to him was more an echo than an ambassador. The War Department did not wish to keep the responsibility and wanted to pass it on to the State Department long before the diplomats would accept it. Now a civilian is in charge in Germany — John J. McCloy. But Mr. McCloy, excellent man though he is, has not as much of the proconsular caliber as Clay.

In Japan, of course, MacArthur was a proconsul of the Roman type. State Department representatives served him as minor adjutants, and were not even in the “court” which MacArthur gathered around him. It was natural for the President to put the soldier General Ridgway in place of the soldier General MacArthur, yet the appointment showed the deterioration of civil supremacy.

The State Department lies low

The handling of the troops for Europe debate showed the State Department at its present disadvantage. There was little departmental activity on Capitol Hill. Indeed, several Senators asked the newspapermen for the identity of the official who had been delegated for this task. Actually it was Adrian Fisher, the Department’s legal adviser, but the organ that did the spadework among the legislators was the privately organized Committee on the Present Danger.

Why the apathy at the State Department? The feeling is that Secretary Acheson did not want the State Department to stick its neck out, especially in view of the manner in which the GOP was chewing itself to pieces. But that was no excuse to endanger the proposal to send four divisions to Europe. The vote was carried with an ample 69 to 21 majority, but tagged onto it was the proviso that no additional aid could be sent “without further Congressional approval.” With some vigorous work on the Hill, a clarifying amendment might have been carried.

Of course, the proviso is not a law, no matter what Senator Taft says. The Senate cannot curb the legitimate powers of the President on the dispatch of troops. All the proviso does is to confuse both the minds of our allies and our enemies. Partly the fault was the intransigent President’s, partly the inactive State Department’s. The Senate rapped Mr. Truman’s knuckles for his overinsistence upon a strict respect for his constitutional powers.

The President still has to learn the art of working amicably with the legislature in matters in which they have a legitimate concern. If he had pledged continuous consultation prior to the debate, instead of belligerently standing upon his prerogatives, there would have been less emphasis on restriction.

Who is the enemy?

The discussion on troops for Europe did not live up to the advance notice as a great debate. It was for the most part quite petty. The really great debate is now under way on the nature of our adversary. General MacArthur’s advent provoked it. The General is a crusader first, last, and all the time, in the medieval tradition.

If the General had arrived six months ago, he would have found most of our present leaders using his own vocabulary. In vain did the historians show the futility of waging war upon an idea or a social conception. The religious wars proved that. If Russia were overthrown, would communism be overthrown? The answer is that, on the contrary, communism might be more flourishing than ever.

Now the facts of modern times have influenced the semantics of our political leaders. Tito has become almost a friend of ours, though he declares he is a purer Communist than Stalin. Many observers, contrariwise, think that Asiatic communism, though seemingly tied to Stalinism, is by no means pure communism. Thanks to John Foster Dulles, who names the enemy “Moscow-directed imperialism,” terms were beginning to be more refined when General MacArthur arrived.

Redeeming the ex-Communists

The repentant Communist continues to engage the interest of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Hollywood seems to have had more than its complement of party members. The amateur psychologist is left to figure out what there is in communism to seduce the artist in Hollywood. Was it the “thing” to do? Was it a kind of compensation for making big money ?

The stories that the misguided artists are telling to the Committee are poor commentaries on their intelligence, but the question has arisen as to why, after they have confessed to the FBI, they should be asked to walk the Congressional plank in public?

Actually the FBI does not ask these persons to provide the names of their former cell associates — perhaps because they are known already. It merely affords them hospitality to tell the stories of their victimization. The House Committee, however, insists on full disclosure, and the compliant witness leaves the stand with his morale in partial destruction. It is difficult for him to look his fellows in the face again. As for his employment, this depends upon the studio, which will discharge the man or woman if the case has created sufficient notoriety.

There is no question in most objective minds about the present duty of society toward these ex-Communists, provided they have not violated the law. Society’s duty is to redeem them, not punish them. But Communists will never he redeemed if they are to be regarded as pariahs after they have quit the party.

Abroad the redemption of Communists is one of the prime functions of our diplomacy, and when we have promoted deviationism, as in Italy, the victory is celebrated as a victory over the enemy. As a result of these successes, indeed, the Soviet Union, according to the experts, has had to abandon fifth columnism as its prime reliance, and turn to armed force. Surely the same policy should be applied at home. There is just as much merit in helping the Communist here to find the road back to society as in helping the Communist abroad.

Those who think along these lines feel that means should be fostered to help American ex-Communists to get jobs where they are without work, rather than to insure that they will never get jobs, or be fired if they are already employed. F. Joseph Donohue, who prosecuted Harry Bridges, is concerned over this problem. He persuaded half a dozen former Communists having intimate contact with the case to testify in the Bridges trial, but, instead of being grateful, society turned against them. This treatment — and that of the Hollywood artists — is not calculated to promote defection.

Mood of the Capital

The Administration is handicapped in replying to the MacArthur challenge. As to Formosa, all the facts about Chiang Kai-shek’s forces are known in detail in the Pentagon, but if they were revealed, there would be a boomerang. Certainly the Nationalists would have a gripe against America for exposing the details of their defenses in full sight of their Communist enemy, and their complaint would be taken up by Chiang’s friends in America.

Remember the history of the White Paper. There was initially a holler for the documents, particularly the Wedemeyer Report; but when they were published, there was another holler that the State Department had injured Chiang by the publi cation.

Absence of the data leaves the public mind the victim of unofficial estimates of Chiang’s strength which are absurdly wide of the mark. Most of them represent mere wishful thinking on the part of Chiang’s friends. Chiang is weak, very weak. It is the considered feeling that he would never dream of invading his homeland without “logistical support” from America of the most comprehensive kind. This would mean all-out war. For all intents and purposes, the invasion of the mainland would be American.

This is the real “Great Debate,” and it is bound to go on until 1952. There are those who feel that only a collision with Soviet Russia will end it. At any rate, the temper of Congress and the people is such that there seems little likelihood of any more experiments in “limited war.” In this respect, Berlin was successful, as was Greece. Here a success was scored without launching a world war, but an impatience has come over the country.

And it looks as if the next trial will be approached as an all or nothing proposition. It goes against the national grain to fool around with one limited war after another. This is the basis of the political appeal of General MacArthur’s point of view — the restiveness over the unfinished business in Korea.

The premium on statesmanship is thus terrific. President Truman saw the country through limited war in Berlin and Greece without difficulty. Now he has to contend with both a psychological condition at home and the burden upon the taxpayer.

For this task he is not helped much by his principal Cabinet members. Secretaries Acheson and Marshall are full of punctilio in their relations with the White House. They follow chain of command in the sense that they are in the habit of leaving the responsibility of decision to Mr. Truman. It was different with Messrs. Hughes and Stimson. They never went to see the President solely with a problem. They carried with them a solution as well. Those who talk about Acheson “dictation” don’t know what they are talking about.