MACARTHUR HEARING: Epilogue

The momentous MacArthur hearing ended with 26 investigating Senators (14 Democrats, 12 Republicans) as sharply divided as the rest of the U.S. But last week Chairman Richard Russell of Georgia, who has a talent for the common denominator, composed a careful statement, addressed to the American people," which found a quiet note underlying the hearing's, and the nation's noisy ways. All 26 Senators, who are unanimous on little else, approved his statement. Wrote Russell:

"We do not deny that the record compiled is replete with discord and disagreement . . . We will not all be together on those conclusions. We may differ on the proper policy to be applied in the Far East. We may separate on questions of strategy. We may divide on personalities. But we will be ... single-minded in our will to preserve our institutions. We hope they may be preserved in peace, but preserve them we shall. Mistakes may add to the measure of our sacrifices or change the form of the ordeal we may be called upon to endure, but come what may, America has the means and the will to survive.

"If those who threaten us take only a tyrant's lesson from differences among free men and mistake the temper of our people, they can plunge the world into war . . . [But] the issues which might divide our people are far transcended by the things which unite them. If threatened danger becomes war, the aggressor would find at one' stroke arrayed against him the united energies, the united resources, and the united devotion of all the American people."