National Affairs: Profit from Their Mistakes

While most Congressmen were still wading through the 834 pages of the Yalta papers (TIME, March 28), Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson set the Democratic line last week for the long debate that was sure to come. Said Johnson: "The [Yalta] mistakes—if such they were—appear to have been based upon the estimates and miscalculations of the military leaders in Europe and the Far East ... I am very proud of the fact that no one on my side of the aisle has arisen to question the motives of those military men, whether they be General Eisenhower or General MacArthur who made miscalculations, if any were made." By thus pointing to the two generals—who also happen to be prominent Republicans—Johnson hoped to help his party weather the Yalta storm.

An Entry. Johnson's shot at Mac-Arthur was based mostly on a Feb. 28, 1945 (three weeks after Yalta) entry in the diary of Navy Secretary James Forrestal. Wrote Forrestal, after a talk with MacArthur: "He felt that we should secure the commitment of the Russians to active and vigorous prosecution of a campaign against the Japanese." Douglas MacArthur was quick to reply to Johnson. Said he: "The imminent collapse of Japan was clearly apparent several months before Yalta ... I would most emphatically have recommended against bringing the Soviet into the Pacific war at that late date. To have made vital concessions for such a purpose would have seemed to me fantastic." Both Lyndon Johnson and Douglas MacArthur were begging the real point, i.e., that whatever observations Mac-Arthur did or did not make as to military operations, they could hardly have excused the political amorality of Yalta.

A Hunch. In firing on Eisenhower, Johnson was acting on a hunch. He and many of his fellow Democrats feel that somehow, sometime, somewhere, a paper will turn up showing that Eisenhower made recommendations about Soviet participation in the Pacific war.

The day after Johnson's speech, newsmen at the President's press conference asked the President about Yalta. Did he record or did he remember a decision that he reached at that time as to the rightness or wrongness of Yalta? The President was brisk—and very positive. Said he: "No." Then he pointed out that he did not go to Yalta, but sent his chief of staff, Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith, to the pre-Yalta conference at Malta to report on the military situation as it then existed in Europe.

To Democrats and Republicans alike, President Eisenhower advised political moderation. Said he: "If we believe these people acted for what they thought was the best good of the cause for which they were fighting, of their country, well, then, let us take and lay the thing out dispassionately so that we, in our turn, may profit from their mistakes." With talk about a new four-power conference reaching a high pitch, the opportunity to profit seemed to be great.