COMMAND: Education of a General

(See Cover)

A squadron of the British fleet, entrusted to Commodore Martin, suddenly appeared in the Bay of Naples [m 1742], and threatened an immediate bombardment unless the King would engage in writing to withdraw his troops from the Spanish army, and to observe in future a strict neutrality. The Neapolitan court, wholly unprepared for the defense of the city, endeavored to elude the demand by prolonging the negotiation. But the gallant Englishman...laid his watch upon the table in his cabin, and told the negotiators that their answer must be given within the space of an hour, or that the bombardment should begin. This proceeding, however railed at by the diplomatists as contrary to all form and etiquette, produced a result such as they had seldom attained by protocols. Within the hour [the King] acquiesced in the required terms.

—Lord Mahon, History of England.

In Tokyo the U.S. has a four-star general who—like most of his countrymen—would like nothing better than to lay his watch on the table and tell the Communists at Panmunjom to sign an armistice, or else. The man is General Mark Wayne Clark, 56, U.S. Far East commander, U.N. commander in Korea, commander of the U.S. security forces in newly sovereign Japan. But despite obvious parallels, Clark's situation is somewhat different from that of the intrepid British commodore of 1742. In 1952, the Communists have already drawn out the negotiations so long that in North Korea, at least, they are well prepared to resist attack. And in this age of instant communications, the "diplomatists" can easily restrain Clark from any move that, to them, seems too audacious.

Yet someone has to do something. On this Grand & Glorious Fourth, when orators traditionally remind the nation of the dream of freedom, the fighting spirit, the hatred of tyranny and the sense of purpose that gave it birth, the U.S. is engaged in a frustrating, distant war that seems to have lost its meaning. It has been called a "police action," but the police are sitting in a tent arguing with the criminals.

The Korean war has been going on for two years (as of June 25), the truce talks for a year (as of July 10). The war has pinned down the flower of the U.S. fighting forces and is costing $5 billion a year. Only one-tenth of a nation (the fighting men, their families and friends) pay much attention to it.

To conduct this war, and if possible to end it on favorable terms, the U.S. has need of a new species of general, to parry a kind of enemy that was not described in the textbooks at West Point in 1917, and whose trucemaking tactics are not to be found in Army Field Manual 27-10 under "Intercourse Between Belligerents" or "Capitulations and Armistices." The U.S. has not grown such a general yet, but a good many generals, late in life, are going through elementary classes. Now that Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall and Clay are in mufti, Mark Wayne Clark has probably had more such political experience than any U.S. general on active duty.