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THE ANALYSIS BY SELECTED
MICHIGAN NEWSPAPERS OF EVENTS
LEADING TO AND ISSUES ARISING
FROM THE DISMISSAL OF GENERAL OF
THE ARMY DOUGLAS- MACARTHUR

Thesis for the Degree of M A.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
DALRYMPLE. M. HARRIS
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ABSTRACT

THE ANALYSIS BY SELECTED MICHIGAN NEWSPAPERS
OF EVENTS LEADING TO AND ISSUES ARISING
FROM THE DISMISSAL OF GENERAL OF THE
ARMY DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

BY

Dalrymple M. Harris

This is a study of press performance in regard to
the dismissal in 1951 of General Douglas MacArthur by
President Harry S. Truman. MacArthur's dismissal raised
a storm of controversy over foreign policy, constitutional,
political, and military issues. The debate was brief, but
furious while it lasted. This study outlines the relation-
ship of MacArthur and Truman to the press, and through an
analysis of six Michigan daily newspapers, examines how
well the press performed its function of providing the
citizenry with information needed to make rational political
judgments.

It was found that the Michigan newspapers generally
asserted the constitutional principle of civilian control
of the military, and that information and interpretation of
that information on foreign policy matters was adequately,
but not thoroughly, presented. Outright bias in favor of
the "pro-MacArthur" position existed in the case of the

Hearst-owned Detroit Times. Other issues, such as the ques-

 

tion of MacArthur's military competency or the influence of

Dalrymple M. Harris

domestic politics on the controversy were covered only

superficially by the press, if at all. The Detroit News,

 

the Detroit Free Press, and Grand Rapids Press and, to a
lesser degree, the Flint Journal retained a rational per-
Spective in their news and editorial columns despite dis-

agreement over policies and despite the intense emotionalism

of the time.

THE ANALYSIS BY SELECTED MICHIGAN NEWSPAPERS
OF EVENTS LEADING TO AND ISSUES ARISING
FROM THE DISMISSAL OF GENERAL OF THE

ARMY DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

BY

Dalrymple M. Harris

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
School of Journalism

1971

Accepted by the faculty of the School of Journal-
ism, College of Communication Arts, Michigan State
University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the Master of Arts degree.

Director of Thesis

ACKNOWLEDGMENT S

I wish to express my deep appreciation to my
graduate and thesis adviser, Professor W. Cameron Meyers,
for his encouragement, consideration, and invariably
valuable criticism. He is a man of principle, who is as
deeply concerned about the future of his profession as

the writer is about the future of his own.

iii

Chapter

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O

I.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

MACARTHUR'S "FIRST CAREER" . .
MACARTHUR'S RETURN . . . . . .
TRUMAN AND THE PRESS . . . . .
MACARTHUR, KOREA, AND THE PRESS

THE DISMISSAL OF MACARTHUR . .

PRESS ANALYSIS: THE CONSTITUTIONAL

FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES . . . . .

The Constitutional Issue . . .

The Foreign Policy Issue . . .

PRESS ANALYSIS: THE POLITICAL AND

MILITARY ISSUES . . . . . . . .

MacArthur and the Politicians .
MacArthur and the Military . .

CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . .

BIBLIOGMPHY O O O I O O O O O O O O 0

iv

Page

21
34
49

63

80

81
89

101

101
114

120
128

INTRODUCTION

This is the age of the celebrity rather than of

the hero, historian Daniel J. Boorstin suggests, defining

Va celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-

knownness,"1 and observing that "in the creation of a

celebrity, somebody always has an interest--newsmen need-

ing stories, press agents paid to make celebrities, and

the celebrity himself."2 A genuine hero, by Boorstin's

definition,is a far different kind of creature:

For our purposes it is sufficient to define a
hero as a human figure--rea} or imaginary or both--
who has shown greatness in some achievement. He is
a man or woman of great deeds.

Of course, many such figures remain. But if we
took a census of the names which populate the na-
tional consciousness . . . we would now find the
truly heroic figure in the old-fashioned mold to be
a smaller proportion than ever before.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was cast

from that old-fashioned mold, although he sometimes

failed to fit Boorstin's description of the ideal hero.

A true hero, for example, should shun publicity.4 That

 

1Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to

 

Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1961),

57.

2Ibid., p. 73.

3Ibid., p. 49.

41bid., p. 62.

was never a MacArthur characteristic. In addition, he
often showed an unheroic tendency to shift the blame for
his failures and rationalize his defeats. Despite these
flaws, however, there is little doubt that MacArthur was

a big man; not just a big name. He created himself; he

was not created by the media. Samuel P. Huntington, a
Harvard University professor and specialist in the military

aspects of politics, wrote of MacArthur:

. . . MacArthur had been a brilliant soldier but always
something more than a soldier; a controversial, ambi-
tious, transcendent figure, too able, too assured, too
talented to be confined within the limits of his pro-
fessional function and reSponsibilities. As early as
1929 his name was mentioned in connection with the
Presidency, and in 1944, 1948, and 1952 he was on the
fringes of the presidential political arena.

If General MacArthur ever became less the hero and
more the celebrity, it was during the thirty days after
April 11, 1951. It was on that date that MacArthur was
dismissed from all of his military offices by President
Harry S. Truman, touching off a brief but extremely bitter
controversy over issues of national foreign policy. During
the last part of April, President Truman was vilified by
congressmen, hanged in effigy, denounced as a traitor,
threatened with impeachment, and damned by many of the

newspapers in the nation. It was a period bursting with

 

5Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 369-70.

emotionalism. Richard Rovere and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,

later wrote that

. . . it is doubtful if there has ever been in this
country so violent and Spontaneous a discharge of
political passion as that provided by the General's
dramatic return from voluntary, patriotic exile.

The purpose of this study is to examine the news
reports and editorial reactions of a representative sample
of neWSpapers to determine whether--under these conditions
of major policy disagreement and extreme emotionalism--the
facts and issues involved were presented to newspaper
readers in a coherent manner.

Six Michigan daily newspapers, representing more
than half of the aggregate paid newspaper circulation in
the state during 1951, were selected for the study. The
publications chosen were: the Detroit News, an indepen-
dently-owned newspaper published weekday afternoons with

a circulation in 1951 of 452,760; the Detroit Free Press,

 

a newspaper owned by Knight NeWSpapers, Incorporated,
published mornings with a daily circulation of 449,449;

the Detroit Times, a neWSpaper owned by the William Ran-

 

dolph Hearst chain, published weekday afternoons with a

circulation in 1951 of 440,317;7 the Grand Rapids Press,

 

 

6Richard H. Rovere and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
The MacArthur Controversy and American Foreign Policy
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965) , p. 5.

7In 1951, the Detroit Times was at the peak of its
circulation curve, which would decline steadily from 1951
until the neWSpapers demise in November, 1960.

 

 

an afternoon newspaper with a circulation of 106,391,
published weekdays by Booth Newspapers, Incorporated;

the Flint Journal, also a Booth neWSpaper, published

 

weekday afternoons with a circulation in 1951 of 77,975;

and the Lansing State Journal, an afternoon newspaper

 

published in the state capital by Federated NeWSpapers,
Incorporated, with a daily circulation in 1951 of 55,513.
Each of the neWSpapers in the study, with the exception

of the Grand Rapids Press, then published a Sunday morn-
8

 

ing edition.
In 1951, fifty-five daily newspapers were pub-
lished in Michigan with an aggregate paid daily circula-
tion of more than two and one-quarter million. Two-thirds
of that circulation was provided by the six neWSpapers
listed above.9
Because of the importance of Douglas MacArthur‘s
character and personality in shaping the issues of the
1951 controversy, it is essential to understand something
about that extraordinary general, particularly those as-

pects of his career that helped shape the relationship

between him and the press.

 

8N. W. Ayer & Son, Directory: Newspapers and

Periodicals (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer & Son, 1951), pp.
451-62.

 

 

91bid.

CHAPTER I
MACARTHUR'S "FIRST CAREER"

Douglas MacArthur served his country as a general
officer for so many years that by 1951 his early fame was
almost forgotten by the peOple. He was born to a military
tradition. His father, Arthur MacArthur, had won the
Medal of Honor during the Civil War as a regimental com-
mander at Missionary Ridge, and had served as a major
general in the Philippines during the Spanish-American
War. «Later, Arthur MacArthur became the first military
governor of the Philippine Islands.1 In 1903, his son,
Douglas, was graduated from the United States Military
Academy at West Point, New York, at the age of twenty-
three. From its beginning, the career of Douglas
MacArthur was Spectacular. He was first captain of the
cadet corps, the highest military honor a cadet can re-
ceive, and was academically first in his class.2 After
his graduation, MacArthur served briefly in the Philip-

pines and Japan, was a military aide to President

 

1Dorris Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur,
1880-1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), pp. 13-15,
33-38.

 

 

21bid., pp. 78, e4.

Theodore Roosevelt, helped sieze Vera Cruz from Mexico in
1914, and served as a press censorship officer on the War
Department general staff.3

In 1917, MacArthur served in France with the Ameri-
can Expeditionary Forces as a major in the Forty-second
Infantry (Rainbow) Division. By the end of the war in
EurOpe, he was a much decorated brigadier general and in
command of the division. MacArthur was widely hailed as
one of the outstanding combat leaders in the American Ex-
peditionary Forces.4 The young general was an imposing

presence and was attractive to the press in those early

days:

. . . The papers had found him a fetching figure and
liked to call him "the D'Artagnan of the A.E.F."
After serving for a while with the occupation forces
in Germany, he came home with two battle wounds, a
trunkful of decorations and clippings, and enough
memories of wartime kudos to nourish vast discontent
through the years of peace.5

During the years from 1919 to 1922, MacArthur
served as the superintendent of the United States Military
Academy, the youngest officer to hold that post since the

War of 1812.6 After another assignment in the Philippines,

 

3Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 28-4?.

 

4James, Years of MacArthur, pp. 140-50, 239.

 

5Rovere and Schlesinger, The MacArthur Controveray,
p. 28.

6James, Years of MacArthur, p. 261.

 

he returned to the United States and in 1925 was assigned
to sit on the court-martial board of air-power advocate
Brigadier General William (Billy) Mitchell, a boyhood
friend. MacArthur later wrote that this assignment was
"one of the most distasteful orders [he had] ever re-
ceived."7 Mitchell had been angered by the crash of the

military dirigible Shenandoah and other aircraft accidents

 

and had told reporters, "these accidents are the result of
the incompetence, criminal negligence, and almost treason—
able administration of the national defense by the Navy
and War Departments."8 The offense for which Mitchell was
tried was "conduct to the prejudice of good order and

military discipline,‘

Article of War.9 Of the twelve officers assigned to act

under the catch-all Ninety-sixth

as Mitchell's jury, six--including MacArthur--were major
generals and six were brigadier generals.10 The truth of
Mitchell's accusations of negligence in the War and Navy
Departments was not to be an issue in the trial, because

a separate board of inquiry was to investigate the aircraft

accidents. Mitchell and his defense attorney, however,

 

7MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 85.
8

 

Time, Nov. 2, 1925, p. 9.

9Burke Davis, The Billpritchell Affair (New York:
Random House, 1967), pp. 247-48.

10

 

James, Years of MacArthur, p. 307.

 

were able to turn the court-martial into a public forum
on air power. After a seven-week trial, Mitchell was
convicted and sentenced to suspension from duty for more
than two years. Despite the public outcry, President

Calvin Coolidge approved the sentence and Mitchell promptly

O O I 0 ll
re51gned hlS commisSion.

One aSpect of Mitchell's defense is pertinent to
MacArthur's later career. Mitchell's civilian defense

attorney, U. S. Representative Frank R. Reid, a protege

of Clarence Darrow,12 had offered the defense of freedom

of speech, arguing that the Articles of War did not super-

sede the rights guaranteed to a military officer or any

13

other citizen by the Bill of Rights. On this point,

MacArthur wrote in his memoirs:

It is part of my military philosophy that a senior
officer should not be silenced for being at variance
with his superiors in rank and with accepted doctrine.
I have always felt that the country's interest was
paramount, and that when a ranking officer, out of
purely patriotic motives, risked his own personal
future in such opposition, he should not be summarily
suppressed.1

The MacArthur legend, reported by a number of ad-

miring biographers, suggests that MacArthur voted to

 

11Davis, Billy_Mitchell Affair, pp. 326, 331-32.

lZIbid., p. 332.

13Time, Nov. 2, 1925, p. 9.

l4MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 85.

 

15 In fact, MacArthur never publicly re-

acquit Mitchell.
vealed his vote. His memoirs, however, give some hint as

to his decision. He wrote:

. . . In such a court-martial as Mitchell's only a
two-thirds vote is necessary to convict. When the
verdict was reached, many believed I had betrayed my
friend, and certain rabid and irresponsible colum-
nists even assailed me for joining "in the persecu—
tion of Mitchell." Nothing could be further from the
truth. I did what I could in his behalf and I helped
save him from dismissal. That he was wrong in the
violence of his language is self-evident; that he

was right in his thesis is equally true and incontro-
vertible.l

In viewing Mitchell's trial in retrospect, it seems prob-
able that MacArthur voted to convict, but may have argued
for a light sentence.

Mitchell was a colorful figure, popular with the
public and the press. One of his champions was Fiorello
LaGuardia, U. S. Representative from New York City, who
focused attention on MacArthur during the trial. LaGuardia,
a wartime pilot under Mitchell, had been quoted in the
press as saying, "Billy Mitchell isn't being tried by his

peers, but by nine17 beribboned dogrobbers of the General

 

15See among others, Clark G. Lee and Richard Hen-
schel, Douglas MacArthur (New York: Holt, 1952), p. 45;
Frazier Hunt, The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur (New
York: Devin-Adair Co., 1954), pp. 118-19; or Clarke Newlon,
The Fightinngouglas MacArthur (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1965), p. 107.

16

 

 

 

MacArthur, Reminiscences, pp. 85-86.

 

17Three of the members of the board of officers had
been challenged by the defense and dismissed.

10

Staff." When questioned on this statement while testify-
ing before the court, LaGuardia reSponded, "I want to say
that at that time I didn't know General MacArthur was on

"18 MacArthur was still a popular public

this court.
figure.

In 1930, President Herbert Hoover appointed
MacArthur as Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
He was then fifty years old--once again the youngest man
to hold such a position--and he had been an officer for

thirty-one years.19

He was at the top of his profession.
MacArthur's tenure as Chief of Staff was essentially a
struggle with the Congress to prevent further reduction
of the army's strength and budget in the depths of the
Depression. He was disturbed by talk in the Congress
"and all across the country . . . to the effect that war
could come no more."20 On June 8, 1932, MacArthur made a

speech at the University of Pittsburgh in which he iden-

tified the enemy:

Pacifism and its bedfellow, Communism, are all
about us. In the theater, neWSpapers and magazines,
pulpits and lecture halls, schools and colleges, it
hangs before the face of America, organizing the
forces of unrest and undermining the morals of the
working man.

 

18James, Years of MacArthur, pp. 308-09.

 

19MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 89.

 

201bid., p. 90.

lebid.

11

To MacArthur's dismay, the speech brought much criticism

upon him. Some years later he wrote:

I was roundly denounced not only by pacifists and
Communists, but even on the floor of Congress itself.
A small group in that august body fancied themselves
far better strategists than any general. I was har-
rassed ceaselessly in the effort to force me into
acceptance of their appeasement views. I was slan-
dered and smeared almost daily in the press. The
prOpaganda spared neither my professional attributes
nor my personal character. It was bitter as gall and
I knew that something of that gall would always be
with me.22

Another bitter dose of gall was waiting for
MacArthur as he Spoke in Pennsylvania. It had originated
in 1929, when the stock market crashed and plunged the
nation into the worst financial crisis it had ever known.
By 1932, the future looked bleak for millions of unemployed
men and women. Assets that had survived the crash now
were mostly depleted, and sources of private relief were
all but exhausted. Tens of thousands of veterans of-the
armed services saw their single remaining asset to be
their "adjusted compensation certificates," representing
a "bonus" due them from the government for their wartime
service during 1917-1918. The payment was not legally
due until 1945, but U. S. Representative Wright Patman of
Texas had introduced a bill in the House to pay the bonus

immediately in response to the veterans' need. The bill

 

221bid., pp. 90-91.

12

was opposed by the Hoover administration as fiscally ir-
responsible, and was shelved by the Ways and Means Com-
mittee of the House.23
To get action on the bill, the veterans organized
a march on the Capitol. The first contingent of the
"Bonus Expeditionary Forces," or "B.E.F.," as it became
known, arrived in the District of Columbia on May 28,
1932, led by Walter W. Waters of Oregon, who became the
leader of the bonus army. By June 7, about 20,000
veterans marched in ragged military formation down
Pennsylvania Avenue, and more men were arriving every
day.24 Partly through the lobbying efforts of the veter-
ans, the bonus bill was forced out of committee to the
floor of the Democrat-controlled House. That body was
aware that the measure could probably not pass the U. S.
Senate. And if it did, the President had promised to
veto the legislation. On June 15, the House passed the

bill.25

But all hope for the bonus bill ended on June 17
when the Senate voted it down. Senator Hiram Johnson, a
maverick Republican from California, is reported to have

said:

 

23New York Times, May 7, 1932, p. 1.

 

24Ibid., June 8, 1932, p. 1.

25Detroit Free Press, June 16, 1932, p. l.

 

13

This marks a new era in the life of our nation.
The time may come when this folderol--these trappings
of government--will disappear, when fat old men like
you and me will be lined up against a stone wall.

Despite such fears of revolution, 8,000 veterans outside
on the Capitol grounds heard the bad news quietly. Their
leaders spoke to them for a few tense moments, then they
sang "America" and marched back to their camps, vowing to
stay until 1945, if necessary.27
The veterans were generally well-disciplined and
orderly and, for the most part, the residents of the
capital city tolerated them in good humor. This was ap-
parently largely due to the efforts of a man respected and
admired by both the residents and the veterans: retired
Brigadier General Pelham Glassford, superintendent of the
District of Columbia police.28 After the Congress had ad-
journed on July 17, there were some attempts by the small
radical element of the bonus army to march on the White
House. None of these came close to success, thanks in

part to the intervention of the main body of veterans.29

 

26Robert S. Allen, More Merry-Go-Round (New York:

Horace Liverwright, 1932), p. 46. Johnson's remark is not
reported in the Congressional Record.

27

 

 

Detroit Free Press, June 16, 1932, p. l.

 

28Frederick Lewis Allen, Since Yesterday: The
Nineteen-Thirties in America, September 3, 1929:48eptember
3, 1939, Bantam Books (New York: Harper & Row, 1940),
pp. 66-67.

29

 

New York Times, June 19, 1932, p. 1.

 

14

Some veterans left Washington in the face of an eviction
order issued July 22, but efforts to convince the majority
to depart had no immediate success. When Glassford in-
sisted on explicit written instructions before forcibly
evicting the veterans from their camps, a series of con-
ferences was called. The administration was losing
patience with Glassford's moderate tactics, and was ready
to take a harder line.30 One of the meetings included
Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, B.E.F. leader Walter
Waters, and Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur.31
According to Waters, MacArthur did not contribute to the
five-hour discussion of the future of the B.E.F., but
paced around the room listening. At the close of the

meeting, Waters was convinced that the government had no

sympathy whatsoever for the veterans' plight. He wrote:

. . . I turned to General MacArthur, who would give
the order to the troops in case they were to be used.
"If the tr00ps should be called out against us will
the B.E.F. be given the opportunity to form in
columns, salvage their belongings, and retreat in
orderly fashion?"

His answer was vital to me . . . . He paused in
his endless march around the room and replied, "Yes,
my friend, of course!"

 

30Detroit Times, July 28, 1932, p. 3.

 

31Walter W. Waters, B.E.F.: The Whole Story of

the Bonus Army, with William C. White (New York: John
Day Co., 1933), p. 192.

32

 

 

Ibid., p. 199.

15

MacArthur's version of this exchange is that he
"conferred with [Waters] and reached an agreement that if
the army was called in he would withdraw without vio-

lence."33

After more delays, the police evacuation of
the veterans began at 11:00 A.M. on July 28. In the
early afternoon a scuffle between police and veterans
resulted in the fatal wounding of a veteran by a panicky
police officer. Other veterans and some police officers
were hurt, but Glassford restored order and the evacua-
tion continued. President Hoover called out federal
tr00ps shortly after, announcing that this action was
needed to put an end to "rioting and defiance of civil

34

authority." Four companies of infantry, a platoon of

light tanks, and four troops of cavalry were mobilized,
arriving in downtown Washington in the late afternoon.35
General MacArthur decided to accompany the troops on
their mission. He later wrote that he did so "in ac-
cordance with the President's request."36 Major Dwight

D. Eisenhower, then an assistant to MacArthur, advised

the chief of staff that it seemed "highly inappropriate"

 

33MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 93.

 

34Washington Post, July 29, 1932, p. 3.

35Gene Smith, The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover
and the Great Depression (New York: William Morrow & Co.,
1970), p. 160.

36

 

 

MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 95.

 

16

for the head of the army to be present with the tr00ps.

Eisenhower reported that

. . . General MacArthur disagreed, saying that it was
a question of Federal authority in the District of
Columbia, and because of his belief that there was
"incipient revolution in the air," as he called it,
he paid no attention to my dissent. 7

Time, a weekly news magazine, reported MacArthur's partici-

pation:

General MacArthur directed the military operation,
tears streaming down his cheeks, not from emotion but
from the fumes of the [tear gas] bombs. When his
cavalry rode down a group of veterans with a U.S. flag,
a spectator sang out: "The American flag means nothing
to me after this." General MacArthur snapped: "Pu
that man under arrest if he opens his mouth again."

The imposing show of force and liberal use of tear
gas cleared the downtown area with little delay, and the
tr00ps moved on to the main camp at Anacostia flats, near
the Potomac River. By midnight, the bonus army was shat-
tered and dispersed; the shacks of Anacostia were ablaze;
and the stunned veterans, many with wives and children,
streamed from Washington along every road.39 Remarkably,
no one was killed during the evacuation, although a
veteran's baby later died of complications resulting from

tear-gas inhalation.40

37Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to
Friends (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 216-17.

38

 

Time, Aug. 8, 1932, p. 6.

39Washington Post, Nov. 30, 1932, p. 1.

40New York Times, Aug. 10, 1932, p. 2.

17

The decision to use the army was clearly not

41

MacArthur's. The size and composition of the force was

his responsibility, however, and he could be validly
criticized for sending tanks and cavalry against unemployed
American citizens. MacArthur's supporters suggested that
the strength of the force was a prime factor in minimizing
casualties through its psychological effect. Most criti-
cism of MacArthur's role in the bonus army affair was
directed at his comments to newspaper reporters on return-
ing to the War Department late on the night of the eviction.

He said, in part:

. . . That mob down there was a bad-looking mob. It
was animated by the essence of revolution. The gentle-
ness, the consideration with which they had been
treated had been mistaken for weakness, and they had
come to the conclusion, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
that they were about to take over . . . . It is my
Opinion that had the President not acted today, had

he permitted this thing to go on for twenty-four hours
more, he would have been faced with a grave situation
which would have caused a real battle. Had he let it
go on another week, I believe that the institutions of
our government would have been very severely
threatened . . . .

 

41Arthur Krock, then chief of the New York Times

Washington bureau, reported a conversation with President
Hoover in which Hoover may have disclaimed reSponsibility
for the removal of the bonus army. Krock quotes Hoover as
speaking of the veterans' rout by the military "which
MacArthur ordered on his own." (Arthur Krock, Memoirs:
Sixtinears on the Firing Line [New York: Funk & Wagnalls,
19681, p. 132.)

 

18

There were, in my Opinion, few veteran soldiers
in that group we cleared out today; few indeed. I
am not Speaking by figures because I don't know how
many there were, but if there was one man in ten in
that groupztoday who is a veteran, it would surprise
me. . . .

Dwight Eisenhower, who had advised MacArthur not to meet

with the press, thought that MacArthur's comments

. . . led to the prevailing impression that General
MacArthur had undertaken and directed the move against
the veterans and that he was acting as something more
than just the agent of civilian authorities.

Press criticism of MacArthur was loudest from
those neWSpapers that would be his champions twenty years
later: the Scripps-Howard publications and those of

William Randolph Hearst. The Baltimore Sun ridiculed

 

MacArthur's statement in an editorial that concluded:

. . . and what bosh it is! A handful of forlorn men,
of so little economic power that they had to live on
handouts, of so little political power that Congress
turned on its heel and left them sitting in their
hovels, of so little military power that actually a
few tear bombs sent them scurrying into the light
from their wretched shelters. These were the "insur-
rectionists" who were to endanger the nation and
menace civilization. What Bosh!

The Detroit Times, in a front-page editorial, reviewed the

incident and the reaction of the international press and

 

42New York Times, July 29, 1932, p. 2.

 

43Eisenhower, At Ease, p. 218.

44Editorial, Baltimore Sun, reprinted in Detroit

Times, July 31, 1932, p. 3.

19

summarized it as "a sorry day's work, Mr. President and

General MacArthur."45
MacArthur remained bitter about criticism of the

eviction of the bonus marchers until his death. In his

memoirs, he wrote:

During the Bonus March Communist threats continued
to be made against reSponsible officials. I was to be
publicly hanged on the steps of the Capitol. It was
the beginning of a definite and ceaseless campaign
that set me apart as a man to be destroyed, no matter
how long the Communists and their friends and ad-
mirers had to wait, and no matter what means they
might have to use. But it was to be nineteen years
before the bells of Moscow pealed out their glee at
my eclipse.

MacArthur served as chief of staff for an unpre-
cedented five-year term. In 1934, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt extended the general's normal tenure by one
year.47 As his term closed, MacArthur faced the prOSpect
of retiring at fifty-five, or reverting from temporary
four-star rank to his permanent grade of major general and
accepting a subordinate command. He did neither. At the
request of the Philippine government, MacArthur was de-

tached from the U. S. Army to be military adviser to the

 

45Editorial, Detroit Times, Aug. 1, 1932, p. l.

 

46MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 97.

 

47Ibid., p. 102.

20

Philippine Commonwealth and field marshal of the armed

forces of the islands. He left Washington, ending his

"first career," in 1935.48

 

481bid., p. 103.

CHAPTER II
MACARTHUR'S RETURN

Douglas MacArthur was not yet a legend in 1941,
but he was a famous general with a long and honored
career behind him. Dorris Clayton James, latest and most
comprehensive of MacArthur's biographers, observes that
by the beginning of World War II the general was still

seen by most mortals as a mere human:

. . . None yet adulated him to the point of comparing
his genius of military leadership to that of Alexander
the Great or Napoleon I, as some would later do. . . .
No one talked seriously yet of MacArthur as a unique
creature of destiny, nor does the evidence suggest
that MacArthur saw himself as such. The myths of

his almost superhuman attribftes and feats were still
several years in the future.

From 1935 to 1941, MacArthur struggled to create an effec-
tive defense for the Philippine Commonwealth. His resources
were small and progress was slow. After two years as an
American military adviser, MacArthur retired from the U. S.
Army to go on with his work in the Philippines rather than

. . 2
accept rea551gnment to a subordinate command elsewhere.

 

lJames, Years of MacArthur, p. 570.

2MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 107.

 

21

22

Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had accompanied MacArthur to
the Philippines, returned to the United States after four
years in the islands.

As war came to EurOpe and Manchuria, the defense
of the Philippines remained low on the list of priorities
of the U. S. War Department. By 1941, armed forces per-
sonnel strength in the islands totaled about 100,000 men,
but 75 per cent of those men were in Philippine army re-
serve divisions that existed only on paper, not as trained
units.3 MacArthur's most optimistic estimate of a date
for a "completely adequate defense force" was April,
1942.4 Because of increased tension between Japan and
the United States, MacArthur was recalled to active duty
on July 26, 1941, and promoted to lieutenant general.
George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, appointed him
to head the newly-created Far Eastern command. Marshall's
biographer reports that this decision was not made

lightly:

. . . The return of General MacArthur to active duty
created a difficult situation. Having served as
Chief of Staff for a longer period than any of his
predecessors, he naturally found it awkward to ac-
cept directives from men who were colonels or even
captains when he was Chief of Staff.5

 

3James, Years of MacArthur, p. 594.

 

4Ibid., p. 597.

5Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall, Vol. II:
Ordeal and HOpe, 1939-1942 (New York: Viking Press, 1965),
p. 184.

 

23

There was not enough time left to complete the job. At
3:40 A.M. on December 8, 1941, MacArthur learned that
Pearl Harbor had been attacked.6 MacArthur was for a
time under the impression that the attack had been re-

pulsed:

. . . I learned, to my astonishment, that the Japanese
had succeeded in their Hawaiian attack, and at 11:45

a report came in of an overpowering enemy formation
closing in on Clark Field. Our fighters went up to
meet them, but our bombers were slow in taking off

and our losses were heavy.

General MacArthur must bear at least part of the blame for
failure to protect his aircraft with more than eight hours
warning that hostilities had begun. More than half of his
air force was caught on the ground and destroyed. Two
weeks after the attacks, General George Marshall told a
T§m§_magazine reporter: "It's all clear to me now except
one thing. I just don't know how MacArthur happened to
let his planes get caught on the ground."8 Although the
commanders at-Pearl Harbor were disgraced, castigated by
the press, and subjected to military and congressional in-

quiries, MacArthur's disaster passed almost without public

comment.

 

6MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 117.

71bid.

 

8Pogue, Marshall, II, p. 234.

24

On December 22, 1941, the Japanese invaded the
Philippines. In Washington, the basic decision to concen-
trate first on the defeat of Hitler had been made, with
the full knowledge that this meant that the Philippines
could not be reinforced in time to save them. The Ameri-
can and Filipino forces there resisted valiantly, but
eventual defeat was certain. MacArthur felt that he was
being abandoned; that had there been sufficient determina-
tion in the War Department, he could have been reinforced.9
Dwight Eisenhower, then on General Marshall's staff, was
made responsible for desperate attempts to provide any
possible support for the Philippines. Later, in 1944,
Eisenhower read of MacArthur's complaint in a book by

10

correspondent Frazier Hunt. He called the book to

Marshall's attention, writing that

. . . the book practically gave me indigestion . . .
you will be quite astounded to learn that back in the
winter of '41/‘42, you and your associates in the War
Department had no real concern for the Philippines and
for the fighting forces there.l ‘

 

9Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with
History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 27. GeneraI
Whitney was a long-time member of MacArthur's staff. His
book and MacArthur's memoirs draw on the same source
material and can almost be considered a single work.

10The book referred to was: Frazier Hunt,
MacArthur and the War Against Japan (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1944), pp. 59-61. '

11Stephen E. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The
War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Garden City,
N. Y.: Doubleday, 1970), p. 2D) citing the Eisenhower
Papers, Letter No. 1994.

25

On March 11, 1942, MacArthur left the Philippines
on President Roosevelt's order. General Jonathan M. Wain-
wright surrendered the forces on Bataan and Corregidor two
months later, and went with them into captivity. It was
MacArthur's first bitter defeat. Years later, MacArthur
told New York Herald Tribune reporter Bert Andrews that
the decision makers in Washington were guilty of "treason
and sabotage" in not adequately supporting the Pacific
war. He condemned European strategy as "hammering stupidly
against strongpoints" to rescue an area that was worn out
and dying, and predicted that the history of the world
would be written in the Pacific for the next 10,000 years.12

In Australia, after his escape from the Philippines,
MacArthur made his memorable and much-publicized promise,
"I came through and I shall return,"13 and began organizing
the Allied defenses of the Southwest Pacific area.
MacArthur characteristically chose to defend Australia by
assuming the offensive as quickly as possible. The Pacific
strategy adOpted by the Allies called for a two-pronged
assault. MacArthur would attack with predominantly army
forces on a south to north axis, while Admiral Chester A.

Nimitz would command the naval thrust from west to east.

 

12Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New

York: Viking Press, 1951). pp. 17-18.

l3MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 145.

 

 

26

MacArthur strongly opposed this divided command and called
instead for a major effort from Australia under a single
commander. He was not successful.14 The U. S. Navy vic-
tory at Midway Island checked the Japanese advance and
enabled MacArthur to attack New Guinea with American and
Australian ground forces in the fall of 1942. As
MacArthur began his long drive northward, the MacArthur
legend began to take form. Two of the general's most
severe critics admit that the legend was based on solid

accomplishment:

Whatever MacArthur's initial resistance to the
directives from Washington, he executed them with in-
comparable skill. Combining air, naval and ground
operations with supurb success, ably solving the
logistics of the amphibious offensive, he succeeded
brilliantly in knocking out the cricial links in the
Japanese island chain of defense. The enemy was badly
out-maneuvered; allied losses were one-tenth those of

the Japanese. In these Spectagular campaigns, MacArthur
more than made up for Bataan.

After nine months of battle, the Philippines were recap-
tured. MacArthur announced the official end of the cam-
paign on July 4, 1945, a few weeks before the Japanese

surrender.16

Keyes Beech, Pulitzer-prize-winning correspondent

for the Chicago Daily News, wrote that it was typical of

 

l4;§i§,, pp. 197, 227, 230, 258-59.

15Rovere and Schlesinger, The MacArthur Controverpy,
p. 66.

l6MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 259.

27

MacArthur that "while his press relations were generally

bad his public relations were excellent." ~

17 The American

public was as familiar with Dwight Eisenhower's name as

MacArthur's but in the EurOpean theater the identities of

the field commanders--Bradley, Patton, Montgomery and

others--were also well known. Richard Rovere and Arthur

Schlesinger suggest that

. . . MacArthur's special triumph was to make peOple
forget who his field commanders were; the greatest
triumph of all was to convey the impression that he
was the field commander himself, in tacifical command
in every jungle and on every beachhead.

Censorship restrictions in the Southwest Pacific

.area were tighter than in any other theater of the war.

George C. Kenney, an admirer of MacArthur and his air

force commander during the war, put much of the blame on

MacArthur's staff:

. . . To them, unless a news release painted the
general with a halo and seated him on the highest
pedestal in the universe, it should be killed. No

news except favorable news reflecting complete credit
on an infallible MacArthur had much chance of getting
by the censors. They seemed to believe they had a
sacred mission, which was to "sell" the general . . . .
Sometimes they tended to be arrogant and almost insult-
ing to the representatives ofgthe press, of whom they
did not have a high opinion.

 

p.

l7Keyes Beech, Tokyo and Points East (Garden City,

Y.: Doubleday, 1954Y, p. 59.

18Rovere and Schlesinger, The MacArthur Controvergy,

71.

19George C. Kenney, The MacArthur I Know (New York:

Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1954): PP. 240-41.

28

From the beginning of MacArthur's offensive until the end
of the war, communiques from his headquarters would Opti-
mistically announce the end of a campaign when it was
clear to the reporters (and the tr00ps) that weeks of
fighting lay ahead. Once the battle had been declared
"won," or if American soldiers did not perform well, the
correspondents could not get their stories through the
censors. According to Gavin Long, an Australian military
historian, some of the bitterest fighting in the Pacific--
such as at Papua, where twice as many allied soldiers were
killed as at Guadalcanal--is all but unknown to the Ameri-
can public.20 Long believes that MacArthur's "regrettable
information policy" was due largely to the defensive and
mistrustful attitude of his staff toward Washington and
his own "abnormal sensitiveness to criticism and appetite
for favorable publicity."21
MacArthur himself was almost unapproachable to the
press. An Australian observer described one of MacArthur's

press conferences as follows:

The thirty or more war correSpondents and officers
present rose as the general made an impressive entry--
bare-headed, grave, distinguished-looking, immaculate.
His right arm was raised in salute. There was no
other introduction. Pacing to and fro almost the
length of the conference room, MacArthur began to de-
claim his statement of the military situation. His

 

2OGavin Long, MacArthur as a Military Commander
(Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1969), p. 116.

21Ibid., p. 118.

29

phrasing was perfect, his Speech clear and unhalting,
except for pauses for dramatic emphasis. The corre-
spondents took notes but there was no interruption of
any kind. The conference room had become a stage . . .
The statement ended, the general again raised his right
arm in salute and strode from the room followed by one
or two staff officers. The conference was over. One
man alone had spoken--the Supreme Commander. There
was no questioning, no Opportunity to clarify the
meaning of the statement. It had come from the lips
of General Douglas MacArthur and as such it was,
evidently, beyond question.22

Working conditions for reporters did not improve
much when the war ended and MacArthur assumed his new role
as military governor of Japan. John Gunther, writing in
1950, said that MacArthur had "performed the extraordinary
feat of conquering an enemy, occupying its territory, and

making its peOple like it."23

As Supreme Commander for

the Allied Powers, usually called "SCAP," MacArthur
directed the transformation of Japan with all but absolute
powers. The Diet, the Japanese national assembly, nominally
ran the country and the emperor remained as the head of
state; but MacArthur controlled the Diet and the emperor
called on MacArthur at the general's office, not the re-
verse.24 It is generally conceded that the Japanese oc-

cupation was one of the most successful and enlightened

in history. MacArthur instituted many reforms,

 

22Ibid., p. 136.

23John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur (New York:
Harper, 1951), p. 13. -

24MacArthur, Reminiscences, pp. 287-88.

 

30

reorganized the educational system, instituted a labor
movement and equality of sexes, introduced civil rights
and a new legal code, abolished the "thought police" and
the state religion, and gave the Japanese a new, fairly
liberal constitution. One of the most successful of
MacArthur's reforms was the establishment Of a free
Japanese press, or at least the foundations of such an
institution.25
MacArthur was popular in the United States. By
1943, he had been one of the Republican party's t0p choices
for the presidential nomination.26 MacArthur and Eisen-
hower headed the list of "ten most-admired people" com-
piled in a Gallup public Opinion poll in 1946.27 Perhaps
because of his pOpularity, his virtually unlimited
authority, and the genuine accomplishments of the occupa-
tion, MacArthur and his staff became even more sensitive
to criticism than they had been during the war years. No
person could enter or leave Japan without permission from
the Supreme Commander. This included Americans, Japanese,

foreigners and, emphatically, news media correspondents.28

25William J. Coughlin, Copquered Press: The
MacArthur Era in Japanese Journalism (Palo Alto, Calif.:
Pacific Books, 1952), p. 142.

26American Institute of Public Opinion, Gallup
Poll Reports, 1935-1968 (Princeton: American Institute
Of Public Opinion, I969), p. 149.

27

 

 

 

 

Ibid., p. 188.

28Gunther, Riddle of MacArthur, p. 22.

 

31

Newsmen who did not cooperate were in frequent trouble
with MacArthur's headquarters. General LeGrande A. Diller,
for a time MacArthur's public relations officer, was said

to have told reporters:

We are not going to let you give MacArthur's
critics in the States any ammunition. . . . Further-
more, when we do lift the censorship we will still
have control over what you-correspondents write about
MacArthur. Don't forget the army controls the food
here.

To a large extent, the press cooperated:

Most correSpondents in Tokyo--and I refer specifically
to the major news agencies--dutifully fed the
MacArthur line to American readers word for word, even
though they knew that what they were sending was not
the truth or at least not the whole truth. The justi-
fication was objectivity. In short, MacArthur had
said it, and even if it was an outright lie it was not
their responsibility to contradict him.

Keyes Beech wrote that it was impossible to be neutral on
the subject of MacArthur "because MacArthur did not toler-
ate Objectivity." Those who pleased the general had occa-
sional access to him, Beech wrote. Those who filed
unfavorable stories did not. "I wrote both kinds of

stories," said Beech, "and I did not have access to

 

 

MacArthur. It was as simple as that."31
29 .
Coughlin, Conquered Press, p. 116.
30

Beech, Tokyo and Points East, p. 49.

311bid., p. 61.

32

In February, 1948, the reporters rebelled, sending
a list of complaints to General MacArthur and various
agencies in the United States. The spark had been struck
when a Newsweek magazine correspondent, Compton Parkenham,
was barred from reentry to Japan because he had formerly
associated with Japanese of "feudalistic and militaristic

32

tendencies." Hanson W. Baldwin, military writer for

the New York Times, commented that "the Parkenham exclu-

 

sion was preceded and accompanied by restrictions which
further hampered the gathering of news in the Far East.
Some correSpondents have been subjected to threats and
grilling," Baldwin wrote. "The home of one man was
searched by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division."33
After a few weeks, Parkenham was quietly readmitted to
Japan. Conditions improved for the reporters as long as
they did not attack the occupation too vigorously, at
least until the start of the Korean War.

The press had not been reluctant to grant that the
peaceful transformation of Japan was a tremendous achieve-
ment. Their complaint was best stated by an Australian
diplomat, W. MacMahon Bell: "It isn't that SCAP has done

so little--but that it claims so much."34 History may

 

32New York Times, Feb. 19, 1948, p. 12.

 

33Ibid., March 5, 1948, p. 3.

34Beech, Tokyo and Points East, p. 49.

 

33

yet remember MacArthur longest, not for his considerable
military talents, but for his service as military governor
of Japan. It would have certainly been so had MacArthur
been able to complete the work of the occupation, see the
signing of the Japanese peace treaty, and retire. It was
not to be. In June, 1950, North Korean forces invaded
South Korea and President Harry S. Truman prepared to meet

the challenge.

CHAPTER III
TRUMAN AND THE PRESS

President Harry S. Truman began his tenure as
chief executive with a reservoir of good will--if not,
perhaps, of admiration--from the press. One Washington
correspondent said that Truman had "a larger acquaintance
among newspaper men than Hoover or Coolidge ever enjoyed
or than Roosevelt had" in 1933.1 James E. Pollard, author

of The Presidents and the Press, updated his standard work

 

on the subject of presidential press relations with an

analysis of the Truman administration:

In Mr. Truman's first year and a half in the White
House, the press as a whole treated him rather well.
Opposition newspapers were naturally critical of him,
but at this stage there was none of the personal feud-
ing that marked the Roosevelt period.

As the Roosevelt Democratic coalition collapsed and the
1948 elections drew near, Truman's support in the press--
and seemingly among the public as well--diminished. By

April, 1948, a Gallup public Opinion poll indicated that

 

1Editor 8 Publisher, April 21, 1945, p. 9.

 

2James E. Pollard, "President Truman and the Press,‘
Journalism Quarterly, XXVIII (1951), 458.

 

34

35

only 36 per cent of those sampled approved of Truman's
performance of his Office, while 50 per cent disapproved.3
Elmo Roper's polling organization found that 64 per-cent
of the voters questioned in July, 1948, expected Thomas
Dewey to defeat Truman.4 Just before election day,

Editor & Publisher, journal of the newspaper publishing

 

business, reported the result of a survey of 1,183 daily

newspapers in the United States:

The completed poll Of all daily newspapers in the
U. 8. reveals Dewey is backed by 65.17 per cent of
the dailies representing 78.55 per cent of the total
daily circulation. Truman has the support of 15.38
per cent of Ehe dailies with 10.03 per cent of the
circulation.

In Michigan--and in twelve other states--not one daily
newspaper endorsed Truman's candidacy, according to the
survey. Twenty-three Michigan dailies responded to the

Editor & Publisher poll. Of these, four indicated that

 

they remained "independent" and the rest endorsed Governor

Thomas Dewey of New York.6

 

3Mildred Strunk, ed., "The Quarter's Polls,"
Public Opinion Quarterly, XV (1951), 395.

4Elmo B. Roper, You and Your LeadersL Their Actions

 

 

and Your Reactionsy_l936-l956 TNew York: William Morrow
& Co., 1957). p. 136.

5

 

Editor & Publisher, Oct. 30, 1948, p. 11.

 

6Ibid., p. 13. The "independent" neWSpapers were
the Ann Arbor News, the Manistee News Advocate, the
Muskegon Chronicle, and the Royal Oak Tribune.

 

 

 

 

36

Editorial comment in Michigan newspapers stressed
the theme that the public wanted a change after sixteen
years of Democratic administrations. Some writers, such

as John S. Knight, publisher of the Detroit Free Press

 

and three other large metrOpolitan dailies, implied that
Truman was not a big enough man for the office he held.
Commenting on Dewey's nomination, Knight wrote: "This
year, Dewey is fortunate in the meager abilities of his
Opponent. The intellectual contrast should be striking."7

A few days later, the Free Press editorially discounted

 

Truman's chances of reelection in colorful language:
"With the Republican bandwagon rolling to glory, its steam

calliope blared the victory theme that the Democratic

8

party is dead." In the same issue of the Free Press,

 

the distinguished author and syndicated columnist Walter
Lippmann suggested that the campaign was a waste of time

for Mr. Truman:

Although Mr. TrumanvfiJJ.not, Of course, allow
himself to believe it, and though none of the practi-
cal politicians can under the rules admit it, the main
purpose of the Democrats this year is to prepare them-
selves to become the effective Opposition.

 

7John S. Knight, "The Editor's Notebook," Detroit
Free Press, June 27, 1948, p. 4.

8

 

Editorial, ibid., July 14, 1948, p. 6.

91bid.

37

Truman's unexpected re-election was a shock to the
pollsters and to the press. James Reston, a reporter in

the Washington bureau of the New York Times, in a letter

 

to his own editor, said that "we were wrong, not only on
the election, but what's worse, on the whole political

direction of our time."10

The Washington Post publicly
Offered to "eat crow" at a banquet in Truman's honor, and

the embarrassment of the famous Chicago Tribune "Dewey

 

Defeats Truman" headline was duplicated in the Free Press

 

editorial and some advance-written syndicated columns the
day after the election.11 Two of Truman's supporters de-
lightedly collected and published the pre-election edi-
torials and columns as evidence that the press was not so
influential or representative as it believed.12 They
pointed out that Lippman, the AlsOp brothers--Joseph and
Stewart, David Lawrence, Marquis Childs, Westbrook Pegler,
Drew Pearson, and other analysts had been completely wrong.

Of Lippmann, they wrote:

. . . Having decided early in the game that Truman had
no chance and should not even try to be nominated,
Lippmann seemed to be quite hurt because the President
refused to take his advice. Since Lippmann had
already settled the election as no contest, it seemed

 

1OEditor & Publisher, Nov. 6, 1948, p. 5.

 

11Detroit Free Press, Nov. 3, 1948, pp. 10-11.

 

12Morris L. Ernst and David Loth, The PeOple Know
Best, The Ballots vs. the Polls (Washington, D. C.:
Public Affairs Press, 1949), pp. 50-93.

 

 

38

ungracious of a mere President of the United States
to go on fighting.

In January, 1949, Truman made two important
speeches: his "State of the Union" message in which the
"Fair Deal" was introduced, and his inaugural address.

The former speech was described by the Michigan press--or
at least the six newspapers central to this study--as

more of the same kind of "centralism" newspaper publishers
and other businessmen had mistrusted in Roosevelt. The

Lansing State Journal, for example, said editorially that

 

the speech could be boiled down into a three-word phrase:

14 The inaugural address

"greater government control."
dealt with foreign policy and in it the President intro-
duced as the fourth point of his policy a large foreign
assistance program. The "Point Four" program was the
basis for the later work of the Agency for International
Development. Editorial reaction to the speech was polite,

but there was little comment on its substance. The

Detroit Times was an extreme example. The Hearst news-

 

paper did not carry the text of the speech, stories about
it, or editorial comment on it. A front page story ex-
plained why the President's daughter had no escort to the

inaugural ball, but the single reference to the foreign

 

13Ibid., p. 70.

14Editorial, Lansing State Journal, Jan. 6, 1949,
p. 6. (Hereinafter cited as "State Journal.")

 

 

39

policy statement was one sentence: "Peace was the theme

Of Mr. Truman's inaugural address, that and a 'fair deal'

at home."15

During the campaign, Marquis Childs, an editorial
columnist for United Features Syndicate, had written that
Truman was given "less than justice for the results of
the firm foreign policy that began with the Truman Doc-

16

trine." Certainly, Truman felt that this was true, and

had lost much confidence in the press. He wrote:

It was my conviction that the major media of com-
munication had failed in their responsibility to pre-
sent facts as facts and Opinions as Opinion. It
seemed to me that many owners, publishers and colum-
nists of the press and the radio were deliberately
irresponsible during a time of great importance to
the people of the United States . . . . As far as I
was concerned, they had sold out to the Special inter-
ests, and that is why I referred to them in my cam-
paign speeches as the "kept press and paid radio."l7

After the 1948 election campaign, the opposition of the
press to the Truman administration grew more personal.
The North Korean army invaded the Republic of
Korea in June, 1950. General MacArthur went to Korea and
reported that the South Korean army was disintegrating.

The Security Council of the United Nations called on all

 

15Detroit Times, Jan. 21, 1949, p. 1.

16Detroit Free Press, July 3, 1948, p. 4.

17Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. II: Years of

Trial and Hope, 1946—1952 (New York: Doubleday, 1956),
176.

40

member nations to help repel the North Korean attack, and
Truman authorized MacArthur to commit American ground
forces from Japan. Most Michigan newspapers supported

President Truman's decision to intervene. A Flint Journal

 

editorial said, in part:

Somewhere, sometime, the Russian advance had to be
called to a halt. If it had not been Korea, it would
have had to be Formosa, French Indo-China, Siam, the
Malay states, India, the Philippines.

The Grand Rapids Press reviewed foreign policy

 

"mistakes" in China and post-war Korea and concluded:

Mr. Truman's forthright action . . . belated as
it might have been, conceivably may convince the
Soviets that they can gain no more save at great risk
to world peace and themselves; for in ordering Ameri-
can air and sea forces to protect Korea and Formosa,
the President has announced to the world that the
United States finally has taken a stand in the Far
East. 9

President Truman, fearing the Spread of the war outside
Korea, had ordered the navy to protect Formosa but also
to prevent the Nationalist Chinese forces from attacking
the China mainland. Some neWSpapers saw the order to

"protect" Formosa as a reversal of the President's much

criticized China policy. The Lansing SEate Journal said

 

editorially:

 

18Editorial, Flint Journal, June 28, 1950, p. 12.

 

19Editorial, Grand Rapids Press, June 28, 1950,

 

41

Mr. Truman's action . . . is an abrupt reversal
of past policy with respect to the last-remaining re-
fuge of the Chinese Nationalists on Formosa, and it
should be satisfactory to those in both major politi-
cal parties who have been demanding sterner action to
halt the Communist tide.2

The Detroit Times "support" for the President's
action was slightly barbed. Truman's decision to fight in
Korea, the newspaper said, was a repudiation of Secretary

of State Dean Acheson's advice:

By his historic reversal, the President was recog-
nizing at last that General MacArthur was right, that
former President Hoover was right . . . .

It took the Korean War to Show the President how
profoundly wrong his Secretary of State had been.

Mr. Truman must be commended for his stand, com-
mittinglusto action in place Of a policy of supine
indifference.2

The Detroit News editors reminded their readers

 

that "more than two years ago, [on August 23, 1948,]"

the Ngw§_had predicted that "South Korea would go out like
a light the moment the United States turned its back."

The Ngwg editors concluded, however, that Korea was the

wrong place for the United States to fight a war:

. . . War might come in any case, but if we've got to
fight, we should do it on ground where the issue is
unmistakeably clear to our own peOple and where the
strategic stake is worth the risk. South Korea from
the standpoint of world strategy is a dead end for
the United States.22

 

20Editorial, State Journal, June 28, 1950, p. 12.

 

21Editorial, Detroit Times, June 29, 1950, p. 28.

 

22Editorial, Detroit News, June 27, 1950, p. 22.

 

42

Once American trOOps had been committed, the News said
editorially that "it remains for us to close ranks,
strengthen our armor, and hold ourselves ready."23

The Detroit Free Press was not ready to close

 

ranks. Like most of the other newspapers in this study,

the Free Press said editorially that

 

. . . the Communist challenge in Korea must be met
firmly. A retreat there would be still another in-
vitation to further aggression. The word 'Korea'
would join 'Yalta' and 'China' on our roster of
ignominy.

But, said the editors, it was unfortunate that "our sup-

port will benefit the appeasers . . . who got us in the

mess."24 The Free Press also ridiculed the "crisis

 

activity" of politicians:

While the lives of millions of young American men
and women may be at stake, the leaders of both parties
are playing cheap and contemptible politics--even as
the Roman soldiers gambled at the foot of the cross
for the garments Of the Lord.25

Formosa was a constant problem in Korean war
policy, and later would be central to the MacArthur con-
troversy. In the early days of the war, Chaing Kai-shek,
leader of the Nationalist Chinese government on Formosa,

Offered 33,000 Nationalist troops for use in Korea.

 

231bid., June 28, 1950, p. 30.

24Editorial, Detroit Free Press, June 29, 1950,

 

251bid., June 28, 1950, p. 6.

43

Truman considered but declined this aid because these
troops were needed more to secure Formosa from possible
attack and because he did not want to provoke the Chinese ~
Communists. In addition, General MacArthur had advised
against using the Chinese troops. He felt they would be
more of a burden than a help to him because of inadequate
logistical support.26
The war did not go well for the United Nations
forces during July and August, 1950. The South Korean
Army was beaten, and the American military machine built
during World War II had been mostly dismantled. The few
units available for committment to the Korean fighting
were poorly trained and equipped. One unit at a time,
they were rushed to the battlefield to slow the enemy
drive. By August first, the United Nations command--at
that time a virtually all-American organization--was de-
fending a small perimeter around the port of Pusan, at
the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula.27
On July 31, 1950, MacArthur made a brief trip to

Formosa. At the close of the visit, Chiang Kai-shek told

reporters that he and MacArthur were in complete agreement

 

26Truman, Memoirs, II, 342, 348.

27Roy E. Appleman, South to the NaktongL North to
the Yalu, [Vol. II,] U. S. Army in the KoreapTWar, ed. by
Stetson Conn (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Of-
fice, 1960), pp. 59-265. This work is the official U. S.
Army history of the Korean War.

44

on Far Eastern policy. But President Truman said later:
"The implication was--and quite a few of our newspapers
said so--that MacArthur rejected my policy of neutralizing
Formosa and that he favored a more aggressive method."28

The President immediately sent W. Averell Harriman,
a presidential assistant and later governor of New York,

to Tokyo to confer with the general. An Associated Press

correspondent, John M. Hightower, reported:

Policy makers here fin Washingtonlassume MacArthur
acted under President Truman's general instructions
for the protection of Formosa, and discussed only de-
fensive military arrangements with Chiang. The Harri-
man trip is said to be for the purpose of making
certain this assumption is correct, as well as to
clarify between Washington and Tokyg precisely what
American policy toward Formosa is.

Harriman met with MacArthur and reported back to the Presi-

dent that:

. . . for reasons I find difficult to explain, I did
not feel that we came to a full agreement in the way
we believed things should be handled on Formosa . . . .
He accepts the President's position and will act ac-
cordingly, but without full conviction.

It soon became clear that Harriman was correct when
MacArthur sent a message on Formosa to be read to a con-

vention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The statement

 

28Truman, Memoirs, II, 354.

29State Journal, Aug. 5, 1950, p. 2.

 

30Truman, Memoirs, II, 351-52.

45

said, in part, that "nothing could be more fallacious than
the threadbare argument by those who advocate appeasement
and defeatism in the Pacific that if we defend Formosa we

alienate continental Asia."31

It is possible that
MacArthur did not realize that his description fit pre-
cisely the position of the President and his advisers who
were trying to neutralize Formosa. After the President
ordered the message withdrawn--too late to prevent its
publication--MacArthur reportedly reexamined the message
but "could find no feature that was not in complete sup-
port Of the President."32 Truman later would write that
he gave "serious thought" to relieving General MacArthur
at that time.33

Editor & Publisher commented on the suppression

 

of the message in an editorial that said there were excep-
tions to the rule that American foreign policy must speak

with but one voice:

. . . Americans whether in military or civilian
government employ have always spoken their minds and
rarely have they been slapped down by the President
as was MacArthur.

 

31U. 8., Congress, Senate, Joint Committee on

Armed Services and Foreign Relations, Militapy Situation
in the Far East, Hearings before the Joint Senate CommiE-
tee on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, 82nd Cong.,
lst sess., 1951, p. 3189. (Hereinafter cited as "Hear-

ings.")

 

32MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 341.

33Truman, Memoirs, II, 355.

 

46

The President and his advisers may set foreign
policy but certainly the American people are entitled
to hear the Opinions of informed people such as Gen-
eral MacArthur. The President assumed an unbecoming
dictator-tinge when he revealed his disinclination to
tolerate the Opinions of others.3

MacArthur's brilliantly successful counterattack
at Inchon, Korea--an operation that had been opposed by
many senior officers in the Far East and in Washington as
dangerous and extremely difficult--changed the course of
the war and eased tension between Washington and Tokyo.35
After the recapture Of Seoul and the collapse of the North
Korean army, United Nations forces marched quickly toward
the thirty-eighth parallel. Truman met with MacArthur for
the first and only time at Wake Island in the Pacific to
confer on the Korean situation. MacArthur's supporters
and some newspapers suggested that the trip was a politi-
cal ploy to gain support for the Democratic party in the
approaching congressional elections and, as a member of
MacArthur's staff later wrote, to "exploit politically
the smashing victory of Inchon and directly link the ad-

. C O 0 O I 0 36
ministration With this impreSSive success."

 

34Editorial, Editor & Publisher, Sept. 9, 1950,

 

p. 40.

35Appleman, South to the Naktong, pp. 492-95.

 

36Charles A. Willoughby and John Chamberlain,
MacArthur, 1941-1951 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.,
1954), p. 382. Major General Willoughby was MacArthur's
intelligence chief in Korea and a long-time member of
MacArthur's personal staff.

 

47

The Lansing State Journal, in an editorial, "Seek-

ing the Pre-Election Spotlight," said the meeting was an

. . . attempt to salvage political advantage from the
success achieved under the leadership of General
MacArthur in spite of the foreign policy fumbling and
blundering of the Truman administration.

Curtis D. MacDougall, a Northwestern University
professor and the author of Understanding Public Opinion,
wrote in his book of the attitude of the public toward

General MacArthur during World War II:

. . . The most intense hero worship among Americans
was of General Douglas MacArthur. It is not detracting
one iota from the general's ability as a military
leader to declare that the movement developed from
necessity rather than from any exploits of his. Some
way had to be-found to assuage the national pride
after the humiliating defeats suffered at Pearl Harbor
and the Philippines. . . . Hero-worshipping of
MacArthur, at a time when he had done nothing except.
retreat, filled the psychological need of the moment.
It also, of course, enabled Roosevelt haters to pin
their hOpes to someone other than the logical wartime
leader, the President . . . . Part of the MacArthur
myth involved . . . charges that the commander in
chief was jealous of the arrogant Pacific leader and
deliggrately withheld supplies and authority from

him.

The same forces were probably operative in the relationship
between President Truman and MacArthur during the Korean

War .

 

37Editorial, State Journal, Oct. 12, 1950, p. 10.

38Curtis D. MacDougall, Understanding Public Opinion:
A Guide for Newspapermen and Newspaper Readers (Dubuque,
Iowa: William C. Brown Co., 1966), p. 328.

48

At Wake Island, the two leaders conferred for only
a few hours. Truman was told by the general that the war
would probably end before Christmas, 1950, and that there
was little chance that the Communist Chinese would inter-
vene. The President regarded the conference as "very satis-
factory" and he and MacArthur parted on the "best of

terms."39

 

39Truman, Memoirs, II, 365-67.

CHAPTER IV
MACARTHUR, KOREA, AND THE PRESS

MacArthur was appointed supreme commander of
United Nations forces in Korea on July 9, 1950, and much
of the American public was thus assured that all would be
well in the Far East. Dwight Eisenhower would later

write of MacArthur that

. . . at all times, he seemed so certain of his own
professional superiority over his fellow officers and

of a high place in American history that he developed 1
in the American public a like appraisal of his merits."

International News Service correspondent Bob
Considine summed up this feeling in the first installment
Of a series, "MacArthur, Man of the Hour," that ran in
the Hearst-owned newspapers during the early days of the

Korean War:

When General Douglas MacArthur flew to Korea for
a sixteen-hour examination of that war and the news
was announced, a costly panic on the New York Stock
Exchange was checked; the Bourse reacted favorably,
and hundreds of millions of human beings breathed
easier. . . . His brief presence in Korea reassured a
jittery western world that, having cast its die, the
United States was n03 prepared to see the matter
through to a finish. '

 

1Eisenhower, At Ease, p. 219.

2Detroit Times, July 9, 1950, p. 3.

 

49

50

MacArthur was understandably pleased by this con-
fidence in his talents, noting that his "appointment as
commander-in-chief was generally well received in the
United States, despite the usual clamor of [his] leftist
enemies."3

A New York Times editorial complimented MacArthur

 

and called his appointment "cause for satisfaction."4
John Fisher, an editorial columnist for the McClure news-
paper feature syndicate, also approved of the general's
assignment and suggested in addition that Truman was
fortunate that MacArthur was not interested in the presi-
dency. MacArthur would defeat the Communists, Fisher
predicted, but the President would get the credit.5

After the successful landings at Inchon by the
U. S. Army Seventh Infantry Division and the First Marine
Division, the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed MacArthur
that the President had approved an expanded mission for
his forces. His new task was the destruction of the North
Korean armed forces north of the thirty-eighth parallel.6
Later accusations made by some that MacArthur provoked
the Chinese Communist intervention by attacking North

Korea without proper authority were false. MacArthur's

 

3MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 338.

 

4Editorial, New York Times, July 10, 1950, p. 20.
5

 

State Journal, July 10, 1950, p. l.

 

6Dean G. Acheson, Present at the Creation, My
Years in the State Department (New York: Norton, 1969),
p. 462.

 

 

51

actions were restricted, however, by a paragraph of his

orders that read as follows:

Under no circumstances . . . will your forces
cross the Manchurian or U.S.S.R. borders of Korea and,
as a matter of policy, no non-Korean ground forces
will be used in the northeastern provinces bordering
the Soviet Union or in the area along the Manchurian
border. Furthermore, support of your operations . . .
will not include air or naval action against Manchuria
or against U.S.S.R. territory.

On October 1, and again on October 9, MacArthur
called on the North Korean commander-in-chief to surrender
because "the early and total defeat and complete destruc-

tion of your armed forces and war-making potential is now

inevitable."8

During the same period, the Associated Press re-

ported to its members that

. . . Red China's Premier Chou En-lai warned in a week-
end broadcast from Peiping [Peking] that China's 400

to 800 millions will not 'supinely tolerate seeing
their neighbors being savagely invaded by imperial-
ists.’

DeWitt MacKenzie, an Associated Press foreign affairs ana-

lyst, concluded that

. . . despite General Chou's grim language, it isn't
likely that the Chinese will intervene at this late
date. If they had intended to take a hand they would
have done so long before this.

 

7Ibid.

8State Journal, Oct. 9, 1950, p. 9.
9Ibid., Oct. 2, 1950, p. 1.

10Ibid., Oct. 6, 1950, p. 6.

52

The directive restricting MacArthur was modified
on October 9, 1950, by another that warned him that even
if the Chinese did intervene, MacArthur must contact
Washington before striking targets outside Korea. Truman's
first concern was preventing World War 111.11 That was
the situation at the time of the Wake Island conference.

By early November, MacArthur's troops--now includ-
ing units from the United Kingdom and other nations--were
deep in North Korea, the enemy capital of Pyongyang had
been captured, and the first evidence of Chinese Communist
forces in Korea had been confirmed. Early reports of
United Nations forces fighting Chinese "volunteers" were
temporarily pushed out of the headlines by news of the
attempted assassination of President Truman.12

On Thanksgiving Day, 1950, all was quiet at the
front and there were hints in the press of peace negotia-.

tions in progress.13 On November 24, MacArthur lauched

his "end-the-war offensive." The Grand Rapids Press re-

 

ported:

The roar of warplanes . . . drowned out talk of a
negotiated peace which had blossomed Thursday [Novem-
ber 23]. . . . Before leaving the front MacArthur told
his field generals "Tell the boys when they get to the
Yalu they are going home. I want to make good on my
statement fihat they are going to eat Christmas dinner
at home."1

11
12
13
14

 

Truman, Memoirs, II, 362.
New York Times, Nov. 2, 1950, p. 1.
Detroit News, Nov. 23, 1950, p. l.

 

Grand Rapids Press, Nov. 24, 1950, p. 1.

 

53

Before this "final" attack, MacArthur had warned
the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Chinese in Manchuria
were massing in such force as "to threaten the ultimate

destruction of my command."15

Nevertheless, the general
appeared confident of victory when he issued the following

press communique:

If successful this should for all practical pur-
poses end the war, restore peace and unity to Korea,
enable the prompt withdrawal of the United Nations
military forces, and permit the complete assumption
by the Korean people and nation of full sovereighty
and international equality. It is that for which we
fight.16

MacArthur's command was divided by the mountainous
spine of the Korean peninsula into two independent attack-
ing forces: the Eighth Army and the Tenth Corps. Republic
of Korea forces were in the mountains between the two
American elements. On November 26, 1950, some 200,000
Chinese Communist soldiers smashed through the central
sector of the front. The United Nations' "end-the-war"
attack was shattered and thrown back to the south.17 In

Tokyo, General MacArthur's spokeman said the Chinese

counterblow had been expected. He claimed that the U. N.

 

15Truman, Memoirs, II, 375.

16m. pp. 1834, 3491-92.

l7Martin Lichterman, "To the Yalu and Back," in
American Civil-Military Decisions, A Twentieth Century
Fund Study, ed. by Harold Stein (Birmingham, Ala.:
University of Alabama Press, 1963), pp. 606-610.

 

54

attack had been "halted temporarily" but was "continu-
ing."18 This optimism could not be maintained for long
because the United Nations forces retreated farther south
each day. MacArthur issued an extraordinary communique to
reporters on November 28, announcing that "we face an en-
tirely new war" and appealing to his superiors for in-
creased authority to deal with the situation. MacArthur
called for diplomatic action to stOp Communist China from
further aggression and added that "this situation--repug-
nant as it may be--poses issues far beyond the authority
of the United Nations military council."19
Editorial reaction to the disaster in Korea was,
for the most part, not critical of MacArthur except in

lamenting his optimistic "home by Christmas" comments be-

fore the Chinese attack. The Grand Rapids Press blamed

 

Washington:

The responsibility for allowing the Chinese the
opportunity to mount their offensive against U. N.
forces in Korea rests almost entirely on President
Truman and his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson. It
was Acheson who counseled against attacking the
Chinese bases on the Manchurian side of the Yalu--
with, of course, the President's approval. Acheson
remained hopeful to the end that gengle words and soft
action would deter the Chinese Reds. 0

 

18State Journal, Nov. 28, 1950, p. l.

 

19Grand Rapids Press, Nov. 24, 1950, p. l.

 

20Editorial, Grand Rapids Press, Nov. 29, 1950,

 

55

The Flint Journal commented on the sudden reversal

 

of the war in an editorial and said:

. . . As if things weren't tOpsy-turvey enough, we
continue to refuse the help of the Chinese National-
ist trOOps because their appearance in the fight
might offend the Chinese Communists who are shooting
and bayoneting our boys.21

The Lansing State Journal said editorially that

 

World War III had started. "The humiliating defeat,"

said the State Journal editors, should force us to abandon

 

our "fool's paradise." The editorial continued:

. . . Let's face the fact: we are already at war
with Red Russia. We will think clearly if we quit
pretending--if we recognize that it is the professors
of the Kremlin who are pulling the strings that make
us fight puppets in Korea, Europe and elsewhere. . . .
Our only course is to take on Russia--now. We don't
need to start bombing Moscow tomorrow, but we must
get tough, and stay tough.22

During the week after the Chinese attack,
MacArthur made a major effort to explain to the public
his defeat along the Yalu River. The general blamed all
of his problems on the political limitations placed on
his waging of the war. It was typical of MacArthur that
he did not deal with mere reporters in transmitting his

message. He gave interviews, in person and by cable, to

 

21Editorial, Flint Journal, Nov. 30, 1950, p. 30.

 

22Editorial, State Journal, Dec. 3, 1950, Sec. I,

 

56

such persons as the editor-in-chief of U. S. News & World

 

Report; Hugh Baillie, president of United Press; and
Arthur Krock, chief of the Washington bureau of the New

York Times.23 On December 6, 1950, the Detroit Times and

 

 

the State Journal published an International News Service

 

dispatch with an unusual byline: that of General Douglas
MacArthur.24 In fact, a small note explained, the story
was compiled from a MacArthur cable to Barry Faris,

editor-in-chief of International News Service. The story

began:

The entire effort to distort and misrepresent the
causes leading to the existing situation in Korea re-
presents one of the most scandalous propaganda efforts
to pervert truth in recent times.

MacArthur was upset at charges, mostly in European news-
papers, that he had invaded North Korea on his own author-
ity. MacArthur also denied that he had violated United
Nations directives, and that there had been inadequate
coordination between the Eighth Army and Tenth Corps.25
Indeed, MacArthur was beginning to defend the defeat

along the Yalu River as a United Nations victory. He

later wrote:

 

23Hearings, pp. 3491-95, 3532-35.

24State Journal, Dec. 6, 1950, p. 1; Detroit Times,

Dec. 6, 1950, p. 20.
25

 

 

Ibid.

57

I myself felt we had reached up, sprung the Red
trap, and escaped it. To have saved so many lives
entrusted to my care gave me a sense of comfort that,
in comparison, made all thg honors I had ever received
pale into insignificance.2

On December 6, MacArthur received two directives
from the President through the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The first was addressed to most members of the executive
branch and directed that "until further notification, no
speech, press release, or other public statement concern-
ing foreign policy will be released without clearance"
from the apprOpriate office in Washington. The second
message said, in effect, that the instructions in the
first message specifically did apply to MacArthur's head-
quarters.27

General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur's military
secretary and political adviser, interpreted this direc-
tive as an attempt to quiet MacArthur "in his defense of

American troops against the vilifications of the press."

Whitney wrote:

MacArthur . . . accepted this directive and was
meticulously guided by it. As he later said at the
Senate hearings, "No more subordinate soldier has
ever worn the American uniform."28

 

26MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 377.

 

27Hearings, p. 3536.

28Whitney, Rendezvous With History, p. 450.

 

58

John Fisher, a nationally syndicated editorial

columnist for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, commented:

If the White House dared to brave public wrath,
General Douglas A. MacArthur would be rebuked or sum-
marily relieved of his command by an Administration
which is privately furious because he has publicized
military and diplomatic difficulties responsible for
our unprecedented disaster in Korea and which he
blames on his Washington superiors.é

Fisher was almost correct. The President later
wrote that he should have relieved MacArthur immediately
after his outburst of public statements. "The reason I
did not," Truman recalled, "was that I did not wish to
have it appear as if he were being relieved because the
offensive failed."3O

Late in January it became clear that United Nations
forces had stOpped the Chinese advance south of Seoul.

Once again, MacArthur's trOOps began moving north toward
the thirty-eighth parallel. By early March, 1951, the
breach between the general and his commander-in-chief had
become almost beyond repair. Soon after the Chinese
Communist attack, MacArthur had called for the commitment

of Nationalist Chinese units to reinforce his battered

army, but Truman--after sampling United Nations reaction
31

 

 

to the idea--decided against such action. As the tide
29State Journal, Dec. 7, 1950, p. l.
30

Truman, Memoirs, II, 384.

31Ibid., 11, 385.

59

of the battle turned once again, MacArthur was angry that,
while his request for reinforcements had been rejected,
the administration intended to send four divisions to
General Eisenhower's new North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion (NATO) command in EurOpe. MacArthur told reporters
on March 7, 1951, that unless he was given more strength
a stalemate would result, causing a "spectacle of uncease-
ing slaughter." He called for decisions that he could not
make but were needed, he said, to prevent that stalemate.32
Two weeks later, MacArthur was informed by the
Joint Chiefs of Staff that he should not re-cross the
thirty-eighth parallel. The decision had been made to
return to the original United Nations objective of secur-
ing the Republic of Korea from aggression. The President,
MacArthur was told, was attempting to Open negotiations
in diplomatic channels and that these must be given time
to work.33 A few days later, on March 25, MacArthur under-
cut any hope Of a negotiated armistice by a statement to
the press that resulted in a furious reSponse from the
Chinese Communists and an outraged one from America's
EurOpean allies. MacArthur's statement was addressed to

the enemy commander in Korea and was, in effect, a Far

Eastern foreign policy of his own. MacArthur warned the

 

32Hearings, pp. 3540-41.

33Ibid., p. 3541.

60

Chinese that they were doomed to defeat when the United
Nations forces extended Operations into China, and he

called on the enemy commander to negotiate with him

. . . to find any military means whereby the realiza-
tion of the political objectives of the United Nations
in Korea . 4 . might be accomplished without further
bloodshed.3

President Truman later reported that it was imme-
diately after that statement that he decided to dismiss

MacArthur. For a time, however, he kept the decision to

35

himself. The Associated Press reported that "huge

shudders" went through the horrified EurOpean capitals

36 Many American news-

after MacArthur's public statement.
papers, however, approved of MacArthur's ultimatum to the

Chinese. A State Journal editorial, for example, said:

 

While the conduct of foreign policy cannot be
turned over to military leaders, General MacArthur
may well feel that he has a solemn duty . . . to make
clear the need for tOp-level decision as to the U. N.
Objective in Korea and effective methods of attaining
it.

MacArthur may not be a diplomat, but he could
hardly do worse in that field than the professionals
have done. When MacArthur's diplomacy is contrasted
with State Depargment diplomacy, the latter is far
from impressive. 7

 

34ibid., pp. 3541-42.

35Truman, Memoirs, II, 445.

36State Journal, March 26, 1951, p. 8.

 

37Editorial, ibid., March 28, 1951, p. 8.

61

On April 5, 1951, Joseph Martin, Jr., a Mississippi
Republican, the minority leader of the U. S. House of Re-
presentatives, read a letter from MacArthur on the floor
of the House. Martin had written to the general suggest-
ing that Nationalist Chinese troops should be used against

the enemy in Korea, and had asked for MacArthur's views

on how the war should be prosecuted.38 In a letter dated

March 20, MacArthur replied:

My views and recommendations with respect to the
situation created by Red China's entry into war
'against us in Korea have been submitted to Washington
in most complete detail. Generally, these views are
well known and clearly understood, as they follow the
conventional pattern of meeting force with maximum
counterforce, as we have never failed to do in the
past. Your view with respect to the utilization of
the Chinese forces on Formosa is in conflict with
neither logic nor this tradition.

It seems strangely difficult for some to realize
that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators
have elected to make their play for global conquest,
and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the
battlefield; that here we fight EurOpe's war with arms
while the diplomats there still fight it with words;
that if we lose the war to Communism in Asia the fall
of Europe is inevitable, win it and EurOpe most prob-
ably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As
you point out we must win. There is no substitute
for victory. 9

On April 11, 1951, at 1:00 A.M., newsmen and the

public were informed that General Douglas MacArthur had

 

38Hearings, p. 3543.

39Ibid., pp. 3543-44.

62

40

been relieved of all his commands. MacArthur, like most

other Americans, first learned of his dismissal through

the news media.41

 

40New York Times, April 11, 1951, p. 1.

41MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 395.

CHAPTER V
THE DISMISSAL OF MACARTHUR

During the two-week period preceding the annOunce-
ment of General MacArthur's dismissal, each of the six
Michigan newspapers examined for this study reported that
the general was obviously displeased with the Far Eastern
policy of the Truman administration. The furor over
MacArthur's communique of March 24, directed to the enemy
commander in Korea, was the first real indication that the
general might have gone too far in challenging the admin-

istration's policies. Some historians have concluded:

It is difficult to review the history of MacArthur's
difficulties with his government without concluding
that at some point he embarked on a deliberate course
of provocation. . . .

At some stage . . . he must have become convinced
that his government was pursuing a disastrous course
in the Far East and that it was his duty as a patriot
to bring about a change.

MacArthur--seventy-one years old in l951--had been
a general officer and a public figure for more than thirty
years. He had enormous prestige and many powerful friends

in government and industry. Whether or not the provocation

 

lRovere and Schlesinger, The MacArthur Controversy,
p. 168.

63

64

was deliberate, the general's actions had left little doubt
as to his views. On March 24, a few hours after the com-
munique to the enemy commander had been released, MacArthur
was again directed by the President through the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to be silent on foreign policy matters.2
Despite this instruction, MacArthur gave an interview in
Japan to the military correspondent for the London Daily

Telegraph. The United Press quoted the London newspaper

story in diSpatches published in the United States:

General MacArthur said in an interview published
here today [April 5, 1951] that the United Nations
forces could easily defeat the Chinese Reds if the
United Nations would "take the wraps off" his command.

MacArthur was quoted as having said also that a sea block-
ade of China and bombing raids on vital targets would
quickly defeat the Chinese. "Politicians have encroached
on the realm of the military," MacArthur claimed, accord-
ing to the story, "not vice-versa, and they are not facing
3

the facts in Korea."

There could be little doubt that the Detroit Times,

 

at least, was solidly behind MacArthur. The newspaper
condemned the Truman administration late in March with an

editorial titled "Time to Get Mad." The language was

 

2Truman, Memoirs, II, 442-43. Unless otherwise

indicated, all messages from the President to MacArthur
were in the form of directives from the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.

3Detroit Times, April 5, 1951, pp. 1-2.

65

harsh but mentioned no specific Truman policies. The ad-

ministration was described as a "spectacular demonstration

of bad government, the Korean war was said to be caused

by "ineptitude and even treason,‘ and the phrase "bungling
and muddling" was repeated three times. The editorial
concluded: "It is a proper thing for American people to
get mad about bad government, and the present time is a
good time for them to do so."4

The Detroit Free Press responded to MacArthur's

 

claim that he was handicapped by the politicians with an
editorial cartoon captioned "Strange Way to Fight a Title
Fight." MacArthur and Mao Tse-tung were depicted as
boxers. One of the American general's arms was handcuffed
to a ring-post labeled "Lack of Clear-cut U. S. Diplomatic
Offensive."5

News coverage in the Detroit Times of the contro-

 

versy over MacArthur's communique and the resulting
"muzzling order" by President Truman implied that Opinion
in the Far East was solidly behind MacArthur. Frank
Conniff, correspondent for the Hearst-owned International
News Service, reported in a background piece from Tokyo
that "all shades of Opinion in Tokyo have rallied to the

support of the Supreme Commander." Conniff noted that

 

4Editorial, ibid., March 28, 1951, p. 22.

5Detroit Free Press, April 2, 1951, p. 7.

 

66

MacArthur had been rebuked by the defense department and

wrote:

I don't know whether General Marshall [the Secre-
tary of Defense] pays much attention to press criticism,
but I don't think he would be pleased by the comments
around the local press club.

The six Michigan newspapers studied all carried
wire service reports of meetings of high government Offi-
cials on April third and fourth, and rumors that these
meetings would result in disciplinary action against
MacArthur. Then, on April 5, U. S. Representative Joseph
Martin released his letter from the general. The Detroit
Timgg reported the event without immediate editorial com-
ment. Martin S. Hayden, Washington correSpondent for the
Detroit News, wrote an analysis of the "Martin-letter inci-
dent" that was detailed and clear. It was buried, however,
in the back pages of the newspaper. Hayden predicted more
trouble with MacArthur for the Truman administration. He
identified the general's major complaints as the failure
of the United States to make usesof the Nationalist
Chinese trOOps on Formosa and the placing of Europe ahead
of Asia in American foreign policy priority: Hayden also
pointed out that the letter to Martin was dated before the
muzzling directive from the President. In the administra-

tion's view, Hayden concluded, the letter to Martin and

 

6Detroit Times, April 2, 1951, p. 7.

67

the general's later interview with the Daily Telegraph

 

reporter was evidence that MacArthur was not going to be
silent.7

The Grand Rapids Press said editorially that more

 

was being made of the letter to Representative Joe Martin
than it deserved since it, like the communique to the
enemy commander, had been transmitted before MacArthur

had been ordered silent. The Grand Rapids Press and

 

other newspapers were at that point unaware of the Presi-

dent's earlier directive of the same nature in December,

1950. "It wasn't until March 26th," said the editorial,

"that word circulated that Washington had told MacArthur

he was not to talk about such matters without consulting
a ' "8

his superiors.

The Detroit Free Press editors did not agree that

 

the problem was a minor one. A Free Press editorial said
that "without question" the general was out of order, and
suggested a number of possible explanations for such con-
duct, as follows: (1) MacArthur was inviting dismissal
purposely to come home and advocate his policies; (2) he
was compelled to Speak out by the strength of his convic-
tions; (3) he was actually speaking for the Joint Chiefs

of Staff in the face of a weak executive; (4) he was angry

 

7Detroit News, April 6, 1951, p. 51.
8

 

Editorial, Grand Rapids Press, April 7, 1951, p.
14.

68

and responding to Communist prOpaganda that described him

as a dangerous egomaniac. The Free Press editorial writer

 

concluded that for whatever reason, the general was wrong
in his conduct, and the President should act or "relinquish
the power and role assigned him by the Constitution."9
Three days later, another Free Press editorial called for
MacArthur to "come home at once in order that [the U. S.
Senate] may hear from his own lips what's going on in

10

Korea."

A Detroit News editorial said:

 

MacArthur within the last ten days has received a
call-down from Washington for interfering in high
policy matters. On the surface of the incident, it
appeared to the American press and public he was on
solid ground and the Administration was being unduly
mean and critical.

The Martin letter, the Nawg suggested, had changed the
situation. "The letter . . . cannot but further doubts
that MacArthur is no longer fitted for his job."11
Despite the speculation on a possible reprimand
for MacArthur, few people thought that the President had
the will to face the storm of disapproval that was sure to

follow removal of the general. An Associated Press story,

carrying a Washington dateline, reported that

 

9Editorial, Detroit Free Press, April 7, 1951,

 

p. 6.
loEditorial, ibid., April 10, 1951, p. 8.

11Editorial, Detroit News, April 7, 1951, p. 8.

 

69

General Douglas MacArthur has proved again that he
is one of the Truman administration's hottest potatoes.

While MacArthur's letter to Martin raised specula-
tion about possible disciplinary action against the
five- -star general, there was serious question whether
the White House would risk a bitter fight in Congress
by removing him from command. . . .12

The Lansing State Journal editorially considered

 

the possibility that MacArthur might just be grasping for
the limelight in writing to Martin, but noted an alterna-

tive motive:

On the other hand, it could mean that he has feel-
ings of patriotism so intense that they supersede
mere military rules and regulations.

. . . To say that the dictums of the Pentagon and
the State Department are sacrosanct and above the re-
proach of key military leaders in a good position to
know the facts . . . would be to strengthen the forces
that grind the individual under the heel of statism.

The Grand Rapids Press commented editorially that

 

Martin could be justifiably criticized for making the ex-

change of letters public, but

. . . nobody can deny that the House leader of the
minority party has the right to ask a general in
MacArthur's position for his views, or that a general
has a right to reveal them under such circumstances.

The editorial concluded that although the general should
not be forced to be silent, "the government could not

tolerate indefinitely any attempt on his part to force his

. . "14
Views on it.

12

 

State Journal, April 6, 1951, p. l.

 

13Editorial, ibid., April 8, 1951, p. 10.

14Editorial, Grand Rapids Press, April 7, 1951,

 

p. 14.

70

On April 10, the Associated Press reported from
Tokyo that MacArthur was not bending under pressure from
Washington: "There are growing indications," the report

said,

. . . that the general and his aides are appealing to
American public Opinion. . . . For one thing, a close
check of editorial comment is made here [at MacArthur's
headquarters]. Officers say the general's views are
becoming increasingly popular.

On the same day in Washington, most reports specu-
lated that MacArthur continued to have the upper hand. A
United Press story reported that an administration source
said "President Truman had decided tentatively to do
nothing about MacArthur, but to leave action up to the

16 According to the Gallup public opinion pOll,

military."
the President's pOpularity was at its lowest point in
February and April, 1951. The poll reported that just
before MacArthur's dismissal only 28 per cent of those
sampled approved of Truman's performance of his office.17
The feeling that the President would not risk any
action that would further reduce his popularity probably

contributed to the shock when MacArthur's dismissal was

announced at 1:00 A.M. on April eleventh. The unusual

 

15Ibid., April 10, 1951, p. 2.

16Detroit Times, April 10, 1951, p. l.

 

17Strunk, "The Quarter's Polls," Public Opinion
Quarterly, XV (1951), 396.

 

 

71

time of the dismissal announcement--and the reason why
MacArthur was not first informed of his dismissal pri-
vately--is explained by President Truman in his Memoirs.

It was planned, Truman explains, that Secretary of the
Army Frank Pace, then visiting in the Far East, would in-
form MacArthur. Transmission problems and the fact that
Pace was then in Korea delayed arrival of his instructions.

Then, writes Truman, another problem appeared:

. . . Late in the evening of April 10, General [Omar]
Bradley [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] came
rushing over to Blair House. He had heard, he said,
that the story had leaked out and that a Chicago news-
paper was going to print it the next morning. That
was when I decided that we could not afford the
courtesy of Secretary Pace's personal delivery of the
order.1

The President's announcement was only three para-
graphs long. The first announced the dismissal of
MacArthur because the general was "unable to give his
whole hearted support to policies of the United States
Government . . . ," and the last paragraph saluted
MacArthur's "distinguished and exceptional service" to

19

his country. The heart of the statement was the middle

paragraph:

Full and vigorous debate on matters of national
policy is a vital element in the constitutional

 

18Truman, Memoirs, II, 449.

19Hearings, p. 3547.

72

system of our free democracy. It is fundamental,
however, that military commanders must be governed by
the policies and directives issued to them in the
manner provided by our laws and Constitution. In
time of crisis, this consideration is particularly
compelling.2

A number of other documents were distributed with the an-
nouncement, including the official dismissal order, the
December directive to MacArthur (and others) ordering him
to be silent on foreign policy matters, notification of
the President's intention to seek negotiations in Korea,
MacArthur's public and private statements, and other sup-
21

porting documents.

The editors of the morning Detroit Free Press

 

hastily compiled a story from its wire services for late
editions.22 Inside was an editorial, written before the
announcement, that attacked the Truman administration and
British critics of MacArthur. The editorial conceded

that MacArthur's voice might have been raised at the wrong
time, but explained that the only person who could legiti-
mately deal with both military and political questions was
the President, who had failed to do $0.23

In Lansing, the State Journal informed readers of

 

MacArthur's dismissal with wire service stories from

 

20Ibid.

21Truman, Memoirs, II, 449-50.

22Detroit Free Press, April 11, 1951, p. 1.

23Editorial, ibid., p. 4.

73

Associated Press and one local feature on the reaction of
the public. An editorial in the State Journal was angry

and bitter:

General MacArthur was discharged because he had
the courage to Speak out against the blundering tac-
tics of the Pentagon and the White House. . . . He
lost his job because he refused to be a pawn of the
national and international blunderers, who by their
stupidity, brought about the war in Korea and then
left the United States the task of fighting it almost
alone and with one hand behind its back.

We point to Munich and say in all solemnity that
never will such be allowed to happen. We look at what
happened to General MacArthur and see again another
Munich in the making--with an aftermath more tragic
and more terrible than anything which Hitler and his
minions ever devised.

Martin Hayden wrote the lead story appearing in

the editions of the Detroit News the afternoon of April 11.

 

It was a concise summary of the events of the morning,
including the texts of the documents released by the govern-
ment. The Ngwg carried three United Press stories--On

the reaction of Republican leaders, on the reaction in
Tokyo, and on the history of MacArthur's past conflicts
with political leaders--all on page one. Also on the
first page was a local "man-in-the-street" feature. Almost
all of the Detroiters interviewed sided with MacArthur.

There was no editorial comment.25

 

24Editorial, State Journal, April 11, 1951, p. 8.

 

25Detroit News, April 11, 1951, p. 1.

 

74

The Grand Rapids Press supplemented its wire ser-

 

vice dispatches with a report from the "Grand Rapids Press

 

Washington Bureau,‘ or more accurately, from the Washing-
ton bureau for Booth Newspapers, Incorporated. The Booth
reporter had interviewed Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids,
Michigan, U. S. Representative for the Fifth Congressional
District. Ford, a Republican, tied the removal of Mac-
Arthur tO the case of Alger Hiss. Hiss, a former state
department Officer, had been accused before the House Un-
American Activities Committee of passing government papers
to the Soviet Union. He was later convicted by a New
York Federal District Court Of perjury for his testimony
during the committee investigation. Secretary of State
Dean Acheson, asked to comment on the conviction of Hiss,
had refused to do so but affirmed his belief in Hiss's
integrity and said: "I do not intend to turn my back on

26

Alger Hiss." Said Representative Ford:

Mr. Truman has by such action [removing Mac-
Arthur] . . . aligned himself with the Alger Hiss
gang in the department of state. For all practicable
purposes, the President, like Acheson, refuses to turn
his back on Alger Hiss."27

The Flint Journal, a Booth neWSpaper, restricted

 

its reporting of the story on the first day to wire ser-

vice accounts, using as its lead story a complete account

 

26Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 359-60.

 

27Grand Rapids Press, April 11, 1951, p. 1.

 

75

written by Associated Press reporter John M. Hightower.28
The Flint daily was the only newspaper of the six examined
in this study that printed full texts of all the documents
released by the government.29
The Detroit Times devoted much more Space to the
story than any of the other newspapers examined. Virtu-
ally all of the editorial OOpy on the first twenty-nine
pages of the issue concerned MacArthur's dismissal and
the reaction to it. The lead stories were headlined:
"M'Arthur to Tell U. S. His Story" and "Impeach Truman,
GOP Chiefs Urge."30 Truman's statement and some of the
documents released by the government were printed or sum-
marized on inside pages. The Opinions of the U. S. Em-
bassy staff in Tokyo, those of members of the Detroit
city council, and those of survivors Of the Bataan "death
march," among others, were presented in the Timag. An
International News Service story from Tokyo described the
reaction of American soldiers in Korea as "open-mouthed,
pop-eyed amazement." The soldiers, said the INS story,

"had come to love MacArthur."31

 

28Flint Journal, April 11, 1951, p. 1.

 

29Ibid., p. 6.

30Detroit Times, April 11, 1951, p. l.

 

3lIbid., p. 2.

76

The Detroit Times was the only Detroit newspaper

 

to publish an editorial comment on the day of the dismis-
sal. It was unsigned and not identified as an editorial
except by its content. It appeared high on page one,
titled, "A Tragic Day For America." The Times editorial

said the removal of MacArthur demonstrated the

. . . insidious power over the President of Secretary
Acheson and General Marshall, who are jointly reSpon-
sible for selling out China to communism and who have
bitterly resented General MacArthur's efforts to es-
tablish a realistic and effective American foreign
policy in the Orient.

The editorial dismissed MacArthur's alleged insubordina-
tion as merely a failure to "clear his statements through
the censorship of the state and defense departments," and

concluded that

. . . the American peOple will not be fooled by the
ostensible reason for General MacArthur's relief of
command. They know that he is being removed t3 pave
the way for a humiliating deal with communism. 2

Before April 11, 1951, was past, MacArthur had
accepted an invitation to address a joint session of the
Congress, hearings on Far Eastern policy had been proposed,
and the PrSSident had addressed the nation by radio to ex-
plain his policies and the necessity for MacArthur's re-

lief. The nation was in an uproar and the press, as well

as the public, was choosing sides. Marquis Childs,

 

32Editorial, ibid., p. l.

77

editorial columnist for United Features Syndicate, wrote

"33 The

that there was a "storm sweeping over Washington.
extreme of press reaction was probably that expressed in

a Chicago Tribune editorial that concluded: "The American

 

nation has never been in greater danger. It is led by a
fool who is surrounded by knaves. Impeachment is the only
remedy."34

A Detroit Free Press editorial warned: "Never,

 

perhaps, in the history Of the American nation has there

been such a spontaneous outburst of public feeling, com-

ing perilously close to national hysteria. . . ."35

Richard Rovere and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. , analy-
zed the turmoil of those days shortly afterward, and con-

cluded:

Now that the passion . . . has largely spent it-
self there is a tendency on the part of those who
never liked it to deny that it ever existed. . . .
Yet it has to be recorded in all candor that, in the
two or three weeks that followed the recall, the Ameri-
can citizen . . . seemed a deeply aggrieved and
affronted man. He took MacArthur's recall as if it
were an outrage to his own person.36

 

33Grand Rapids Press, April 13, 1951, p. 18.

34Editorial, Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1951,

 

35Editorial, Detroit Free Press, April 13, 1951,

 

6Rovere and Schlesinger, The MacArthur Contro-

versy, p. 5.

 

78

MacArthur returned tO the United States a week

after his dismissal and was greeted as a hero in Honolulu

 

and San Francisco. The Grand Rapids Press reported that
in Traverse City, Michigan, where the MacArthur family
had once spent their summers, all the bells of the city
were rung as MacArthur's aircraft touched down in Cali-
fornia.37
On April 19, MacArthur addressed the Congress,

restating his views in eloquent language. William S.

White, author of Citadel: The Story of the U. S. Senate,

 

was present in the gallery. He wrote:

The atmosphere was the most curiously emotional
I had ever seen in service as a correspondent, includ-
ing such matters as D-day in Normandy, the liberation
Of Paris, and the death of Franklin Roosevelt.38

MacArthur concluded his speech with words that be-
came etched into the American consciousness in the weeks
that followed. He recalled an old barracks ballad that
ended, "old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

Said MacArthur:

. . Like the Old soldier of that ballad, I now close
my military career and just fade away--an old soldier
who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to
see that duty.

Good-by. 9

 

37Grand Rapids Press, April 18, 1951, p. 1.

 

38William S. White, Citadel: The Story of the
U. S. Senate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 19687, p. 244.

39

 

 

New York Times, April 20, 1951, p. 4.

 

79

David Lawrence, an editorial columnist for the New York

Herald Tribune syndicate, wrote of the speech:

 

His speech was the voice of the America Of yester-
year, when Americans did not prate of defeat and speak
with fear and trembling to the enemy that had de-
spoiled a weaker nation and tortured or killed
prisoners.

4OGrand Rapids Press, April 20, 1951, p. 14.

 

CHAPTER VI

PRESS ANALYSIS: THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND

FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES

The debate over the dismissal of General MacArthur
centered on two issues: The challenge to the doctrine of
civilian contrpl of the military--the constitutional is-
sue--and the question of the proper course for American
foreign policy in the Far East. These issues were in
many respects inseparable because the challenge to the
authority of the President rose from the foreign policy
dispute. Similarly, other issues to be discussed in the
next chapter overlapped with those discussed below.
Within this limitation, it is possible to examine the
performance of the six Michigan daily newspapers in this
study to determine how well they performed their function
of providing the people with information, and the inter-
pretation of that information, needed by the citizenry to
make rational political judgments. Some of the issues
were clear from the start, despite the emotional atmos-

phere. The most basic of these was the matter of civilian

control of the military.

80

81

The Constitutional Issue

On April 11, 1951, General Dwight D. Eisenhower
was in Germany observing the maneuvers of his newly-
created North Atlantic Treaty Organization command. When
informed by reporters of MacArthur's dismissal, Eisenhower
reacted with a magnificent understatement: "I'll be
darned," said the NATO commander. "I hOpe that he will
not return to the United States and become a controversial
figure." After recovering from his obvious surprise a few
moments later, however, Eisenhower clearly identified one
of the key issues of the MacArthur controversy. "When you
put on a uniform," Eisenhower said, "there are certain
inhibitions you accept."1

The constitutional principle involved in the dis-
missal of MacArthur was Obvious, perhaps so basic that it

did not get the attention it deserved from the press. The

Detroit Free Press had pointed out months before the dis-

 

missal that a constitutional struggle was in progress
involving the legislative and executive branches of the
federal government. In the last quarter of 1950 and the

Low...“

first of 1951, the term "Great Debate" recurred frequently
in news columns and editorials. The term referred to the
long and heated debate in the U. S. Congress over the pro-

posal to send American trOOps to EurOpe in peacetime to

 

1Detroit Times, April 11, 1951, p. 12.

 

82

implement the North Atlantic Treaty. The Free Press sug-

 

gested editorially that Truman had precipitated the power
struggle by asserting that the President had the authority
to send American troops anywhere, at any time, and in
whatever numbers he saw fit, and that any consultation
was a matter of courtesy only.2 While the Congress re-
belled at this assertion, few members went so far as to
question the President's authority as commander-in-chief
to remove MacArthur. One of the exceptions was Joseph
McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin, who was
then growing in influence but who was not yet at the peak
of his power. McCarthy, in a speech delivered two days
before the dismissal of the general had made clear his
view of presidential authority over MacArthur. He said:
"It is high treason to refuse General MacArthur permission
to use Chinese Nationalist trOOps."3
Most editors declined to question the constitu-
tional authority of the President. Walter Winchell, King
Features Syndicate newspaper gossip columnist, however,

stated:

MacArthur, contrary to the general impression, is
within his rights even as a soldier in defying the

 

2Editorial, Detroit Free Press, April 4, 1951,

 

3New York Times, April 9, 1951, p. 3.

 

83

President. His oath ii to the Constitution and to the
men under his command. '

The view that the supremacy of the civilian execu-
tive was something less than absolute was best expressed

in a reader's letter to the Grand Rapids Press. The out-

 

raged citizen accused Truman Of assuming dictatorial
powers over the military "because by a political techni-
cality he became head of the armed forces."5 Even among
those who saw the principle of civilian supremacy as some-
thing more than a "political technicality," there were
some who claimed that it was irrelevant in MacArthur's
case. MacArthur himself was of that Opinion. In Tokyo
soon after his dismissal, MacArthur claimed through his
spokesman, Major General Courtney Whitney, that he had
always been "meticulous in obedience."6 MacArthur wrote

in his memoirs years later:

The legal authority of the President to relieve a
field commander, irrespective of the wisdom or stupid-
ity of the action, has never been questioned by anyone.
The supremacy of the civil over the military is funda-
mental to the American system of government, and is
wholeheartedly accepted by every officer and soldier
in the military establishment. It was not an issue
in this case.

 

4Detroit Times, April 13, 1951, p. 25.

 

5Grand Rapids Press, April 14, 1951, p. 14.

6Detroit Times, April 12, 1951, p. l.
7

 

MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 393.

 

84

The general explained that the letter to Representative
Joe Martin was incorrectly interpreted as a deliberate
violation of orders to be silent on policy matters.
MacArthur said that letters from legislators were always

answered promptly by him as a routine courtesy:

I attached little importance to the exchange of
letters, which on my part was intended to be merely a
polite response couched in such general terms as to
convey only a normal patriotic desire for victory.8

To the editors of the Detroit Times also, civil

 

control of the military was not at issue in the case. The
EEEEE said editorially that the President's action was
caused by men of "insidious power" who "bitterly resented"
MacArthur's successes and removed him to "pave the way for
a humiliating deal with communism."9 In another editorial,
the Timag characterizedthe President as being motivated
by revenge. MacArthur's career had been "vengefully ex-
acted" by the President, the editorial said, because the
general "did not agree with him and therefore grievously
offended him." Truman was determined, the editorial con-
cluded, "to rule dictatorially and absolutely over the

affiars and lives of the American people." The editorial

 

8Ibid., p. 386.

9Editorial, Detroit Times, April 11, 1951, p. l.

 

85

suggested that the American peOple should compel the

government to restore MacArthur to his posts.10

An editorial in the Flint Journal suggested that

 

the President was not correctly interpreting his proper

duty as commander-in-chief, commenting, in part, that

We can understand how Captain Harry S. Truman,
Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 35th Division,
World War I, could recognize an instance of military
insubordination but we wonder if President Harry S.
Truman of the United States of America can appreciate
all of the consequences of what amounts to a repudia-
tion of the world's No.1 symbol of anti-Communism and
the man who has been most forthright and effective in
his resistance to the gieatest menace to world peace
and national security.

David Lawrence, then an editorial columnist for
the New York Herald Tribune syndicate, wrote in a column
that appeared in the Grand Rapids Press that the adminis-
tration was observing a double standard in restricting
policy statements by military officers. Lawrence observed
that General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, had made "party-line" Speeches supporting adminis-
tration policy without raising a ripple of protest from

12
anyone.

 

loEditorial, ibid., April 12, 1951, pp. 1-2.

11Editorial, Flint Journal, April 12, 1951, p. 30.

12Grand Rapids Press, April 18, 1951, p. 14.

86

Before MacArthur was dismissed, the Detroit Free

 

Press had called editorially for the President to act or

"relinquish the power and role assigned him by the Consti-

13

tution." The Free Press made no additional editorial

 

comment on the constitutional issue after the dismissal.

John S. Knight, the publisher of the Free Press, in a

 

signed column, implied that he regarded the propriety of
MacArthur's dismissal as a closed subject, for better or
worse, and called instead for an examination of future

foreign policy decisions.14

The Lansing State Journal made no editorial com-

 

ment on the constitutional principle asserted by the Pre-
sident in dismissing MacArthur. An editorial-page column
in that newspaper by James Marlow, an Associated Press
political news analyst, reviewed the issues involved in
the controversy and pointed out clearly the constitutional
relationship of the President and his generals. The basic
question in the controversy, wrote Marlow, was: "Should
the President of the United States let any military com-

mander defy him?"15

 

l3Editorial, Detroit Free Press, April 7, 1951,

 

14Editorial, ibid., April 12, 1951, p. 10.

15State Journal, April 12, 1951, p. 10.

 

87

The Detroit News reported in detail the instances

 

of insubordination alleged by the administration and also
the response from MacArthur's aide and spokeman in Tokyo,
General Whitney, that MacArthur had never been disobedient.l6
The News reminded its readers in an editorial that the
President has final authority over the military. It would
be intolerable, the News said editorially, that subordi-
nates
. . . should deliberately overrule the President of
the United States. . . . During his last several
months as Supreme Commander in the Far East, General
Douglas MacArthur had given repeated and deliberate

offense tp this concept Of how the nation should be
governed. 7

In another editorial the following day, the Detroit News

 

examined in detail the reasons why the letter to Represent-

ative Joseph Martin was a "grievous error."18

The Grand Rapids Press, a neWSpaper that had

 

earlier expressed editorially the view that "no one could
deny" that MacArthur and Martin had the right to corre-
Spond,19 changed its Opinion to a degree after the announce-

ment of MacArthur's dismissal:

Heretofore-secret papers which passed between
Washington and General MacArthur shed an entirely new

 

16Detroit News, April 12, 1951, p. 1.

 

l7Editorial, ibid., p. 12.

18Editorial, ibid., April 13, 1951, p. 30.

19Editorial, Grand Rapids Press, April 7, 1951,

 

p. 14.

88

light on the general's position and point to the con-
clusion that removing him . . . was not to be avoided.
It might have been more delicately handled, but a cool
appraisal of the Situation will convince any unbiased
person that it had to come.

History will judge whether MacArthur's policies were right,

the Grand Rapids Press editorial concluded, but his actions

 

were wrong. "The Constitution leaves no room for doubt on

this score."21

To the editors of at least three of the six news-
papers in this study, MacArthur was clearly in the wrong
on the constitutional issue. As General Matthew B.
Ridgeway--who replaced MacArthur in the Far East--1ater

wrote:

The real, basic issue was neither the wide diver-
gence of views between Mr. Truman and General Mac-
Arthur on enlarging the Korean War nor the clash of
two strong personalities. It was simply, as General
Marshall pointed out in his testimony before the
Senate Committee, the situation of a local Theater
Commander publicly expressing his disagreement with a
policy which superior authority had repgatedly com-
municated to him in the clearest terms.

 

20Editorial, ibid., April 12, 1951, p. 22.

21Editorial, ibid.

22Matthew B. Ridgeway, The Korean War: How We Met
the Challenge, How All-Out Asian War Was AvertedJ Why
MacArthur Was DismissedL Why Todayfs War Must Be Limited
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1967), p. 142.

 

 

 

89

The Foreign Policy Issue

 

The divergent views of General MacArthur and Presi-

dent Truman on the proper course for American foreign
policy in the Far East were stated in two speeches. On
April 11, the President presented his position in a radio
address to the nation explaining his reasons for removing
MacArthur.' History has taught us, said Mr. Truman, that
Aggression anywhere in the world is a threat to world
peace. For that reason the United States had worked with
other free nations to check aggression in such places as
Berlin, Greece, and Korea since the end of World War II.
That action had prevented aggression from succeeding, the
President said, and had prevented the eruption of World

War III. The President continued:

We do not want to see the conflict in Korea ex-
tended. We are trying to prevent a world war--not to
start one. The best way to do that is to make it
plain that we and the other free nations will continue
to resist the attack.

But you may ask why we can't take other steps to
punish the aggressor. Why don't we bomb Manchuria and
China itself? Why don't we assist Chinese Nationalist
troops to land on the mainland Of China?

If we were to do these things we would be running
a very grave risk of starting a general war. If that
were to happen, we would have brought about the very
situation we are trying to prevent.

If we were to do these things, we would become
entangled in a vast conflict on the continent of Asia
and our task would become immeasureably more difficult
all over the world.

What would suit the ambitions of the Kremlin better
than for our military forces to be committed to a full-

Scale war with Red China?

90

It may well be that, in spite of our best efforts,
the Communists will extend the war. But it would be
wrong--tragically wrong--for us to take the initiative
in extending the war.2

MacArthur was relieved, President Truman said in conclu-
sion, "so that there would be no doubt or confusion as to
the real purpose and aim" of United States policy.24
The general explained his position in his speech
to the Congress on April 19. Asia contained half the
world's population, MacArthur said, and 60 per cent of
the world's resources. It was there that the Communists
were making their main effort at world conquest. After
World War II, MacArthur said, the western edge of the
Pacific Ocean had become America's defense line, with

Formosa being an important key to that line. The loss of

Formosa to the Communists

. . . would at once threaten the freedom of the Philip-
pines and the loss Of Japan, and might well force our
western frontier back to the coasts of California,
'Oregon, and Washington.

The decision to intervene in Korea was militarily sound,
MacArthur said, but the intervention of the Communist

Chinese had changed the situation.

. . . While no man in his right mind would advocate
sending our ground forces into continental China . . .

 

23Hearings, pp. 3548-52.

24Ibid., p. 3552.

25New York Times, April 20, 1951, p. 4.

 

91

the new situation did urgently demand a drastic revi-
sion of strategic planning if our political aim was
to defeat the new enemy as we had defeated the Old.

Apart from the military need as I saw it to neu-
tralize sanctuary protection given to the enemy north
of the Yalu, I felt that military necessity in the
conduct of the war made necessary:

First, the intensification of our economic blockade
against China.

Second, the imposition of naval blockade against
the China coast.

Third, removal of restriction on air reconnais-
sance of China's coastal areas and of Manchuria.

Fourth, removal of restriction on the forces of
the Republic Of China on Formosa, with logistical sup-
port to contribute to their effective operation against
the Chinese mainland.

. . . I have constantly called fo the new political
decisionsessential to a solution [the general told the
Congress]. Efforts have been made to distort my
position. It has been said in effect that I was a
warmonger. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I know war as few men now living know it, and nothing
is to me more revolting. . . . But once war is forced
upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply
every available means to bring it to a swift end.
War's very Object is victory--not prolonged indecision.
In war indeed, there can be no substitute for vic-
tory.2(

In simple terms, the Truman_administration's
policy was to contain the Communist threat in Korea, re-

storethe military strength of Europe--still regarded by

 

26New York Times, April 20, 1951, p. 4. (In his
Reminiscences (pp. 378-79), MacArthur included the text
Of'a message to his superiors in Washington in which he
recommended the four points mentioned above, with one ex-
ception. In place of "intensification of our economic
blockade," MacArthur recommended that the United Nations
should "destroy through naval gunfire and air bombardment
China's industrial capacity to wage war.")

27ibid.

 

 

92

the President as the "key to world peace"--and prevent the

28 Even before the dismissal of

outbreak of World War III.
MacArthur, some newspaper editorial writers had interpreted
this policy of restraint as appeasement of the Communists,

or even treason. The Detroit Times commented editorially

 

that "the blundering and disloyal foreign policies of the
New Deal are taking this country into complete disaster."
The solution, the Timgg editorial suggested, was to pull
out of Korea, pull out of the United Nations, and stop all
aid to Europe, even "marxist England." The editorial con-

cluded:

Since obviously we STAND ALONE, we should have
the wisdom and courage to ACT ALONE. For our duty is
to protagt our own pepple and to foster our own
natiOn.“y

 

During the uproar following MacArthur's communique
of March 24, addressed to the enemy commander in Korea,
Fulton Lewis, Jr., an editorial columnist for the Hearst
newspapers, criticized the state department for "drOpping
to a new low" in the MacArthur dispute. Secretary of
State Dean Acheson was identified by Lewis as the greatest

villain:

 

28Truman, Memoirs, II, 380.

29Editorial, Detroit Times, Dec. 5, 1950, p. l.
The use of words or word phrases set in all capital let-
ters and the shift to italics for emphasis from the usual
roman body type was typical of Hearst-owned newspapers.

93

If the President.is smart he will send Acheson's
pip-squeaks trotting back to the state department.
MacArthur is in Korea, he knows war and he knows when
an enemy is beaten. . . . It is certain that the Ameri-
can soldiers still alive in Korea would welcome a
Communist flag of surrender even if Acheson and the.

U. N. representative are not present to Sign the capi-
tulation papers.30

President Truman's speech of April 11, explaining
his policies, was more or less prominently placed on the
front pages of all the Michigan newspapers studied except

the Detroit Times. The Times made little apparent effort

 

to present the administration's views even in its new
columns. On the day after the President's speech, the
Timag printed on page one a two-column photograph of
Truman delivering his address, with a caption above it
which read: "His Side of Story." The cutlines under the
photograph said: "President Truman telling the nation in
a radio-television address why he fired MacArthur. He
said MacArthur's stand invites world war and 'we want
peace.'"31 Nothing else that the President said was men-
tioned on the front page. Under the picture, however, was
a two-column headline: "President Loses Mink-Coat Typist,"
which topped an International News Service story reporting

that an assistant to the President's secretary had resigned

three days earlier. Her name, said the Times story, had

 

3OIbid., April 2, 1951, p. 19.

3lIbid., April 12, 1951, p. 1.

94

been "mentioned in the Senate 'influence' investigations."32

Also on page one was a story reporting a prominent Repub-
lican senator's reply to the Truman speech. The text of
the President's remarks appeared on page forty-three.

'On April 13, a Detroit Times editorial continued

 

the attack on Secretary of State Dean Acheson:

, [The people] understand that the President, will-
ingly and ignominiously, yielded to the sinister in-
fluences led by Secretary Acheson and [the Secretary
Of Defense] General [George] Marshall, which betrayed
China to the Communists and have piously shielded
treachery at home.

It has'been no secret, of course, that the British,
French, and Italian Communists were deggrmined to de-
stroy or at least discredit MacArthur.

Repeatedly, Detroit Times editorials hinted broadly that

 

the administration's policy was little short of treasonous.
Claiming that the restrictions placed on MacArthur in
Korea could not have helped the enemy more if they had
been intended to do so, the Timag said editorially that
"it is not altogether clear that the element of deliberate
calculation by our supposed enemies did app fashion the
crippling restrictions of the MacArthur command."34 The

Times supported MacArthur's foreign policy position with-

out discernible reservation. MacArthur's dismissal,

 

32Ibid.

33Editorial, ibid., April 13, 1951, p. 24.

34Editorial,ibid., April 12, 1951, p. 2.

95

another editorial in the Hearst newspaper said, was a vic-
tory of "the politicians who have been consistently wrong,

over the strategist and statesman who has been consistently

right."35

MacArthur himself was of the Opinion that his re-

moval had thrown the Far East into chaos.

Moscow and Peiping rejoiced. The bells were rung
and a holiday atmosphere prevailed. The left-wingers
everywhere exulted. But in the Far East, there was
bewilderment and shock. I had been there so long in
supreme command that I had become a kind of symbol
Of the free world--a bulwark against the spread of
Communism. The removal of that symbol was not under-
stood, and tended to shake faith in our ways and
methods.

At the Senate hearings held after his dismissal to investi-
gate the situation in the Far East, MacArthur claimed that
the administration had no policy in the area. "I was Oper-
ating in what I call a vacuum," the general testified. "I
could hardly have been said to be in opposition to policies
which I was not aware Of, . . . I don't know what the
policy is now."37
John S. Knight, publisher of the Detroit Free

Press and then Of three other metropolitan neWSpapers,

agreed to an extent that there was a policy “vacuum" in

 

35Editorial, ibid., April 11, 1951, p. l.

36MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 395.

 

37Hearings, p. 30.

96

the Far East. The conflict between Truman and the general
was a symptom of that lack of a sound foreign policy.38
MacArthur's removal was justified, said Knight, and his

policies were dangerous, but "now we demand to know where

we go from here."39 Early in April, the Free Press had

 

suggested editorially that, to clarify policy questions,
the Senate should ask MacArthur to "come home at once in

order that it may find out from his own lip's what's

40

going on in Korea." The Free Press was critical of

 

both MacArthur and Truman, an attitude that was shared by

Free Press editorial columnist Malcolm Bingay. Bingay re-

 

garded Truman as incompetent and inept, and had long been
critical of the Truman administration. Bingay also wrote,
however, that MacArthur was no saint either. "A pox on

both your houses," he concluded.41

A Flint Journal editorial Offered a historical

 

parallel as precedent for a solution to the Far East

policy dispute:

[This] is the problem--greatly oversimplified, of
course. Which is it to be? EurOpe or Asia? Asia or

 

38Editorial, Detroit Free Press, April 15, 1951,
sec. 3., p. 4.

39

 

Editorial, ibid., April 12, 1951, p. 6.

40Editorial, ibid., April 6, 1951, p. 6.

41Ibid., April 13, 1951, p. 6.

97

Europe? Where do we draw the line and say to Russia,
"This far and no farther?"

Is there no compromise between these conflicting
theories? . . .

Do we need to go any farther back in history than
1941 for the answer?

Then the decision was made to concentrate on
EurOpe because it was recognized that the permanent
loss of European resources would be disastrous.

Are conditions so much different now? 2

The Lansing State Journal editorially supported
MacArthur's policy views. In an editorial responding to
the general's announcement in March that a stalemate was

imminent in Korea, the Lansing newspaper said:

General MacArthur's appraisal of the situation in
Korea emphasizes the need for a prompt decision as to
whether American and other U. N. forces are in Korea
for the purpose of crushing Red aggression or merely
to engage in a costly stalemate of indefinite dura-
tion. 3

After the general's dismissal, the State Journal

 

analyzed President Truman's explanatory speech of April 11,

and expressed editorial disagreement. The State Journal

 

asserted editorially that Truman's contention that his

policy would limit Communist aggression was invalid:

The idea that this country has avoided a full-
scale war with Red China is a tragic illusion. The
fact is that whatever our government's intentions,
Communist China is engaged in a full-scale aggression
against the United Nations forces in Korea.

His talk must have been heard with mire than ordi-
nary satisfaction in Peiping and Moscow. 4

 

 

 

42Editorial, Flint Journal, April 14, 1951, p. 10.
43 . .

Editorial, State Journal, March 16, 1951, p. 14.
44

Editorial, ibid., April 12, 1951, p. 10.

98

A State Journal editorial four days later was less moder-

 

ate in tone. The title asked the question: "Treason?"

"Yes--in a way," the newspaper answered editorially.

. . . The firing of MacArthur is not really a question
of military discipline. The real issue is whether the
President . . . will try to bring about a second
Munich in which . . . the Communists would be left
unopposed in Asia.

American foreign policy under Truman and Russian
plans of conquest have strangely coincided in Asia.
No ally of the Kremlin could more effectively have
helped Mao [Tse-tung] into power than American diplo-
mats.

President Truman has revealed his incom etence to
deal with the vast problems of his office.

The Detroit News was, editorially, relatively

 

silent on the foreign policy issues of the MacArthur con-
toversy. The newspaper reported the views of the various
advocates in its news columns, without apparent bias or

distortion, but made little attempt to examine the various

policy alternatives. Blair Moody, Detroit News reporter

 

and political commentator, was an exception. Writing just
before the dismissal of the general, Moody concisely sum-
marized the policy differences between Truman and MacArthur
and identified the central problem as dispute over the best
way to prevent world war. The evidence was great that

the Joint Chiefs Of Staff backed President Truman in

 

45Editorial, ibid, April 15, 1951, p. 10.

99

placing EurOpe first in American foreign policy priority,
Moody wrote.46

On the eve of General MacArthur's Speech to the
Congress after his return to the United States, tne Maya

called on the public to "lend and ear to General

MacArthur":

No differences of Opinion as to the wisdom and
justice of his removal, and no disagreement with his
view of the course that the nation should take, can
shade the Significance of the event or lessen the need
that his every word should be pondered carefully by an
attentive nation.

MacArthur's speech to the Congress was extensively re-
ported by all of the newspapers in this study, although

it was pushed from the lead position on the front pages

by the death of a native son and national political figure,
U. 8. Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg. After the speech,

Detroit News editors saluted the general for "not Speaking

 

in generalization or bitter partisanship, but laying it
on the line as he sees it." The newspaper took issue edi-
torially with much Of what MacArthur had recommended, but

the editors took no specific position of their own.48

 

46Detroit News, April 10, 1951, p. 33. A few weeks
later, Blaif Moody was appointed by the governor of Michi-
gan to fill the unexpired portion of Senator Arthur
Vandenberg's term in the United States Senate.

47Editorial, ibid., April 18, 1951, p. 32.

48Editorial, ibid., April 20, 1951, p. 20.

100

Two days after the dismissal of MacArthur, when
the furor was at its peak, the Grand Rapids Press noted
editorially that in the debate over Far Eastern policy,
it was being overlooked that Korean policy was a United
Nations question, not merely one concerning the United
States.49 Also from the Grand Rapids newspaper came per-
haps the most practical criticism of MacArthur's proposed
foreign policy. The neWSpaper reviewed MacArthur's speech

to the Congress and concluded editorially:

. . . There is no way to prove MacArthur is right ex-
cept by doing the things he advocates. Several million
Americans appear willing to put the general's theories
to the test without further ado. They are being

swayed more by their emotiOns than by their thinking.50

 

49Editorial, Grand Rapids Press, April 13, 1951,

 

p. 18.

50Editorial, ibid., April 20, 1951, p. 14.

CHAPTER VII

PRESS ANALYSIS: THE POLITICAL AND

MILITARY ISSUES

In 1951, the most important issues of the MacArthur
controversy, and those naturally commanding the most atten-
tion from the news media, were the constitutional and
foreign policy issues discussed in chapter vi. Lesser
aspects of the controversy are also important, however, in
any examination of press performance. To some extent,
these secondary issues involved the "supporting players"
in the drama, rather than those at center stage. The is-
sues can be identified as, first, how the press reported
the partisan political factors that entered into the
MacArthur controversy; and second, how the press reported
MacArthur's performance as a military officer and combat

commander.

MacArthur and the Politicians

 

Richard Rovere and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
suggest that MacArthur was, until the moment of his dis-
missal, more of a figure in American history than a parti-

cipant in contemporary events.

101

102

But when MacArthur a week after being notified of
his discharge in Tokyo, flew inward from the perimeter
of American power, he made a similar journey to the
center of the American consciousness.

It was certainly true, at least, that MacArthur journeyed

to the center of American pplitical consciousness. Each

 

of the Michigan newspapers in this study quickly reported
that the MacArthur debate had become a partisan issue.

The editors of the Lansing State Journal, for example, saw

 

clearly that MacArthur's dismissal was not being debated

entirely on its own merits:

It was to be expected that some politicians in
both Democratic and Republican parties would attempt
to make as much political capital as possible out of
the differences between President Truman and General
MacArthur. In consequence, the issues of Far Eastern
policy and of [the authority of] the commander-in-
chief have been in danger of being overshadowed by a
struggle for political advantage . . . .

MacArthur himself was not innocent of responsibil-
ity for the insertion of partisan political considerations
into the controversy. It seems unlikely that any high—
ranking American military officer, especially the supreme
commander of an international force with continental re-
Sponsibilities, could ever hOpe to divorce himself com-

pletely from American politics. The difference in this

 

1Rovere and Schlesinger, The MacArthur Controversy,
pp. 4-50

2

 

Editorial, State Journal, April 20, 1951, p. 10.

 

103

respect between MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower was not
that Eisenhower remained aloof from all things political
while MacArthur did not. The difference was rather that
Eisenhower was less obviously partisan than MacArthur.
MacArthur apparently did not consider himself a partisan
man. "Although nominally Republican," MacArthur wrote in

his memoirs,

. . . probably because of my attraction to Abraham
Lincoln, I had always eXpressed admiration for the
basic accomplishments Of the Democratic party, and
appreciation of its many great leaders.3

Even if it were entirely true that MacArthur was
but "nominally" Republican, the politicians who supported
and admired him most--at least after l932--were emphati-
cally and thoroughly Republican. Among the first to speak
in MacArthur's support during the 1951 controversy were
his superiors during his tenure as U. S. Army Chief of
Staff, former President Herbert Hoover and former Secre-
tary of War Patrick J. Hurley. Before MacArthur's dis-

missal, Hurley told reporters:

If the administration does not want to win the
war in Korea they should relieve MacArthur of his
command. If the administration does wish to win they
should take the wraps off MacArthur and allow him to
employ the forces necessary. . . .

Our state department should limit its role to
policy and leave military strategy to those better
qualified to formulate it.

 

3MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 389.

4Detroit Times, April 8, 1951, p. 2.

104

Robert A. Taft, United States Senator from Ohio, was an-
other Republican leader who quickly spoke in support of
MacArthur's position. He called Truman's refusal to allow
the use of Chinese Nationalist troops against the Chinese
mainland "idiotic, ridiculous, and utterly indefensible."5
Taft, like Hoover and Hurley, was associated with the
semi-isolationist, "America-first" segment of the Republi-
can party rather than the "internationalist" faction
represented by Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan.
Douglas MacArthur was nobody's puppet, but the
evidence is strong that his differences with the President
were deliberately exploited by the Republican minority in
the Congress. Joe Martin, minority leader of the House,

explained years later his reasons for writing to

MacArthur:

I felt that the Republicans were entitled to the
truth if we were effectively to defend our side of
the argument. Since MacArthur was an Old friend of
mine, I was confident that he would give me an eXpert
opinion on which I could rely in presenting our case.

As Martin had expected, MacArthur replied promptly, and
the release of the general's letter was the final provoca-
tion leading to MacArthur's dismissal. Martin, however,

was not dismayed by this result:

 

51bid., p. 1.

6Martin, Mprirst-Fiftinears in Politics, as told
to Robert J. Donovan (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.,
1960), p. 203.

 

105

Already I had visions of him as the Republican nominee
in 1952. This deposed hero, I thought, might truly be
the answer to our prayers. When [MacArthur's aide,
Major] General [Courtney] Whitney, who preceded
MacArthur home, came to see me, I bared my thoughts to
him and he embraced them without reservation.

MacArthur's name had been mentioned in connection
with the presidential nomination before 1951. In both
1944 and 1948, his candidacy had been actively supported
by the Hearst newspapers, but with little success. John

S. Knight, publisher of the Detroit Free Press, wrote of

 

the effort to nominate the general in 1948. "In the his-
tory of personal journalism," Knight wrote, "it would be
hard to find such a waste of clumsy effort as the Hearst
press put out in [MacArthur's] behalf."8
John Tebbel, one of the biographers Of William
Randolph Hearst, reported a conversation in Paris between

Hearst's son, William junior, and Art Buchwald, then a

reporter for the Paris edition of the New York Herald

 

Tribune. Hearst's son is quoted as saying, shortly before

his father's death in 1951:

We've supported MacArthur for a long time, long
before any of the other papers jumped on the bandwagon.
This policy was based on POp's judgment. Pop doesn't
know anything about the Far East and depends on Mac's
judgment. He and the old man are very close. . . .

It was Pop's idea to run MacArthur for President
in 1948. He did it without Mac's permission . . . .

 

7lbid., pp. 209-10.

8Detroit Free Press, June 27, 1948, p. 4.

 

106

Our editorialpglicy on the Far East will be guided by
Mac's thinking.

The Detroit Times, more than the other neWSpapers

 

in this study, tended to favor the Opinions of those poli-
ticians who supported MacArthur's views. The Timg§_was the
only neWSpaper examined that printed, on the day after the
dismissal, the full text ofra 600-word statement by the
House Republican Policy Committee that warned of a "super-
Munich" and a "holocaust that will end civilization as we
know it." The report concluded: "The future of America

is at stake. Plainly, if America is to be saved, the Con-
10

gress must do it."

Two columns of the Detroit Times front page on

 

April 12, were reserved for an editorial followed by a
blank form to be filled in and sent to Washington. The
Timgg reader merely had to check whether he approved of
the President's action or not, and mail the form to his
congressman. Addresses were provided on page two.11

Another story in the Hearst-owned newspaper, iden-

tified as from the Detroit Times Washington bureau, re-

 

ported at length the reactions of many senators and

 

9John Tebbel, The Life and Good Times of William
Randolph Hearst (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1952 ,
p. 265.

 

 

loDetroit Times, April 12, 1951, p. 2.

 

llibid., pp. 1-2.

107

representatives. Among those quoted were Richard M.
Nixon, freshman senator from California, who attacked the
President for "matching his military strategy in the Far
East against the concepts of General MacArthur;" and U. S.
Representative Paul Shafer of Battle Creek, representing
Michigan's Third Congressional District, who reportedly

waved a COpy of the Daily Worker on the floor of the

 

House and pointed out stories in the Communist party news-

paper exulting over the firing of MacArthur.12

The Timgg
also printed, two days in a row, a story reporting that a
Chinese Communist radio station had called the dismissal
of MacArthur "a great victory for the Chinese and Korean
peOple in their fight to resist American aggression."13
In the Sunday editions following MacArthur's dis-

missal, the Detroit Times celebrated MacArthur's imminent

 

return with a front-page salute. Below a two-column~cen-

tered portrait of the general was the tribute: "An

 

12Ibid., April 13, 1951, p. 1.

13Ibid., April 14, 1951, p. 2; and ibid., April 15,
1951, p. 8. Communist party leaders in the U. S. were not
as overjoyed about the dismissal of MacArthur. In a letter
distributed in pamphlet form, party general secretary
Eugene Dennis told members of the Communist party in the

U. S. that although millions of people prOperly saw the
general as a "Number One warmonger and pro-fascist," they
had not realized that Truman was just as bad. The Presi-
dent, Dennis wrote, continued to "pursue Wall Street's
aggressive war policy." (Letter, Eugene Dennis to members
of the Communist Party of the U.S.A., n.d., call no.

CPA VF 505.11, Michigan State University. Special Collec-
tions Library.)

 

108

American Welcome To General MacArthur." The text--bordered

by eighty tiny American flags--was almost biblical in tone:

There will be a great outpouring of the peOple in
honor of General MacArthur.

Let there be a great and swelling volume of acclaim
everywhere in the land.

Let sirens and bells ring in all our cities.

Let the beloved flag of our country fly in pride
and beauty from housetOps and public buildings.

Fourteen years almost to the day have elapsed
since General MacArthur last saw the blessed sight
of the American flag streaming in the free skies of
his native land. . . .14

In contrast, the Detroit Times implied editorially that

 

Truman was utterly incompetent to be President. Respond-
ing to his radio speech of April 11, explaining the dis-
missal of MacArthur to the nation, the Times editors

commented:

Mr. Truman's Speech was stumbling and fumbling.

He was plainly confused and uncertain, even
apologetic.

The strongest impression made by the speech upon
the attentive listener was that the President was not
only wrong, but that_he knew it.15

Although the Tim§§_was the most partisan Of the neWSpapers
examined in this study, it was by no means alone in edi-
torially supporting MacArthur. The Tima§_was unique,
however, in the undisguised bias of the news columns and
the violence of the editorial language. Only the Detroit

Times, for example, used as news a story that

 

14lbid., April 15, 1951, p. 1.

15Editorial, ibid., April 14, 1951, p. 8.

109

Cosmopolitan magazine, also a Hearst publication, had

 

carried an article supposedly explaining Truman's "ter-
rible temper" in psychological terms. The Times story
carried a three-column headline, was placed opposite the

comics page, and quoted the Cosmopolitan article at

 

length. The article, the Tima§_story explained, analyzed
Truman's childhood. Truman's father had never missed a
meeting of the county Democratic party, the article writer
had said, and had gotten into a fight at every meeting.
Truman's mother was said to have believed that "the only
sensible way to deal with varmints was to attack them with
fists, shotgun, or meatcleaver." This background, the
magazine writer had explained, had scarred the President's

life:

. . . As a boy, he was called a sissy, as a man a
deadbeat, as a public official a water boy for poli-
tical gangsters. He married late in life after courting
his wife twenty years. He failed in business in 1922
and has owed money ever since.

Now, concluded the author of the Cosmopolitan article,
16

 

Truman was striking back at the world.
General MacArthur apparently accepted, to some

extent, the view that Truman was motivated by his emo-

tions. In his memoirs, MacArthur reported his reaction

upon learning of Truman's angry note to Paul Hume, music

 

l6Detroit Times, March 30, 1951, p. 44; Cosmopoli-
tan, April, 1951, pp. 30-33.

 

 

110

critic Of the Washington Post, who had criticized Margaret

 

Truman's singing. That incident, wrote MacArthur, had
made him realize that "I was standing at the apex of a
situation that could make me the next victim of such an
uncontrolled passion."17
Each of the newspapers in the study made it clear
that, in the government at least, the dismissal of Mac-
Arthur was a partisan issue on which there was little
breaking of ranks. One after another, political leaders
came forward to support the general or the President, ac-
cording to their party loyalties, and were dutifully re-
ported by the press. Most of the politicians' statements
were routine but a few were as colorful as the Detroit
Timgg editorials. Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican
of Wisconsin, told reporters that the dismissal of Mac-

Arthur was "treason, accomplished by men who "knew how
to get the President cheerful . . . a Communist victory

won with the aid of bourbon and benedictine. The
18

[sic] should be impeached," said McCarthy.
Republican party leaders called for the impeach-

ment of the President and the secretary of state, and the

Democratic party leadership demanded an investigation into

MacArthur's conduct of the war. The Detroit News, however,

 

 

l7MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 394.

 

18state Journal, April 12, 1951, p. 1.

 

111

editorially dismissed all of those threats and accusations

as partisan gambits that would eventually come to nothing:

The President, knowing the nature of his country-
men, can rest secure in the faith that nothing as
emotional as the furor of these recent days can last,
and that when the intoxication of the moment passes,
it will be generally conceded that he did what he had
to do.19

On April 12, the Lansing State Journal reported

 

that the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature was
debating a resolution condemning Truman's dismissal of
MacArthur. A provision calling for the impeachment of

the President had been considered, the story said, but had
been defeated.20 The next day, editions of the Spapg
Journal reported that the modified resolution had been
passed. In addition, the Lansing newspaper reported, the
state senate had censured G. Mennen Williams, Democratic
governor Of Michigan, who had Opposed the resolution con-
demning Truman. Williams was censured by the senate, the
story reported, for ”his Official joining of the English
socialistic program . . . and associating himself with the
"21

Acheson-Alger Hiss foreign policy programs.

A Flint Journal story suggested Governor Williams

 

 

19Editorial, Detroit News, April 17, 1951, p. 24.

 

20State Journal, April 12, 1951, p. l.

 

21Ibid., April 13, 1951, p. 1.

112

might have trouble getting reelected in 1952 because of

Truman's political unpOpularity.22

An Associated Press story in the Flint neWSpaper

reported that tempers were unusually hot in the Congress:

The long and angry "great debate" about troops-to-
Europe and the explosive arguments about firing General
MacArthur have lowered the boiling point of some Sena-
torial tempers.

Barbed remarks about each other--a violation of
Senate rules--crop out daily. Most veteran Senators
try to avoid and suppress this. Younger members often
let fly.2

Columnist Marquist Childs pointed out what he
called a "puzzling contradiction" in the political posi-

tion of the Republicans:

During the debate on the issue of troops for NATO,
Republican senators warned in ominous language of the
dangers of a military dictatorship. To give . . .
General Eisenhower the right to determine whether
additional divisions should be sent to Europe without
the approval of Congress would be to surrender the
pre-eminent right of civilian control of the military.
Yet they supported, without apparent reservation, a
commander in the field who decided to establish a new
policy in the Far East.24

For a period of seven weeks beginning on May 3,
1951, the Joint Senate Committee on Armed Services and
Foreign Relations conducted hearings on the military situ-

ation in the Far East and the events surrounding the

 

22Flint Journal, April 13, 1951, p. l.

 

231bid., April 15, 1951, p. 14.

24Grand Rapids Press, April 12, 1951, p. 22.

 

113

dismissal of MacArthur. The general was the first witness
and he testified for three days. The hearings were not
Open to the public or the press, but censored transcripts
of the testimony were made available to the press as
quickly as possible. As a result, many newspapers pub-
lished much of the early testimony verbatim. The final
transcript of the hearings was over three thousand pages
long, so it is Obvious that there was much that the press
could not print. The hearings concluded late in June,
1951, without reaching any dramatic conclusions. By that
time, the emotionalism of the early days of the controversy
had abated. William S. White, a student of the U. S.
Senate, regarded those hearings as an example of Senate
investigation at its best. The MacArthur hearings, wrote
White, were not loud, dramatic, or ostensibly partisan.
White concluded, however, that the hearings did more than
just shed light on a difficult area of American foreign

policy:

. . . It is always a tricky thing confidently to as-
sert that any action at a given time in history had
directly and indiSputably a clear and immediate ef-
fect . . . .

Coincidentally or not, a part of the aftermath of
the hearings was the almost incredible collapse of the
boom for MacArthur for the Presidential nomination.25

Pollster Elmo Roper had a different explaination

for MacArthur's rapid decline from public notice:

 

25White, Citadel, p. 251.

114

One of the interesting phenomenon of American
politics is that although the American people often
entertain extravagant sentiments about figures in
public life, they are wary and somewhat unpredictable
about transferring their emotions about a leader in
one sphere of endeavor to his attempted leadership in
another sphere. At times, as in the case Of Generals
Marshall and Eisenhower, the transference has been
made. With MacArthur, the case was different. Most
people admired him as a great general, but only a
small se ment had faith in his abilities as a civilian
leader.2

MacArthur and the_MiliEary

 

On April 11, Russell Brines, Associated Press

bureau chief in Tokyo, reported:

Today, at the apparent end of a career which has
included two temporary but bitter military defeats,
MacArthur was relieved without a public hint of
criticism for his military ability. To the Old
soldier, that must have been comforting.

Mr. Brines observation that there was no criticism of
MacArthur's military skill was essentially correct. AS
has been described in earlier chapters of this study,
there is little doubt that Douglas MacArthur was a bril-
liant soldier. His combat record in World War I was im-
pressive, and his Pacific campaign during World War II
was conducted efficiently and economically despite truly
limited resources. During the Korean War, MacArthur

earned full credit for the successful delaying action that

 

26Roper, You and Your Leaders, p. 153.

27Grand Rapids Press, April 11, 1951, p. l.

 

115

permitted the establishing of the defensive perimeter at
Pusan during the early days of the war, and the amphibious
landing at Inchon that destroyed the North Korean Army in
1950 was MacArthur's plan, and his alone.

MacArthur was a good general, but he was not as
infallible as his admirers in the public--and the press--

sometimes seemed to believe. The Detroit Times remained

 

editorially steadfast in the belief that, even during the
darkest hours in Korea, "General MacArthur's military
leadership had been superbly successful and inspiring."28
The other newspapers in this study, however, were not en-
tirely free of criticism of the supreme commander. Most
of the critical commentary appeared in wire service
stories from Korea after the intervention of the Chinese
Communists.

Don Whitehead, a correSpondent in Korea for the
Associated Press, reported after the Chinese attack that
there was "sharp criticism" from combat officers in Korea
of the command arrangements in Korea. The Chinese had
struck at the boundary between the Eighth Army and the
Tenth Corps, which were independent units commanded from
MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. Some officers felt,

Whitehead reported, that a single commander on the ground

 

28Editorial, Detroit Times, April 1, 1951, p. 16.

 

116

in Korea should have had overall responsibility for the
entire front.29

Another Associated Press reporter, Hal Boyle,
wrote that many observers were asking why the U. S. com-
mand did not know, before launching the "end-the-war"
offensive on November 24, that the assault would be
against such a force that victory would be impossible.30
MacArthur's intelligence chief, General Charles A.
Willoughby, told reporters in answer to such questions
that the United Nations offensive was the only way to
determine the Chinese intentions. Until then, Willoughby
said, the allies had hoped that the Chinese intervention
was only a gesture.31

In the face of the disaster along the Yalu River,
increased criticism of the commanding general would seem
to be a natural development, whether justified or not.
MacArthur apparently did not see it in that light. He
reacted, first, by denying that the defeat could have
been avoided. As he later testified before the Joint
Senate Committee:

My mission was to clear out all North Korea . . .

The number of troops I had was limited, and those

conditions indicated the diSposition of the trOOps
I had.

 

29Grand Rapids Press, Nov. 30, 1950, p. 24.

30Detroit Free Press, Nov. 30, 1950, p. 1.

 

31State Journal, Dec. 1, 1950, p. 2.

 

117

As a matter of fact, the disposition of those
trOOps could not have been improved upon had I known
that the Chinese were going to attack. 2

In addition, MacArthur, or at least some members of his
personal staff, concluded that the press was engaged in a
deliberate conSpiracy to discredit him. Major General
Courtney Whitney, MacArthur's military secretary and ad-

viser, later wrote:

. . As the U. N. forces had to withdraw temporarily
before the numerical superiority of the Red Chinese,
it became more and more apparent that the real danger
from the press in Korea was not from the exposure of
military secrets . . . . MacArthur found himself
bitterly arraigned by a few segments of the press in
England, France and the United States, aided by a few
sensation-seekers among the war correspondents at the
front who seemed more intent upon finding a whipping
boy than in aiding the defenses against the big on-
slaught.

In cleverly worded propaganda articles attributed
to anonymous sources but calculated to create the
impression of the highest official authenticity, they
attempted not only to blame MacArthur . . . but also
to disparage the courage and fighting ability of his
men.

Whitney did not blame the alleged campaign of vilification
entirely on the press, however. It was a carefully or-
ganized campaign of propaganda, he wrote, supported by

34

some anonymous sources within the Pentagon itself. NO

editorial criticism Of MacArthur's military capacity

 

32Hearings, p. 19.

33Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous With Destiny,
pp. 445-460

34Ibid., p. 454.

 

118

during the Korean war could be found in the newspapers ex-
amined for this study.

Another aspect of the military problem concerned
the relationship between MacArthur and his military
superiors, the Joint Chiefs Of Staff. There was little
comment on this matter in news or editorial columns, but
some information was available and could, perhaps, have
contributed to a better understanding of the controversy.
As was discussed in chapter i, MacArthur had been a general
officer long before his superiors in 1951 had reached high
rank. Each of the newspapers in this study made that
point clear in background stories or serialized biographies
of MacArthur. In addition, MacArthur's personal staff had
been with him for a long time, most of them since World
War II, and they were intensely loyal. Dean Acheson re-
ported a conversation between General George Marshall and
MacArthur during World War II in which the latter began a
sentence, "My staff tells me. . . ." General Marshall re-
portedly interrupted MacArthur and said, "General, you
don't have a staff, you have a court."35

It may have been that the protection of an uncriti-
cal and admiring staff of advisers, in combination with
long years of supreme command, led MacArthur to assume

that the Joint Chiefs of Staff supported his position

 

5Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 424.

 

119

rather than that of the President. Whatever the reason,
MacArthur implied in his speech to the Congress on April
19, that the Joints Chiefs had, at one time, supported

his recommendations to extend the war against China.36

This assertion was the lead for many newspaper stories

about the MacArthur Speech. In the Grand Rapids Press,

 

a banner headline asked, "Did JCS Once Support Mac View

or Not?"37

The question was answered by General Omar Bradley,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his testimony

before the Joint Senate Committee:

. . . We have recommended against enlarging the war.
The course of action Often described as a "limited
war" with Red China would increase the risk we are
taking by engaging too much of our power in an area
that is not the critical strategic prize.

Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to
dominate the world. Frankly, in the Opinion of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve
us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the
wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.

Bradley's phrase divorced MacArthur from the military
establishment and, for all practical purposes, marked

the end of the MacArthur controversy.

 

36New York Times, April 20, 1951, p. 4.

 

37Grand Rapids Press, April 20, 1951, p. l.

 

38Hearings, pp. 730-32.

CHAPTER VI I I
CONCLUSIONS

Author William S. White has called the MacArthur
controversy "perhaps the gravest and most emotional Con-
stitutional crisis that the United States had known since

the Great Depression":

This is of course strong language [White wrote]. It
rests not on the authority of this writer but on his
conversations at the time with some of the most re-
sponsible and ordinarily imperturbably men in the
Government of the United States in both the Legisla-
tive and Executive Branches.l

One week after the dismissal of MacArthur, Detroit
Nawa editorial columnist W. K. Kelsey reviewed the events
of the seven days just past. Noting the extreme reactions
from some public officials and prominent citizens he con-
cluded that, in comparison, his own profession had not
performed badly:
The press has pretty well kept its head. The
great independent neWSpaperS, untied to a party, have
largely supported the Administration, or not willing

to go SO far, have pleaded for calm consideration of
the evidence presented or still to come.2

 

lWhite, Citadel, pp. 241-42.

2Detroit News, April 18, 1951, p. 32.

120

121

Richard Rovere and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., writ-

ing some time later, reached a similar conclusion:

. . We know how adroit the American press has become
in exaggerating, when exaggeration suits its purpose,
the volume and extent of such political feeling as
exists at any given moment. In this instance, however,
the press was far less active than usual in its efforts
to work up the public. In the history of the Truman
administration there had been at least a dozen presi-
dential acts that had been far more stergly condemned
than the dismissal of General MacArthur.

In evaluating the performance of the six Michigan
daily newspapers in this study, it should be kept in mind
that a newspaper's performance can be measured both in
terms of its role as a channel of news information and its
role as commentator on and interpreter of issues and
events. It Should also be remembered that the newspapers
examined were not the only sources of information available
to the public in regard to the MacArthur dismissal, and
also that the newspapers and other media were Operating
in an atmosphere of extreme emotionalism. With these
limitations in mind, it is possible to draw some general
conclusions about the performance of some representative
Michigan daily newspapers in reporting and analyzing the
issues of the MacArthur controversy:

1. Douglas MacArthur was not just another army
general. By 1951, he had become an institution and repre-

sented an older tradition--perhaps an outdated tradition--

 

3Rovere and Schlesinger, The MacArthur Controversy,

 

p. 6.

122

of American patriotism. To many people he represented
all that America once was and still ought to be. As such
a figure, he was handled delicately by both Franklin
Roosevelt and Harry Truman; he was given more autonomy
and permitted more liberties by his military superiors
than they would have permitted any other officer; and, in
the Opinion of the author, he was far less often criti-
cized by the press than his performance warranted.

2. The events leading to MacArthur's dismissal
were, for the most part, adequately reported by all of
the newspapers examined. This was largely due to wire
service accounts, the best of these by Associated Press
correspondents James Marlow, DeWitt MacKenzie, and John M.
Hightower. The clearest and most complete account of the
events of April eleventh and twelfth appeared in the

Detroit News. In particular, the report from Washington

 

by News reporter Martin S. Hayden provided an excellent
account of develOpments leading to the President's deci-

sion to dismiss the general. The morning Detroit Free

 

Press was at an obvious disadvantage in covering the dis-
missal story as it broke in the early morning hours.

Even so, Free Press stories on April 12, failed to add

 

much form to the hasty stories of the day before. Those

readers who relied entirely on Free Press coverage of the

 

first two days of the story would have been more confused

than many of their fellow citizens.

123

3. The Detroit Times was unique among the news-

 

papers examined in this study, as the single example of
an apparently vanishing philOSOphy of American journalism.

Among the newspapers studied, the Lansing State Journal

 

was closest in its editorial position to the Detroit Times,

 

but the style Of the two publications was vastly different.
A reader of the Hearst-owned newspaper would have been
restricted to virtually a single vieWpoint. The Timas

all but ignored administration policy statements and argu-
ments by Truman's supporters in the news columns, and sup-
ported without reservation MacArthur's recommendations,
relying heavily on the editorial tools of ridicule,
accusation and patriotic rhetoric. There could be little

doubt, at least, that the Detroit Times was willing to

 

take a stand on the issues. The newspaper consistently
favored the "pro-MacArthur" position in its news stories,
headlines, make-up, and allocation of Space.

4. The constitutional authority of the President
as commander-in-chief of the armed forces was editorially
asserted by all of the newspapers in this study, although

the Detroit Times and--to a lesser extent--the Lansing

 

State Journal regarded the matter as irrelevant to the

 

controversy. It may be, as some have suggested, that news-
paper editors are more reluctant to challenge the Constitu-

tion than most Of the general public.4 The Detroit News

 

 

41bid.

124

and the Grand Rapids Press were outspoken in their edi-

 

torial support for the principle of civil control of the
military. The other newspapers, however, while they did
not deny the President's authority, apparently felt no
reSponsibility to editorially emphasize that important
matter. The simple truth that, for whatever reason,
MacArthur had repeatedly disregarded the instructions of
his commander-in-chief was, for the most part, not made
adequately clear to the public by the Michigan daily
newspapers examined in this study.

5. Each of the newspapers made it clear that the
opinions of public officials on the MacArthur controversy
were essentially partisan positions. There was little
effort, however, to relate this political issue to other
partisan matters, such as the struggle between the Congress
and the President over executive authority in relation to
the North Atlantic Treaty, or the maneuvering of potential
Republican candidates for the 1952 presidential nomination.
The best analysis of the domestic political aspects Of the
MacArthur controversy was presented by syndicated political
columnist Marquis Childs, whose column appeared regularly

in the Flint Journal and the Grand Rapids Press and fre-

 

 

quently in the Detroit Free Press

 

6. The Flint Journal and the Grand Rapids Press,

 

 

both Booth newspapers, were not identical in their edi-

torial position. Although the difference was not great,

125

the Flint newspaper tended to be pro-MacArthur, while the
Grand Rapids daily appeared most often to editorially
favor the administration view.

7. Although his actions and policy recommenda-
tions were sometimes criticized, MacArthur was, in general,
favorably presented in each of the Michigan newspapers.

No personal attacks on the general's character, such as
those directed at the President and his advisers, appeared
in the Michigan newspapers. Although there had been some
small criticism Of the general after the Chinese attack in
November, 1950, editorial criticism of MacArthur's mili-
tary ability was virtually non-existant after his dismis-
sal. There was never the slightest suggestion in the
press that MacArthur, seventy-one years old in 1951, was
hampered in any way by his age. In general, the press
appeared reluctant to point out any weaknesses or possible
flaws in the general's character or reputation.

Perhaps the best definition of MacArthur's charac-
ter came years later, not from the press but from the man
who replaced MacArthur in Korea and Japan, General Matthew
B. Ridgeway. Ridgeway had served under MacArthur in Korea

and other places many years before. He wrote of MacArthur:

. . . I came to understand some traits of his complex
character not generally recognized: the hunger for
praise that led him on some occasions to claim or
accept credit for deeds he had not performed, or to
disclaim responsibility for mistakes that were clearly
his own; the love of the limelight that continually

 

126

prompted him to pose before the public as the actual
commander on the spot at every landing and at the
launchingcflfevery major attack . . . ; his tendency
to cultivate the isolation that genius seems to re-
quire, until it became a sort of insulation . . . ;
the headstrong quality (derived from his success in
forcing through many brilliant plans against solid
Opposition) that sometimes led him to persist in a
course in defiance of all seeming logic; a faith in
his own judgment that created an aura of infallibility
and that finally led him close to insubordination.5

Keyes Beech, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News,

 

was one of the first correspondents into Korea after the
North Korean invasion in 1950. He was not one of MacArthur's
admirers. Beech had written critically of MacArthur's

policies in Japan and would later write to Editor & Pub-

 

lisher that MacArthur manipulated the press for his own

purposes and regarded reporters with "good-natured con-

tempt."6 The Daily News reporter recalled some years

 

later a confrontation with MacArthur during the early,
confusing days of the Korean War. There was fear and

panic among the Koreans and Americans, Beech remembered:

The mere presence of MacArthur changed all that.
I had just escaped from Seoul one jump ahead of the
Communists and when I saw MacArthur's tall, confident
figure striding across the air strip I was never so
glad to see anyone in my life.

"General, sir," I said, shaking his hand, "I'm
glad to see you here." 7

"Glad to be here," said Douglas MacArthur.

k

5Ridgeway, The Korean War, p. 142.

 

6Editor & Publisher. April 14, 1951, p. 9.

7Beech, Tokyo and Points East, p. 62.

 

 

127

Keyes Beech was not magically transformed into one of the
general's faithful apostles in the press corps. But, on
that day, it was clear to that professional newsman--later
a Nieman Fellow and Pulitzer-Prize winner--that Douglas
MacArthur was an authentic American hero, by Daniel Boor-

stin's definition or almost any other. T}

 

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..Pratt, Julius W. A History of U. S. Fogeign Policy. 2nd

ed. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hail, 1965.

- Ridgeway, Matthew B. The Korean War: How We Met The

Challenge, How All-Out Asian~War Was Averted, Why
MacArthur Was Dismissed,sflhy Today's Objectives
Must be Limited. Garden City, N. Y.: DOfibleday,
1967.

 

ROper, Elmo Burns. You and Your Leaders: Their Actions

_,Rovere,

Rucker,

 

and Your Reactions, 1936-1956. New York: Morrow,
1957.

 

Richard H., and Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The
MacArthur Controversy and American Foreign PoIicy.
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965.

Bryce W. Twentieth Century Reporting at its Best.
Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1964.

 

,-Sapin, Burton M., and Snyder, Richard C. The Role of the

 

Military in American Foreign Policy. Garden City,
N. Y.: Doubleday, 1954.

 

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Roosevelt. Vol.

 

I: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933.
Sentry Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1958.

 

Smith, Gene. The Shattered DreaerHerbert Hoover and the

 

Great Depression. New York: William Morrow &
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132

"Spanier, John W. The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and
the Korean War. Cambridge: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1959.

 

 

*‘Stone, Isidor F. The Hidden History of the Korean War.
New York: Monthly Review, 1952.

 

_ Stormer, John A. None Dare Call It Treason. Florissant,
Mo.: Liberty Bell Press, 1964.

 

Tebbel, John. The Life and Good Times of William Randolph
Hearst. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1952.

 

..Truman, Harry S. Memoirs. Vol. II: Years of Trial and
Hope, 1946-1952. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday,
1956.

 

 

Waters, Walter W. B. E. F.: The Whole Story Of the Bonus
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Co., 1933.

 

J Watson, Richard L., Jr. (ed.). The United States in the
Contemporary World, 1945-1962. New York: Free
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e~White, William S. Citadel: The Story of the U. S. Senate.

 

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1968.

-:Whitney, Courtney. MacArthur: His Rendezvous With His-
to y. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.

 

s Willoughby, Charles A., and Chamberlain, John. MacArthur,
1941-1951. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954.

 

 

Newspapers

 

Detroit Free Press. July 9, 1950-May 3, 1951.

 

Detroit News. July 9, 1950-May 3, 1951.

 

Detroit Times. July 9, 1950-May 3, 1951.

 

Flint Journal. July 9, 1950-May 3, 1951.

 

Grand Rapids Press. July 9, 1950-May 3, 1951.

 

Lansing State Journal. July 9, 1950-May 3, 1951.

 

133

New York Times. May 10, l932-Aug. 1, 1932. July 9, 1950-
May 3, 1951.

 

Washington Post. May 10, 1932-Aug. l, 1932.

 

Articles and Periodicals

 

"Battle of Washington." Time. Aug. 8, 1932, pp. 6-8.

Clark, Mark. "You Can't Win a War if Diplomats Interfere."
U. S. News & World Report. Aug. 20, 1954.

 

"Court Martial." Time. Nov. 2, 1925, pp. 8-9.

Editorial. Editor & Publisher. Sept. 9, 1950, p. 4.

 

Handleman, Howard. "With the General in Korea: A Personal
Report." U. S. News & World Report. April 20,
1950, pp. 42—46.

 

"Heroes: B.E.F.'s End." Time. Aug. 15, 1932, pp. 9-10.

Huie, William Bradford. "The Terrible Tempered Mr. Truman."
Cosmopolitan. April, 1951, pp. 30-33, 108.

 

Pollard, James E. "President Truman and the Press."
Journalism Quarterly, XXVIII (1951), 457-68.

 

Simmons, George E. "How Great the Great Debate? A Study
of 31 Daily Newspapers." Journalism Quarterly,
XXVIII (1951), 351-57.

 

"65% of Dailies Back Dewey with 78% of Circulation."
Editor & Publisher. Oct. 30, 1948, pp. 11-15, 51.

 

Strunk, Mildred (ed.). "The Quarter's Polls." Public
Opinion Quarterly. XV (1951), 386-99.

 

Willoughby, Charles A. "The Truth About Korea." Cosmo-
politan. December, 1951, pp. 35, 37, 133-39.

Public Documents

 

Appleman, Roy E. South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu,
June-November 1950. [Vol. 11:] United States
Army in the Korean War. Edited by Stetson Conn.
Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office,
1960.

 

 

 

 

134

Michigan. Department of State. Michigan Official Direc-

tory and Legislative Manual. Lansing: State of
Michigan, 1951.

,. U. S. Congress. Congressional Record. 72nd Cong., 1st
sess., 1932, Vol. LXXV, Part 12.

. Congressionai_Rasord. 82nd Cong., lst sess.,
1951, Vol. XCVII, Part 3.

, . Senate. Military Situation iafiphe Far East.
Hearings before the Joint Senate Committee on
Armed Forces and Foreign Relations, U. S. Senate,
82nd Cong. 1st sess., 1951.

Other Material

Editor & Publisher International Year Book. New York:
Editor & Publisher, 1952.

Michigan State University. Library, Special Collections.
Call no. CPA VF505.11, letter, Eugene Dennis to
members of the Communist Party.

N. W. Ayer & Son. Directory: Newspapers and Periodicals.
Philadelphia, Pa.: N. W. Ayer & Son, 1951.

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