American Caesar

by William Manchester

  In September he asked Ganoe, “Chief, how long are we going to continue preparing for the War of 1812? Of what possible use is summer camp?” Ganoe recalls, “If he had asked, ‘What good is Flirtation Walk?’ he couldn’t have floored me as much.” During the summer months the corps had traditionally lived under canvas east of Trophy Point, attending hops in their nineteenth-century uniforms, marching to fifes and drums, and listening to sentries call “All’s well” at night. Despite apoplectic protests from the DOGS, MacArthur abolished all this. Instead he ordered cadets to Camp Dix in New Jersey, where they were trained in the use of modern weapons by regular army sergeants, and from which they marched back to the Hudson wearing full field packs.15

  Superintendent MacArthur at West Point with the Prince of Wales, 1919

  Superintendent MacArthur and Mayor Hylan of New York, 1920

  MacArthur was a great believer in exercise. He had read John Dewey and liked to quote him: “There is an impossibility of insuring general intelligence through a system which does not use the body to teach the mind and the mind to teach the body.” As superintendent he made intramural athletics compulsory for the whole corps, and composed a quatrain which he ordered carved on the stone portals of the academy gymnasium:

  Upon the fields of friendly strife

  Are sown the seeds

  That, upon other fields, on other days

  Will bear the fruits of victory16

  Had he left it at that, and turned the Point’s sports program over to the director of athletics, Captain Matthew B. Ridgway, 17, MacArthur’s contribution to West Point physical education might be less revealing than it is. But he never did things by halves, and his immense drive toward victory in every arena led him to excesses here. He urged congressmen to appoint gifted athletes to the academy, asked Washington to build a fifty-thousand-seat stadium on the Hudson, and gave his football players special privileges during the autumn months. Practice sessions always found him lurking on the edge of the field, wearing a short overcoat (specifically prohibited by War Department regulations) and carrying his ubiquitous riding crop under his arm. It is sad to note that during his superintendency Army elevens lost three straight games to Navy.17

  Frustrated on the gridiron, he turned to the diamond. Earl Blaik, the Point’s star athlete in these years, remembers a batting practice when “I was having trouble hitting curve balls. As usual, MacArthur had stopped by to watch the team practicing. I knew that he had been a pretty fair ballplayer in his time so I decided to ask him for a little expert advice on batting. I wasn’t too surprised either when the general loosened his stiff collar, took off his Sam Browne belt, and stepped into the batter’s box. It must have been the only time that I ever saw him fail to accomplish something he set out to do. When it was my turn to bat again, I not only couldn’t hit a curve, I couldn’t even hit a straight ball.” Nevertheless, the Army nine trounced Navy in 1921. That night, in defiance of regulations, the corps paraded past the superintendent’s house at midnight and built a huge bonfire on the edge of the plain. The next morning MacArthur looked owlishly at Danford and said, “Well, Com, that was quite a party you put on last night.” The commandant nervously admitted that it was. He was asked, “How many of them did you skin?” and when he replied, “Not a damn one,” MacArthur banged his fist on his desk. “Good!” he said. “You know, Com, I could hardly resist the impulse to get out and join them.”18

  MacArthur’s ardor for sports found an unexpected ally—Clayton E. “Buck” Wheat, the Point’s chaplain, who proposed that the academy’s hundred-year-old Sabbath observance rule be abandoned to permit Sunday athletics. “I approve one hundred percent,” MacArthur said excitedly. “Go to it!” Presently every company in the corps was fielding football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, tennis, basketball, golf, and polo teams, and a running track was built on the site of the old summer camp. Another MacArthur supporter, in another sphere, was Colonel Lucius E. Holt, chairman of the Department of English and History and a Yale Ph. D. Like the new superintendent, Holt believed that cadets should study, not only military science and tactics, but also government, economics, psychology, and sociology. At MacArthur’s suggestion Holt stressed public speaking in his classes, and required his students to offer a ten-minute commentary each morning on that day’s foreign and domestic news.19

  Wheat and Holt were exceptions. Their faculty colleagues were less enthusiastic. On the whole the cadets admired their new leader. There were a few exceptions—one undergraduate of the time recalls, “Neither I nor the vast majority of my class ever saw the General, except when he was walking across diagonal walk, apparently lost in thought, his nose in the air, gazing at distant horizons as his publicity photos always displayed him throughout his career”—but they were a distinct minority in the corps. On the other hand, among members of the academic board, as the faculty was called, critics formed an overwhelming majority. They disliked his unannounced visits to their classrooms, unprecedented for a superintendent. His habit of returning salutes with a casual flick of his riding crop was regarded by them as a mockery of military courtesy, and his sloppy cap and short overcoat gave the impression, one of them said, that he was “not only unconventional but perhaps a law unto himself.”20

  Most of all the professoriat disapproved of his proposals for academic changes. There was nothing they could do about his liberalization of cadet life (though they left no doubt that they opposed that, too), but on the academic board the superintendent had only one vote, and they vetoed his suggestions again and again. If the DOGS were, as Ganoe says, “as set as hitching posts,” the diehards on the board were nearly as intractable. Here and there they gave a little. Economics and political science were introduced, cadets were shown how to use slide rules, radio communications and Spanish replaced geology and mineralogy. Each professor agreed to visit at least three civilian colleges or universities every year; lecturers like Mitchell were invited to the Point. But MacArthur’s pleas for broader offerings in the humanities left the faculty unmoved. The board dissented with his argument that the age of the social sciences had arrived, disagreed with his contention that knowledge could not be taught in watertight compartments (“It’s a lot of loose bricks without mortar,” he said of the Point’s curriculum), and vehemently defended the academy’s tradition of “front-board recitation,” in which a cadet marched to the blackboard, faced the professor and a “section-room” of eleven other cadets, and repeated verbatim passages memorized from textbooks.21

  In the spring of 1920 the academy became the target of one of those savage civilian attacks which have erupted from time to time throughout its history. The attacker was Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard, who told the Harvard Teachers’ Association that “West Point is an example of just what an educational institution should not be.” Protesting, a major general publicly asked for details in behalf of the general staff. Eliot provided them: “In my opinion, no American school or college should accept such ill-prepared material as West Point accepts. Secondly, no school or college should have a completely prescribed curriculum. Thirdly, no school or college should have its teaching done almost exclusively by recent graduates of the same school or college.” A War Department spokesman replied in the New York Times: “We admit that West Point is hard and we admit that it is narrow. We consider that it is well that at least one institution should continue in the United States which holds that the duties of its students are more important than their rights.” That reflected the outlook of the conservative Chaumont colonels, who were moving into positions of responsibility in Washington. To their chagrin, MacArthur, in his first report as superintendent, agreed with Eliot. The fighting in France, he said, had demonstrated the need for a new type of officer “understanding the mechanics of human feelings.” He said that “when whole nations spring to arms,” improvisation “will be the watchword,” requiring “a change in the psychology of command. “ Therefore West Point was being restructured by a “substitution of
subjective for objective discipline, a progressive increase of cadet responsibility tending to develop initiative and force of character rather than automatic performance of stereotype functions.”22

  This convinced the Pershing clique that the hero of the Rainbow was still a show-off. It also illustrated a weakness which would plague him all his life: a tendency to count his chickens before they were hatched. The “privy council,” as he sardonically described the academic board to his staff, remained unreconciled to his plans for restructuring the academy. Ganoe says he never saw another “group so powerful and entrenched.” Exasperated, MacArthur tried to wear them down. One day Hibbs asked him whether a board session should be scheduled for 11:00 A.M., as usual. “No!” the superintendent snapped. “Call the meeting at 4:30 P.M. I want them to come here hungry—and I’ll keep them here that way till I get what I want.”23

  But he didn’t get it, and his confrontations with them in the dim boardroom, with its filigreed mantelpiece decorated by carvings of great warriors, its deep leather chairs, and its huge medieval table, became increasingly tense. Once, according to Danford, the thin membrane of civility was ruptured. Agreeing with Eliot that the faculty was too inbred, the superintendent suggested more teaching at the Point, especially in English, by alumni of other institutions. An elderly colonel rose and said tartly that soldiers should learn to use weapons, not words. MacArthur tried to reply, but the colonel interrupted with increasing frequency, finally cutting in when he was in the middle of a sentence. Slamming his fist on the table, MacArthur roared, “Sit down, sir! I am the superintendent!” Looking around the room he added, “Even if I weren’t, I should be treated in a gentlemanly manner.”24

  Thereafter they were more polite to him, though no more acquiescent. A comparison of the academy’s four-year curricula before and after his superintendency reveals that he added just 389.75 hours, mostly in the humanities, and subtracted a mere 524 hours, mostly in mathematics, drawing, and military skills. In his history of West Point, Stephen E. Ambrose observes of these reforms that “ ‘minimal’ is the only word to describe them,” and long afterward MacArthur conceded: “The success obtained did not even approximate what I had in mind.” In his second year frustration compounded frustration. Not only had he failed to convert his faculty; Congress rejected his stadium plan and his proposal that the size of the corps be doubled. Probably his greatest achievement was inspiring the cadets of those years. Two of them, Lyman Lemnitzer and Maxwell Taylor, were future army Chiefs of Staff, and two others, Hoyt Vandenberg and Thomas D. White, became air force Chiefs of Staff. Over the objections of the New York Times, which scorned academy “pipeclay,” Congress approved retention of the Point’s four-year course, but MacArthur’s role in this is obscure, and in any event the key witness against a three-year plan was General Pershing.25

  In 1921 Warren Harding became President, John W. Weeks succeeded Newton Baker as secretary of war—ever a MacArthur admirer, Baker confirmed him as a permanent brigadier general before leaving office—and Pershing, now Chief of Staff, took a hard look at West Point. The general liked hazing, summer camp, quiet Sundays on the Hudson, and cadets who didn’t smoke, read newspapers, receive spending money, or enjoy six-hour leaves in the fleshpots of New York. He and those around him wanted to turn the academy’s clock back. Spurred by indignant DOGS and the seething faculty, they had already chosen MacArthur’s successor, Brigadier General Fred W. Sladen, West Point ‘90. Sladen didn’t carry a riding crop, discard the wire stiffener in his cap, or read John Dewey. He was ready to reimpose all the restraints MacArthur had scrapped, including the cigarette ban. Pershing wanted him to move into the superintendent’s mansion. All he needed was an excuse to relieve MacArthur.26

  He couldn’t find it. He knew that a team of officers from his staff had concluded that discipline had suffered at the Point, but their report was still in the mill. Besides, its authors were philistine academy graduates; the public, weighing MacArthur’s lustrous war record, would discount their findings. The customary tour of duty for a superintendent was four years, and MacArthur seemed destined to serve that long when, on January 30, 1922—less than three years after his appointment—Pershing unexpectedly announced that he was being transferred to the Philippines. That same day the Chief of Staff sent MacArthur an amazing letter. He had, he said, just learned that the superintendent had recently testified before a committee on Capitol Hill about the West Point budget. “I am astonished to hear this,” he continued, “as evidently you neither called at this office nor on the Secretary of War during your visit. I think a proper conception of the ordinary military courtesies, to say nothing of Army regulations and customs of the Service, should have indicated to an officer of your experience and rank the propriety of making known your presence in Washington, the purpose of your visit, and to have considered with the Department the matters you proposed to bring to the attention of the Military Committee.”27

  In his reply of February 2, MacArthur expressed mystification. He had been summoned to Washington on a few hours’ notice, “having barely time to make the necessary arrangements and rail connections.” On arrival, he had notified the Adjutant General’s Office of his presence, though this had been unnecessary: “It has never been customary for the superintendent to report for immediate instructions to his military superiors when summoned by a committee of Congress.” After testifying, he had phoned Pershing’s office and asked if the Chief of Staff wanted to see him. An aide had replied that he didn’t. MacArthur concluded: “I regret exceedingly if this incident may have given any impression of discourtesy to two superior officers whom I hold in the highest respect and esteem; as shown by the above statement of fact none was intended.”28

  There is no record that his apology was accepted. MacArthur should not have expected that it would be. Pershing’s anger had nothing to do with the superintendent’s visit to Washington. Like his posting to the Philippines, it was evidence of a very different affront. Brigadier General MacArthur was guilty of one of the oldest wrongs one man can inflict on another. The four-star general had had his eye on a woman, and the dashing brigadier had heisted her.29

  Actually it is a question of which of them had rustled the other—whether the proud, charming West Point superintendent had winkled out the Chief of Staffs favorite divorcée or whether the sophisticated, sexually experienced flapper had filched a beloved son whose mother’s attention, for once, was distracted. There is no correspondence from either party, for like so many engagements in the suitor’s military career, this one went swiftly. They met one evening during a party at Tuxedo Park, a resort twenty miles south of the academy. Before the night was out, they were betrothed. “If he hadn’t proposed the first time we met, I believe I would have done it myself,” MacArthur’s fiancee told reporters.30

  MacArthur’s wife, Louise Cromwell Brooks

  MacArthur and Louise, March 1925

  Their engagement was announced in the January 15, 1922, New York Times, and Pershing’s and Pinky’s plans lay in ruins. Pinky was the greater loser. The general’s suit had already been rejected, but the brigadier’s mother had lost her heart’s desire. Probably she would not have relinquished him readily in any case. This bride, however, was the last match she could have approved. Her husband would have been shocked. Robert E. Lee would have been appalled. Mrs. Arthur MacArthur was beside herself. She took to her bed and told a condoling friend, “Of course, the attraction is purely physical.” She was right. It was. But on both sides it was physical attraction of a very high order.31

  Like MacArthur’s raccoon coat, Henriette Louise Cromwell Brooks—she detested her first name, and preferred to be called Louise—belonged to the 1920s. The groom-to-be was ill at ease in that era; he didn’t understand the stock market, didn’t like jazz, wouldn’t sample bathtub gin. Louise adored all three and a great deal else that either repelled him or baffled him. And she was superbly equipped to enjoy the giddiest amusements of the time. A stepdaughter of Edward T.
Stotesbury of Philadelphia, and a sister of the James Cromwell who married Doris Duke, she had been educated at the best finishing schools. Her Washington debut had been the most-discussed social event of that season: Rauscher’s restaurant at Connecticut and L Street had been converted into a garden for the occasion, with cedar trees, asparagus ferns, palms, roses, and live yellow canaries. The first of what ultimately became her four ventures into matrimony—MacArthur was the second—had been to Walter Brooks, a Baltimore socialite and contractor for whom she bore two children. By the time it ended in 1919 she had begun to discover bobbed hair, short skirts, and Paris’s international set.32

  In Paris her name had been “linked,” as the columnists put it, with those of Pershing, a widower; Colonel John G. “Quek” Quekemeyer, a bachelor; and England’s Admiral Sir David Beatty, who was very much married. Later gossip had it that Louise was responsible for the breakup of the admiral’s marriage, but Ethel Beatty didn’t mention it in her suit for divorce, and in any event the commander in chief of the AEF had taken a proprietary interest in Louise before then. Back in Washington, she became his official hostess, and capital rumor had it that she would become the second Mrs. Pershing. Newspaper accounts of the time put her age at twenty-five. Since she had married Brooks in 1908, this is absurd. She was in her thirties, but didn’t look it. There was about her something of the air of those other Jazz Age gamines Zelda Fitzgerald and Clara Bow. With her tousled short hair, roving eyes, and impish grin, she seemed forever on the prowl for The Great Gatsby’s “gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover.” She thought she had found him in Douglas MacArthur.