The General vs. the President

by H. W. Brands

  Acheson’s elevation to the post of America’s top diplomat did nothing to improve his opinion of those he considered his intellectual and moral inferiors. Nor did it moderate his arrogance. He disdained to defend himself against those he called “primitives,” among whom he placed Joseph McCarthy first. Instead he defended Alger Hiss. He said he had known Hiss and his brother Donald Hiss from childhood and trusted their word implicitly. He judged that the court that convicted Hiss had got the verdict wrong. He told reporters, “I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss.”

  He should have. Evidence released from Soviet archives many years later revealed with near conclusiveness that Hiss had indeed spied for Moscow. But Acheson considered Hiss one of his own kind, several cuts above McCarthy and the others who persecuted honest men like himself.

  Acheson’s defense of Hiss outraged McCarthy and the senator’s Republican allies. McCarthy read to the Senate Acheson’s statement of support for Hiss and wondered aloud if the secretary of state intended to “turn his back on other Communists who were associated with Hiss.” Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana demanded that Truman fire Acheson for sheltering Hiss and said he was “prouder than ever” that he had voted against Acheson’s confirmation as secretary of state. Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa blasted Acheson and Truman in the same breath by proclaiming that there would be a “mass revolt by the American people” if the people knew to what lengths the administration had gone in covering up for Hiss. The Senate, despite its solid Democratic majority, proceeded to vote to authorize its Foreign Relations Committee to launch an investigation of the charges leveled by McCarthy and the others about a cover-up of communists in the State Department.

  Meanwhile, Acheson demanded that McCarthy produce his list of communists, whether the version with 205 or the mere 57. And Acheson’s spokesman, John Peurifoy, denied the other numbers the senator slung around. The president’s loyalty board had not identified 300 department employees as disloyal, and it had not fired 80, Peurifoy said. Reporters asked Peurifoy how much confidence he had in the department’s ability to detect disloyalty in its ranks. Would the department’s security system “screen out a Dr. Fuchs”? one inquired. The Fuchs case had nothing to do with the State Department, but the revelation that America’s most closely guarded secret had been compromised lent credence to the conservative charges of laxness in matters of national security. Peurifoy made no promises. “All I can say is that our system is a continuing process,” he replied. “It’s a difficult job and we keep at it.”

  McCarthy refused to reveal his lists. He said that doing so would compromise the investigative agencies that had unearthed the identities of the people on the lists. He similarly refused to identify the agencies. He hinted at having informants inside the State Department, but he refused to identify them, saying their jobs would not be “worth a tinker’s damn” if he did so.

  Acheson sniffed in derision, confirmed in his dismal judgment of democracy. The American system could produce an admirable leader like Truman, but it also produced primitives like McCarthy. And the primitives appeared to be gaining ground.

  7

  ARTHUR MACARTHUR IV was the only child of Douglas and Jean MacArthur. He was named for Douglas MacArthur’s father, Arthur MacArthur Jr., and elder brother, Arthur MacArthur III, who died of appendicitis more than a decade before Arthur IV was born. Twelve years old in early 1950, the boy had never visited America. His earliest years were passed in the Philippines, from which he escaped by PT boat with his father and mother as the Japanese were closing in on Corregidor in 1942. The boy and his mother spent the rest of the war in Australia, where he acquired a touch of an Ozzie accent, and they joined his father in Japan at the end of the war.

  Living in the American embassy in the middle of bombed-out Tokyo, Arthur had few playmates. At the first birthday party he celebrated in Japan, the guests were army generals and colonels who played musical chairs and made sure the boss’s kid won. Occasionally, a foreign diplomat would appear with a child around Arthur’s age, but for the most part the boy dwelled in a world of adults: his father, his mother, his British governess, the household staff, his father’s aides. He was often alone, reading books and comics or rowing about the embassy pond in a red, white and blue boat that bore the same name as his father’s airplane, Bataan.

  He craved his father’s attention and regularly received it at one particular time of day: early morning. Douglas MacArthur allowed himself to be awakened every day at seven by Arthur, who would tear into his parents’ bedroom and wrestle with his father in the big bed. The three would be joined by the family’s four dogs, and father, son and canines would romp about the room making all manner of noise. Jean would retreat to another room to escape the exuberance.

  The general treated his son as a genius. When the boy showed an aptitude for music, he received instruments and instruction in musical theory and practice. When Arthur painted a watercolor, MacArthur invited reporters to see it and declared the work “better than a Rembrandt.”

  MacArthur’s father had been a distinguished general and a winner of the Medal of Honor. MacArthur himself was even more distinguished, and likewise a Medal of Honor winner. MacArthur assumed his son would continue the martial tradition. He wrote to the corps of cadets at West Point, where he had excelled as a student and later served as commandant, “I hope that God will let me live to see the day when young Arthur MacArthur is sworn in on The Plain as a plebe at West Point.”

  —

  FAMILY TRADITION MEANT a great deal to Douglas MacArthur. He could recite from memory the story of his father’s heroics during the American Civil War, when the senior MacArthur had been an adjutant with a Wisconsin regiment at the Battle of Missionary Ridge. “No one seems to know just what orders may have been given, but suddenly the flag of the 24th Wisconsin started forward,” Douglas MacArthur would say. “With it was the color sergeant, the color guard of two corporals and the adjutant. Up they went, step by step. The enemy’s fire was intense. Down went the color bearer. One of the corporals seized the colors as they fell, but was bayoneted before he could move. A shell took off the head of the other corporal, but the adjutant grasped the flag and kept on. He seemed surrounded by nothing but gray coats. A Confederate colonel thrust viciously at his throat, but even as he lunged a bullet struck and the deflected blade just ripped a shoulder strap. No movement yet from the Union lines. And then, above the roar of battle, sounded the adjutant’s voice: ‘On, Wisconsin!’ ”

  MacArthur could see the fighting unfold before his mind’s eye. “They come, then; they come with a rush and a roar, a blue tide of courage, a whole division of them. Shouting, cursing, struggling foot by foot, heads bent as in a gale! Gasping breath from tortured lungs! Those last few feet before the log breastworks seem interminable! Men tumble over like tenpins! The charge is losing momentum! They falter! Officers are down! Sergeants now lead! And then, suddenly, on the crest—the flag! Once again that cry: ‘On, Wisconsin!’ Silhouetted against the sky, the adjutant stands on the parapet waving the colors where the whole regiment can see him! Through the ragged blue line, from one end of the division to the other, comes an ugly roar, like the growl of a wounded bear! They race those last few steps, eyes blazing, lips snarling, bayonets plunging! And Missionary Ridge is won.”

  MacArthur could never recount the battle without hearing that primal roar of the Union soldiers, without feeling the blast of the shells and the rush of the bullets, without tasting the salt of sweat and blood. The story had become his story as much as his father’s, for the MacArthurs were cut from a single cloth of Scots courage. He had since heard the roar, felt the blast, tasted the salt of his own battles. Yet it all began on Missionary Ridge.

  “The adjutant suddenly falls to the ground exhausted, his body retching, racked with pain. He is a terrible sight—covered with blood and mud, hatless, his smoke-blackened face barely recognizable, his clothes torn to tatters. Sheridan, the division commander, utters not a wo
rd—he just stares at him—and then takes him in his arms. And his deep voice seems to break a little as he says: ‘Take care of him. He has just won the Medal of Honor.’ ”

  —

  THERE WAS MORE to the MacArthur tradition than valor. There was firm adherence to military principle in the face of political meddling. Douglas MacArthur entered West Point about the time his father, by then a general in the U.S. Army, was appointed military governor of the Philippines. The son cut a swath through the academy. “Handsome as a prince he was, six feet tall and weighing about 160, with dark hair and a ruddy, outdoors look,” recalled an admirer. Another contemporary described him as “brave as a lion and smart as hell.” Yet some thought him too full of himself. “Arrogant from the age of eight,” remarked one of the skeptics. Another classmate declared, “To know MacArthur is to love him or hate him—you can’t just like him.” MacArthur ranked first in his class three out of his four years, achieving in his final year the coveted rank of first captain, a distinction previously enjoyed by such academy models as Robert E. Lee and John Pershing.

  His initial posting took him to the Philippines. The assignment might have been awkward under any circumstances, with his father the ranking officer in the recently acquired American colony. But it was rendered more awkward by a feud that had developed between Arthur MacArthur and William Howard Taft, the civilian governor of the Philippines. Arthur MacArthur was responsible for military security in the islands, and he blamed Taft for sacrificing security to political convenience. MacArthur’s innate haughtiness didn’t help matters, goading Taft beyond endurance and bringing governance of the Philippines to a standstill. Eventually President Theodore Roosevelt felt obliged to relieve MacArthur and recall him to America.

  Yet he still managed to promote his son’s career. The army sent Arthur MacArthur on a tour of East Asia, and he took Douglas along. They ventured to Japan after that country stunned Russia with a sneak attack against its Pacific fleet and commenced a successful war against the much larger power. Washington wanted to know how Japan had done it and what it portended for the United States. “I met all the great Japanese commanders,” Douglas MacArthur remembered later: “Oyama, Kuroki, Nogi and the brilliant Admiral Heihachiro Togo—those grim, taciturn, aloof men of iron character and unshakeable purpose. It was here that I first encountered the boldness and courage of the Nipponese soldier. His almost fanatical belief in and reverence for his Emperor impressed me indelibly.”

  Father and son spent nine months in Asia and the surrounding waters. They visited China, Indochina, Siam, the East Indies and India, speaking to government officials, local dignitaries, military officers and ordinary men and women. Douglas MacArthur was smitten by the Orient, which he came to consider the crucible of humanity’s fate and his own country’s. “Here lived almost half the population of the world, with probably more than half of the raw products to sustain future generations. Here was western civilization’s last earth frontier. It was crystal clear to me that the future and, indeed, the very existence of America were irrevocably entwined with Asia and its island outposts.”

  The Asia tour proved a last hurrah for Arthur MacArthur, who never recovered professionally from his firing in the Philippines. He was promoted to lieutenant general, the highest-ranking officer in the army, but was passed over for chief of staff, the highest post, and when his bête noire, Taft, became president, he retired, a bitter man. He regularly gathered with his comrades from the Civil War, who still revered the hero of Missionary Ridge. Their reunions gradually grew less frequent as their numbers dwindled, but they summoned the fraternal spirit for a fiftieth reunion, at which they shared the old stories, sang the old songs, toasted comrades present and gone. Arthur MacArthur rose to recognize their valor and to be recognized for his. But after a few words he collapsed. He died on the spot, surrounded by his men, who said a prayer as he left them forever.

  “My whole world changed that night,” Douglas MacArthur recalled. “Never have I been able to heal the wound in my heart.”

  —

  FORTY YEARS LATER the wound dully ached, most days. But it sharply throbbed each time a politician put the trivialities of popularity and vote-getting ahead of the life-and-death business of war and military strategy. His father’s death had redoubled Douglas MacArthur’s determination to construct a career that would have made the old general proud. He fought in World War I with unsurpassed distinction. Appointed chief of staff to the commander of the famous Forty-Second, or Rainbow, Division, he delegated the paperwork of his staff job to subordinates and headed for the front. He joined a French raid into German-held territory to capture prisoners to interrogate. For his bravery he received the Croix de Guerre. A short while later he spearheaded an American attack against the German lines. He had warned his men about the dangers of poison gas and insisted that they keep their gas masks handy at all times. He ignored his own advice, advancing with neither mask nor weapon other than a riding crop. He was gassed and briefly incapacitated. Yet rather than being embarrassed, he concluded upon recovery that the fearless figure he presented was worth any added risk. To complement his riding crop he donned puttees, and to fashion a distinctive profile he removed the metal band that held the brim of his hat in place. The hat slouched in a devil-may-care manner, which drew additionally from a turtleneck sweater and a long scarf that caught the French breezes. Some of his soldiers thought him a dandy, but none required a second look to recognize him.

  MacArthur carried off his pose by exhibiting courage and audacity unexcelled in the American Expeditionary Forces. Promoted to brigadier general, he led his brigade from the front. His gallantry and flair for the dramatic made him a reporter’s dream. “I had never before met so vivid, so captivating, so magnetic a man,” wrote journalist William Allen White. “He stood six feet, had a clean-shaven face, a clean-cut mouth, nose and chin, lots of brown hair, good eyes with a ‘come hither’ in them that must have played the devil with the girls, and yet he was as ‘he’ as Chapman’s bull in the Estes Park meadow.”

  MacArthur’s comrades were equally impressed. An officer who served with him throughout the war declared, “He has no superior as an officer in the world.” His divisional commander said, “MacArthur is the bloodiest fighting man in this army….There’s no risk of battle that any soldier is called upon to take that he is not liable to look up and see MacArthur at his side. At every advance MacArthur, with just his cap and his riding crop, will go forward with the first line. He is the source of the greatest possible inspiration to the men of this division, who are devoted to him.” The French commander in his sector called MacArthur “the most remarkable officer I have ever known.” A grizzled noncommissioned officer employed more picturesque colorful language: “He’s a hell-to-breakfast baby, long and lean, kind to us and tough on the enemy. He can spit nickel cigars and chase Germans as well as any doughboy in the Rainbow.”

  —

  MACARTHUR RETURNED TO America after the war, and the army named him superintendent of West Point. He was the youngest officer to hold that position in generations, and he set about dragging the academy into the twentieth century. He liberalized the curriculum to inform cadets about the world beyond the military, and he substituted study of World War I for that of the Civil War. Most shocking to the faculty, he made personal visits to their classes, taking notes and afterward suggesting improvements.

  His reforms aroused resistance, which he might have weathered had it been confined to the affairs of the academy. In fact his most powerful opponent was one he crossed in an affair of quite another sort. John Pershing, the commander of U.S. forces in France during the war and currently army chief of staff, had been eyeing Louise Cromwell Brooks, a wealthy young widow, for some time, as newspapers were reporting. But Louise preferred MacArthur, who was handsomer, closer to her own age and a rising rather than a setting star. The courtship hardly counted as one: MacArthur met Louise at a party and proposed to her that night. She said yes. They were wed on
Valentine’s Day 1922 at her stepfather’s Palm Beach estate. “Marriage of Mars and Millions,” one paper cheekily observed.

  Pershing had his revenge. He banished MacArthur to the Philippines. Pershing naturally denied any link between the distant posting and the intimacy between MacArthur and Louise. “It’s all damn poppycock,” he said of the allegations. “If I were married to all the ladies that gossips have me engaged to, I’d be a regular Brigham Young.”

  Pershing eventually retired and MacArthur returned from exile, to the relief of Louise, who nonetheless divorced him a few years later. He recovered sufficiently to marry Jean Faircloth, a Tennessee woman eight years younger than Louise, in 1937.

  In 1925 he took part in a crucial test of the military chain of command. General Billy Mitchell was an air corps hero of World War I and a pain to his commanders. He ardently believed and loudly stated that airpower held the key to victory in the next war. He found an audience in Congress that paid heed to his theory, against the opposition of the navy and its supporters, who held that the blue-water fleet was and always must be America’s first line of defense. A trial of Mitchell’s theory was proposed and conducted; surplus warships, including a captured German dreadnought, were the targets. When the ships sank, Mitchell’s stock rose, along with the ire of his antagonists. After further provocations—he castigated the Navy and War Departments for “incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense”—the anti-Mitchell group arranged his court-martial.

  MacArthur received an order to join the court. He later called it “one of the most distasteful orders” he ever got, for he sided with Mitchell on the right of officers to speak their minds. “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,” he explained. “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.” In any event, suppression would fail. “The one thing in this world that cannot be stopped is a sound idea. The individual may be martyred, but his thoughts live on.”