National Affairs: Cheers & Second Looks

• Share

In the first heady aftermath of MacArthur's speech, many a Republican chorused praise ("magnificent," "tremendous") without apparently realizing all that MacArthur had said. Indiana's irascible isolationist Senator William Jenner seemed to think that MacArthur had opposed military aid to Europe: "Ex-President Hoover and the Republicans in Congress bought us 85 precious days in their fight on troops to Europe. MacArthur has bought us another, perhaps a final chance, to destroy the Administration's proCommunist, pro-Socialist foreign policy." Ohio's Senator Robert Taft, who had understood what he heard, announced that "I have long approved of General MacArthur's program," though Taft had fought to weaken the draft, to restrict troops for Europe, to scuttle the North Atlantic pact on the ground that it might be provocative to Russia.

Plain Talk. The fact was that Soldier MacArthur was speaking his convictions, and they were tailored to no political wind. His charge that the J.C.S. approved many of his views embarrassed Democrats, as did his insistence that Formosa was vital to U.S. defense. They squirmed as he declared that he had asked for new diplomatic decisions and gotten none, and when he said: "Why, my soldiers asked of me, surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field? I could not answer." Neither could the Democrats.

But he thoroughly discomfited some of his noisiest Republican supporters who had been assailing Truman for sending troops to Korea. Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry had pointedly called it "Truman's war," and Pennsylvania's Ed Martin had declared that the U.S. people "have no confidence in the hasty midnight decision which ordered our soldiers into the so-called police action in Korea." MacArthur said: "That decision, from a military standpoint, proved a sound one."

And MacArthur lent no support to those who, with ex-President Hoover, would make the U.S. a Gibraltar, or to Taft's thesis, reiterated last week, that "We must not overcommit this country . . . There is a definite limit to what we can do." MacArthur said: "There are those who claim our strength is inadequate to protect on both fronts. I can think of no greater expression of defeatism."

Internationalists in both parties were concerned at MacArthur's omission of any mention of the United Nations, to which, as the first U.N. commander in history, he last week delivered a progress report. Many were also sobered by MacArthur's guess that if his proposals were carried out, Russia "will not necessarily" enter the war. Though Republicans in Congress considered MacArthur a godsend to the party, there were few who publicly endorsed all of his proposals.