American Caesar
Page 18
Mitchell was convicted in a split vote. How MacArthur voted was, and is, a mystery. After the verdict an enterprising newsman, investigating the wastebasket in the judge’s anteroom, found a crumpled ballot marked “Not Guilty” in MacArthur’s handwriting. In his memoirs the General merely writes, “I did what I could in his behalf and I helped save him from dismissal,” but nine years after Mitchell’s death he wrote Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin that he had cast the sole vote against conviction, that Billy knew it, and that he had “never ceased to express his gratitude.” Kenney recalls Mitchell saying: “A grand guy, Douglas MacArthur, and a true friend. I’m very fond of him. Some day people will realize how good a friend of mine he was back there in 1925.” Yet in a manuscript written ten years after the trial he said that MacArthur “regrets the part he played in my court-martial. May he be brave enough to say it openly.” According to Betty Mitchell, her husband never knew how any judge voted.51
Often during the proceedings, Burke Davis notes in his history The Billy Mitchell Affair, “General MacArthur was especially inattentive. He and his wife were like newlyweds, exchanging meaningful glances—Mrs. MacArthur smiling over a bunch of violets which she carried each day; her husband could hardly keep his eyes off her.” Less than two years later he couldn’t keep his eyes on her at all, on duty or off, because Louise had moved to 125 East Fiftieth Street in New York while he stayed on alone at Rainbow Hill. Missing her, missing her children, tired of writing promotional leaflets and eating rubber-chicken lunches, he brooded over the sorry state at which the profession of arms had arrived. Like Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill, he had come to regard the late 1920s as a spiritual desert. He needed something to engage his attention and arouse his enthusiasm, and in mid-September 1927 an unexpected opportunity arrived. The president of the American Olympic Committee had dropped dead. The other members, knowing of the General’s strong support for athletics at West Point, offered him the position. He instantly accepted.52
Major General MacArthur, 1926
Major General MacArthur at
MacArthur in mufti at the time of his appointment as Chief of Staff
MacArthur with
CMTC camp in Maryland
MacArthur as leader of U.S. Olympic team, 1928
General Pershing
MacArthur wearing his decorations, December 1930
In some ways American participation in the 1928 Olympics, held in Amsterdam, was a MacArthur production. Everyone there appears to have been taken with him. Even William L. Shirer, then a liberal young sports writer for the Paris Tribune, recalls that after a drink with MacArthur he was “rather impressed by the general. He seemed above the stripe of what I had imagined our professional soldiers to be. He was forceful, articulate, thoughtful, even a bit philosophical, and well read. Only his arrogance bothered me.” Certainly he dominated the U.S. contingent, graciously accepting a Dutch gift of MacArthur red roses, named for his father by Luther Burbank; conspicuously averting his eyes for photographers when Hilda Schrader, Germany’s great swimmer, broke a shoulder strap; and, when the manager of the U.S. boxing team angrily threatened to withdraw over what he regarded as an unfair decision, jutting the MacArthur jaw forward and growling: “Americans never quit.” Striding back and forth before his athletes, he intoned: “We are here to represent the greatest country on earth. We did not come here to lose gracefully. We came here to win—and win decisively.” Thereupon his charges set seventeen records, won more victories than the next two countries combined, and scored 131 points to 62 for Finland and 59 for Germany, the runners-up.53
As the steamer Roosevelt was about to leave the pier, two American stowaways were stopped by officials at the foot of the gangplank. The team knew them and sympathized with them, and MacArthur, on impulse, cried, “Just the boys I’ve been waiting for!” and dragged them aboard. Defying regulations was pure MacArthur. So was his next act, putting the stowaways to work scraping paint. And so, unfortunately, was his Olympic report to President Coolidge, which foreshadowed the ripe prose of his World War II communiques. He began:
In undertaking this difficult task, I recall the passage in Plutarch wherein Themistocles, being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, replied. “Which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic Games or the crier who proclaims who are the conquerors?” And indeed to portray adequately the vividness and brilliance of that great spectacle would be worthy even of the pen of Homer himself. No words of mine can even remotely portray such great moments as the resistless onrush of that matchless California eight as it swirled and crashed down the placid waters of the Sloten; that indomitable will for victory which marked the deathless rush of [Ray] Barbuti; that sparkling combination of speed and grace by Elizabeth Robinson which might have rivaled even Artemis herself on the heights of Olympus. I can but record the bare, blunt facts, trusting that imagination will supply the magic touch to that which can never be forgotten by those who were actually present. . . ,54
One blunt fact, noted in newspaper gossip columns, was that Mrs. Douglas MacArthur had been, not in Holland with her husband, but in Manhattan on the arms of various escorts. Wild stories were circulating about her behavior in speakeasies and on Westchester weekends; she was making up for time she regarded as wasted at No. 1 Calle Victoria and on Rainbow Hill. Shortly after MacArthur finished his Olympic report to the President he was ordered to return to Manila and assume command of all forces in the Philippines. “No assignment,” he said, “could have pleased me more.” No prospect could have pleased his wife less, and so he sailed from Seattle alone.55
Back in his House on the Wall he heard from her attorneys; she was heading for Reno. He agreed to a divorce on “any grounds that will not compromise my honor.” The preposterous grounds decided upon were “failure to provide” support for a multimillion-dollar heiress. On June 18, 1929, the decree was granted. An embarrassed Manila editor brought the AP flimsy to MacArthur. The General suggested he run it; he himself would have no comment. Later Louise commented: “It was an interfering mother-in-law who eventually succeeded in disrupting our married life.” When he was promoted to full general and she was married to Lionel Atwill, the motion picture actor, she wistfully told a reporter, “It looks like I traded four stars for one.” At the time of his death, when she had become Louise Heiberg, she sent a white marble urn containing white rosebuds and little blue forget-me-nots to his funeral. None of these remarks or gestures had much bearing on life as he had lived it. Louise had not only been unable to share his love of the flag, his sense of duty, and his thirst for fame; she had not even understood them.56
His search for glory was never entirely scrupulous. As Walter Millis puts it, “Douglas MacArthur was a ‘political soldier’—a phenomenon comparatively rare in American experience . . . a military politician. From an early date he had taken a close interest in partisan politics; he was prepared to use his prestige as a soldier to influence civil policy decisions, and the arguments of military necessity to override the diplomatic or political objectives of his civilian superiors.” As early as 1929 his name was mentioned as someone presidential kingmakers should watch. In Samuel P. Huntington’s words, he was “a brilliant soldier but always something more than a soldier; a controversial, ambitious, transcendent figure, too able, too assured, too talented to be confined within the limits of professional function and responsibility.”57
Even as the Arthur MacArthur within him won medals, read deeply, and devised fresh strategic concepts, so the Pinky in him manipulated people shamelessly, and these twin drives were never more apparent than during his third, two-year tour of duty in the Philippines. On the one hand he pondered ways to parry the Japanese thrust which, he felt, would eventually threaten the archipelago. On the other hand he was scheming to become the youngest Chief of Staff in the army’s history. Valor and guile, military genius and obsequiousness toward his superiors—the admirable and the deplorable—would coexist in him until the last days of
his active career. Luis Domingo, the valet he now acquired in Manila, depicts the General as an almost fanatical believer in keeping fit for what lay ahead; he did calisthenics every day, never drank, was always home from parties by 11:00 P.M., and spent long hours in his quarters “walking, walking, walking,” almost as though he was fleeing the goads which had spurred him since childhood.58
On one of his first Manila mornings as departmental commander, his adjutant brought him a thick volume of mimeographed precedents established by other generals who had occupied his office. “Burn them,” MacArthur said. “I’ll not be bound by precedents. Any time a problem comes up, I’ll make the decision at once—immediately. “Like many of his command gestures, this one was more dramatic than realistic. His administration was, after all, part of a continuum, and his actions had to be guided to some extent by his predecessors’ contingency plans, ranging from preparations for coping with the natural disasters which struck the Philippines from time to time to the latest refinements of War Plan Orange. These last were of particular interest to the General, for in recent years Japanese sugar workers and entrepreneurs had been pouring into several Philippine communities, notably the Mindanao city of Davao, fourth largest in the islands. In his reminiscences MacArthur writes that he and Manuel Quezon “discussed freely the growing threat of Japanese expansion.” That is disingenuous. They certainly discussed it, but they disagreed sharply on what to do about it. The General and his staff were alarmed about the growing colony of immigrants, while Quezon and Filipino businessmen welcomed the newcomers. They saw the immigrants bringing fresh capital and enterprise to the islands’ lagging economy. To soldiers, they were a threat.59
The threat was heightened by provisions of the Five-Power Naval Treaty, which prohibited the construction of new forts in the archipelago, and by shrunken defense appropriations for the islands. A few weeks before MacArthur’s departure from Seattle a joint army-navy board had reaffirmed that Bataan must be strengthened “to withstand a protracted siege, and Corregidor particularly must hold out to the last extremity,” but at the same time the board conceded that only 17,000 Americans and Filipinos, supported by eighteen aircraft, would be pitted against the 300,000 men Tokyo could put ashore in the first month of hostilities. And in this WPO draft nothing was said about eventual relief of the besieged U.S. garrison. MacArthur protested that his troops were “pitifully inadequate” for the job, though he did not go as far as W. Cameron Forbes, a former governor-general of the archipelago, who had written the year before: “I doubt very much if any real effort will be made to defend the Philippine Islands as such. They are indefensible and from a military point of view are not worth defending. The main thing is to make any interference with them as costly as possible.” In point of fact, American officials contemplating a war between the United States and Japan had virtually written off the islands. MacArthur never accepted the implied sacrifice, and from 1928 onward the chief obstacle to Japanese conquest of the Philippines was his implacable will.60
Quezon appreciated that. Although they differed about Davao, the friendship between the Filipino patriot and the son of his old antagonist burgeoned. It was a relationship which would have historical consequences. Lacking a family once more, MacArthur, channeling his drive toward greater authority, was forming useful friendships on all sides. One of them was with Governor-General Henry L. Stimson. When Hoover brought Stimson home to become secretary of state in 1929, the General wrote him: “No one could have more truly earned such a place and no one will more truly grace it. I hope and believe it is but a stepping stone to that last and highest call of America, the Presidency.” The General cherished hopes that he might be appointed Stimson’s successor. Quezon recommended him for the position, but another man was named. Undaunted, MacArthur observed the Washington political scene with a lively interest, awaiting a chance for a new move.61
It came in 1930. Summerall, now Chief of Staff, had cabled him that Hoover “desires to appoint you as Chief of Engineers. . . . He is convinced of your organizing ability and professional qualifications.” MacArthur, aware that chiefs of engineers do not become Chiefs of Staff, had politely declined. He had been carefully feeding the hungry ego of the new President’s secretary of war, Patrick J. Hurley. Seeing his chance when Hurley sent the Senate a routine communication on the Philippines, the General sent him an oleaginous missive:
I have just read in the local papers your letter . . . and I cannot refrain from expressing to you the unbounded admiration it has caused me. It is the most comprehensive and statesmanlike paper that has ever been presented with reference to this complex and perplexing problem. At one stroke it has clarified issues which have perplexed and embarrassed statesmen for the last thirty years. If nothing else had ever been written upon the subject, your treatise would be complete and absolute. It leaves nothing to be said and has brought confidence and hope out of the morass of chaos and confusion which has existed in the minds of millions of people. It is the most statesmanlike utterance that has emanated from the American Government in many decades and renews in the hearts of many of us our confirmed faith in American principles and ideals. You have done a great and courageous piece of work and I am sure that the United States intends even greater things for you in the future. Please accept my heartiest congratulations not only for yourself personally but the great nation to which we both belong.62
For a while he heard nothing. Discouraged, he asked the adjutant general to bring him home; his mother, he said, needed him. But the administration was giving serious thought to a successor for Summerall, who would retire in the fall of 1930, and MacArthur’s name was being discussed seriously. Hurley had at first balked, arguing that a man who couldn’t “hold his woman” shouldn’t be Chief of Staff. Since then, however, MacArthur’s remarkable letter had impressed the secretary of war with its wisdom and insight. He therefore proposed MacArthur’s appointment to Hoover, who announced it on August 6. The President said he had “searched the army for younger blood” and “finally determined upon General Douglas MacArthur. His brilliant abilities and sterling character need no exposition from me.” Pershing, who had been urging one of his Chaumont clique for the post, gave his grudging approval, reportedly remarking of MacArthur, “Well, Mr. President, he is one of my boys. I have nothing more to say.”63
According to MacArthur, now that he had the prize, he hesitated to take it: “I knew the dreadful ordeal that faced the new Chief of Staff, and shrank from it . . . . But my mother . . . sensed what was in my mind and cabled me to accept. She said my father would be ashamed if I showed timidity. That settled it.” After a testimonial dinner in the Manila Hotel, at which Filipino leaders praised his work in the islands, he sailed on September 19, 1930. On November 21 he was sworn in, the eighth American in history to hold his exalted new rank. Moving his mother into the traditional home of Chiefs of Staff, Fort Myers Number One quarters, a brick mansion on the southern side of the Potomac, he ordered installation of an elevator and construction of a sun porch for her. She ran her finger over his four stars and whispered, “If only your father could see you now! Douglas, you’re everything he wanted to be.”64
Though Pinky did not know it, her son had become something she would not have wanted him to be: the keeper of a concubine. Five months before leaving Luzon he had acquired as a mistress a Eurasian girl named Isabel Rosario Cooper, the daughter of an Oriental woman and a Scottish businessman living in the Philippines. Dorothy Detzer, a Washington lobbyist who met her later, recalls: “I thought I had never seen anything as exquisite. She was wearing a lovely, obviously expensive chiffon tea gown, and she looked as if she were carved from the most delicate opaline. She had her hair in braids down her back.” Isabel and the General had parted on the Manila dock with the understanding that she would follow him to California within a month. After his crossing, she seems to have hesitated, however, and she decided to join him only after he had sent her a heartrending cable from San Francisco signed “Daddy.”
As Chief of Staff, he had to travel a great deal. He always sent her postcards, but she found these poor substitutes for company. She tired of the dog, and grew restless. Reluctantly the General agreed to provide her with a chauffeured limousine; in it, she prowled the night spots’ of Washington and Baltimore, where she seduced, among others, George S. Abell, a descendant of the Baltimore Sun’s founder. She wheedled a large cash gift from MacArthur and spent it on a spree in Havana. Word of these goings-on reached him. Their ardor, as the tabloids would put it, cooled. She asked him to find a job in the capital for her brother. He refused, rudely sent her a “Help Wanted” column torn from a newspaper, and hinted that she look to her father or the brother for future support. Finally, on September 1, 1934, he ended their relationship—or thought he was ending it—by mailing her a train ticket to the West Coast and ocean-liner passage to Manila. But Isabel had no intention of leaving Washington. She moved into a rooming house a few blocks from his office in the State, War, and Navy Building. She was job hunting when she heard that a columnist named Drew Pearson was interested in the General’s past.65