MacArthur and Truman
By RICHARD H. ROVERE GENERAL of the Army Douglas MacArthur has for many years been addicted to the conspiracy theory of history. MacArthur is a True Believer—not a rank- and-file one, but a commander, egocentric, messianic, a True Believer in'himself. Like others of the breed, he finds it neces• sitrY to ascribe his disappointments, which have been numerous, to ,base intrigue by the powers of darkness. This tendency is strikingly displayed in a recent ex cathedra book on MacArthur by Major-General Courtney Whitney, of whom the great man says, in an endorsement of the work, 'I know of no one better qualified thad he intelligently to discuss.. . my role in the stirring events which have encompassed the par East since the start of World War II.' The book is called MacArthur : His Rendezvous with History, and it is illumi- nated by the view that not only the Far East but the world in general since 1940 has been a stage for a titanic conflict between Douglas MacArthur and Satan in manifold disguises. On page 5 we are advised that Frank Murphy, who in 1941 was High Commissioner of the Philippines and who later was `betrayed of the true ornaments of the United States Supreme Court, ,betrayed his jealousy of MacArthur's stature in the islands °Y Initiating a personal campaign of pressure on President Roosevelt to cause the General's removal.' The consequences of this removal were enormous—American unpreparedness. Pearl Harbour, the loss of the Philippines, all the bloodletting from the Banda Sea to the Osumi Straits. Worse yet, life from 1941 on was just one betrayal of jealousy after another. Down they all go—all the large figures of the epoch : Roosevelt. Marshall, Bradley, Truman, Eisenhower, to name only the American traducers. And with them fall innumerable smaller figures, lieutenants of the jealous ones, devil's disciples, chore boys in such institutional conspiracies as the United States Navy, 'the anti-MacArthur coterie in the State Department,' and the Communist Party, which. we learn, was plotting a public hanging of MacArthur on the Capitol steps as long ago as 1932. In the end, the entire United States is made to seem an instrument for the humiliation of General MacArthur.
There is tragedy here as well as high comedy, for the truth of the matter is that there are elements of greatness in Douglas MacArthur. He has served his country as a valorous and resourceful captain and as a gifted proconsul. He has at times borne himself with splendour and shown himself capable of commanding intense loyalties. There has always been about him something of the 'heaven-born general,' to use Pitt's phrase for Clive, whom MacArthur resembles in more ways than one. Yet the man insists on making himself ridiculous. Now, he has come up with a super-plot involving Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. In a statement prompted by the publication of Harry Truman's reminiscences of the Korean war, MacArthur has charged to the Burgeis-Maclean account both the Chinese intervention of December, 1950, and what Whitney calls 'the foul and shocking blow' dealt by Mr. Truman in April, 1951. MacArthur says he only recently became aware of the crucial part played by Burgess and Maclean in these towering events. For years, he writes in a commentary published simultaneously in Life and the New York Times, he 'searched in vain for some logical explanation for my abrupt relief from command in the Far East.' He could not, of course, be satisfied with such an explanation as that Truman was doing what he, misguidedly believed to be right. Truman is not formidable enough to be the source of General MacArthur's mighty anguish. True, MacArthur detects, in addition to the conspiracy involving Burgess and Maclean, a sub-conspiracy involving Mr. Truman, Generals Marshall and Bradley, Averell Harriman and Dean Acheson, all of whom. he says, had reason to persecute him. (Marshall and Bradley were 'personally hostile to me' out of professional envy. Harriman developed 'prejudice' in the course of an interview in Tokyo early in the Korean war. Acheson was against him because he rejected 'certain socialistic concepts' favoured by the State Department.) But knowledge of this conspiracy did not put an end to MacArthur's search, which has only now ended, for a deeper one. 'It .was not until the recent exposure of the British spies. Burgess and Maclean, that the true facts began to unfold,' he writes.
What facts? MacArthur's plot, which is shortly to be investigated by the Senate's Internal Security Sub-committee, is not a very tidy one, at least in his telling of it in his state- ment of last week. To credit it at all, one must share with MacArthur the assumption that the Peiping government in 1950 was being made privy to the discussions of American policy in the National Security Council and to the decisions emerging from these discussions. MacArthur has no difficulty in making this assumption, for he is persuaded that the Chinese would never have been foolish enough to engage him in combat if they had not 'had definite advance information that my hands would be tied.' Only,' MacArthur writes, `if he were certain that we would continue to protect his bases and supply lines would a commander have dared to throw the full weight of the Chinese army into Korea.' This much being taken for granted. it is necessary only to uncover the `links in the chain to our enemy in Korea through Peiping by way of Moscow.'
Now to get Burgess and Maclean into the act : MacArthur makes a broad leap from the enemy's knowledge of what was happening in Washington to his knowledge of what was going to happen in Korea. 'General Walker complained constantly to me that the enemy was receiving prior information of his movements. We could find no leaks in Korea or Japan. Then suddenly one of my dispatches concerning the order of battle was published in a Washington paper within a few hours of its receipt.' MacArthur is now convinced that Burgess and Maclean, 'with access to the secret files,' were responsible for this leak, and he takes this to prove that they must also have been responsible for the earlier decision of Peiping and the later decision by President Truman.
In his own statement, MacArthur does not identify the published dispatch or the Washington newspaper responsible for the breach of security. But Courtney Whitnqr's book par- tially unlocks this mystery : 'On December 30, 1950, at pos- sibly the most crucial phase of the war against Red China in Korea, one of MacArthur's top-secret dispatches to Washing- ton giving intelligence on the order of battle was in part published verbatim in the Washington Post under the byline of a prominent columnist.' A check of the Washington Post of December 30, 1950, reveals that the columnist was Drew Pearson, whose work appears in hundreds of other newspapers; Pearson that day published part of what purported to be a report from MacArthur's intelligence section dated December 6, 1950. MacArthur's 'few hours' turn out to be approximately five hundred and seventy-six, and it was not exactly one of his 'dispatches concerning the order of battle,' but this is quib- bling—there was a leak to Drew Pearson, and somebody was responsible. Who? Burgess and Maclean, clearly. 'If they did not report to their Kremlin masters fully upon our secrets in the conduct of the war against the Communists in Korea, what then could have been their treasonable purpose?' But was Drew Pearson one of their Kremlin masters? The question is not dealt with.
The Pearson incident is the central one. It. proves, retro- actively, that Burgess and Maclean told the Chinese they would have a romp if they entered the war. (It has also been alleged by MacArthur and others that the North Koreans started the war because they knew of our policy decision to abandon Korea. MacArthur does not speculate on why, having seen us throw one policy decision to the winds. they placed such confidence in another.) And it reveals, finally, the reason for MacArthur's removal. MacArthur says that when he could find `no leaks in Korea or Japan,' he promptly recommended that 'a treason trial be initiated to break up [the] spy ring responsible for the purloining of my top-secret reports to Washington.' And he goes on : 'I believe that my demand that this situation be exposed coming after the Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White scandals, caused the deepest resent- ment. . . . the case was never processed, and I was shortly relieved of my command.'
Of such improbable stuff is MacArthur's plot made. It is not receiving any very serious consideration here.
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