The Best of I.F. Stone

by I. F. Stone

  From embassies and department heads, press releases on the invasion began to appear, but aside from these synthetic reactions there was little excitement in the capital and—significant item—bond sales actually fell off. J. Edgar Hoover called for alertness on the home front, and the War Department asked Congress to establish sixty-nine new national cemeteries. All over town, in government offices as well as in churches, there were special prayer services, and many who do not ordinarily pray joined in them with a sober sense of the struggle on distant beachheads and its human cost. But on Capitol Hill, where some of us seemed to feel prayer was most needed, it had little effect. The galleries were well filled, mostly with visiting service men, but there were only eleven Senators and a scattering of Representatives present when the day’s session opened. Minority Leader Martin told the house that “partisan politics . . . disappear as we think of the heroic deeds of our men and women” but this must be put down to poetic license. The Republican-Southern Democratic coalition soon got back to work in both houses with unabated enthusiasm. “I felt humble this morning when advised of the invasion,” Majority Leader McCormack said. “A strange feeling came over me.” The feeling was not widely shared.

  Celler of New York tried to block a resolution to speed up the trial of Kimmel and Short* by pointing out that Pearl Harbor was in part due to an attitude of public “indifference and callousness . . . influenced by some of the isolationist remarks made in this very House . . . by the gentlemen who are the sponsors of this bill.” Said Celler, “I have due respect for the gentlemen and I do not charge them with anything . . . they had a perfect right to their opinions.” Retorted Dewey Short of Missouri boldly, “We still have them.” The House passed his resolution for trial of Kimmel and Short within three months by a vote of 305 to 35, though trial may disrupt military-naval operations. The Senate went ahead on a bill which promises to hamstring the OPA [Office of Price Administration].

  The big local event of the day was the President’s regular press conference at 4 P.M., which drew a record crowd. Most of the President’s official family, from Fala to Judge Rosenman, seemed to be with him in the executive offices, waiting in a kind of holiday mood to watch the old maestro handle the press. The President was happy and confident but tired, and he has aged. His hand shook a little when he lifted it to the same jaunty cigarette holder. He answers questions slowly, looking up at the ceiling, occasionally wriggling his face and scratching his chest between phrases. Our faces must have shown what most of us felt as we came in. For he began, after an extraordinary pause of several minutes in which no questions were asked and we all stood silent, by saying that the correspondents had the same look on their faces that people all over the country must have and that he thought this a very happy conference. I asked him toward the close to tell us what hopes he felt on this great day, and he said to win the war—100 percent.

  I thought the President’s prayer that night a gauche affair, addressing God in familiar, conversational, and explanatory tone, as if it were a fireside chat beamed at heaven. But I am inclined to be charitable when I think of what D-Day means to Franklin D. Roosevelt, of the years since the “quarantine” speech in which he tried to awaken the American people to their danger and to gird them against enemies they so long refused to recognize. How different it would have been could we have gone into France before it fell; how much easier our task. And how different it would have been if the Germans had turned west and south toward Africa and South America instead of east. How poorly prepared we were in 1941 to resist, and how poorly prepared we are even today to understand. D-Day’s events in Congress, the slash last Saturday in UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] funds, the unseemly and ungrateful uproar over the lend-leasing of a cruiser to the Soviet Union indicate how backward public opinion continues to be, and how formidable is the task the President will face in making the peace. D-Day served to remind us that we are heavily in debt to the man in the White House as well as to the boys on the beachheads.

  * * *

  *Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short commanded, respectively, the U.S. naval and military forces at Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese attack.

  The Same Old Codgers

  A vivid snapshot of the opening of the United Nations conference in San Francisco. The war is all but won, Roosevelt is dead, and the new challenge is to forge a more durable peace than the one that followed the First World War. Stone’s acerbic evaluation of Truman and the other leaders of the day—the “same old codgers to whose fumbling we owe World War II”—differs from today’s consensus, which credits that generation for creating such lasting if imperfect institutions as NATO, the Bretton Woods system, and the UN itself, and for at least establishing a world order that helped prevent a third global conflagration. But for Stone, the magnitude of the opportunity demanded statesmen of true greatness, and he was disappointed to find statesmanship in short supply.

  . . .

  May 5, 1945

  THIS IS A SPLENDIDLY VIGOROUS and beautiful city. Its lofty hills, great bay, clear skies, and fresh breezes make it an exhilarating place. The cable cars that crawl up and down its steep streets provide almost as exciting a ride as the chute-the-chutes of Coney Island, and the view from luxurious Nob Hill, where one feels closer to the stars at night, goes to one’s head. For the press this has been a glamorous week spent scooting around between press conferences and plenary sessions. We saw and heard the bright, birdlike Dutch Foreign Minister, Van Kleffens; the school-masterish Deputy British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee; the monolithic but quick-witted Molotov; Nehru’s fragile but intense sister, Mrs. Pandit; dapper Georges Bidault, the French Foreign Minister, who looks more like a care-free boulevardier than an underground leader; and, of course, Mr. Stettinius, our matinee-idol Secretary of State, whose press conferences are remarkable chiefly for his extraordinary facility in remembering the faces and names of reporters. It’s the old apple sauce, but we lap it up just the same.

  The press is housed in the huge Palace Hotel, on Market Street, down near the wharves, and the correspondents, for whom this is a kind of old-home week, obtain much of their mysteriously authoritative inside information by interviewing each other at the crowded bars and in the high glass-ceilinged dining-room. We are perpetually in transit, like skating bugs, from the Palace to Union Square, which is neat and fashionable and quite unlike its New York namesake; there, at the St. Francis, the Russians and the French are housed. Thence we go to Nob Hill, where the British and the Chinese are in the de luxe Mark Hopkins, with its famous rooftop bar, and the American delegation in the equally plush if less famous Fairmont. Down-hill again we speed to the domed Opera House, where the conference sessions are held, and the big Veterans’ Administration Building next door, which is the “press room” of the conference; there are batteries of typewriters and telegraph machines and a most delightful clatter.

  Hollywood, as though fearful of being outshone, is well represented here. Your correspondent, as goggle-eyed as any movie fan, was introduced to Charles Boyer by a member of the French delegation and later that night in the lobby of the Palace to Edward G. Robinson. “Well,” Robinson asked with that overtone of quiet menace for which he is famous, “is our side going to win?” It was definitely an “or else” question, and I hastened to assure him that all would be well.

  The main event, the opening of the conference Wednesday afternoon, might have been an M-G-M opening. Crowds strained against the ropes for blocks around the Opera House to watch the arriving notables; the press flashed its cards with pride; the foreign delegates poured out of their black limousines, trying hard to look dignified and unmoved. Within, in an interior that seemed to have been done by Maxfield Parrish, floodlights lit up the gilded gesso, red plush, and stainless steel; against the blue background of the huge stage stood four brown pillars, symbols of the four freedoms, connected at the top by what appeared to be large segments of a boa constrictor. The
press was with difficulty confined to the triple-tiered galleries by the feminine elite of San Francisco, among whom many heart-rending battles were fought for the honor of ushering at the occasion. But down below camera men swarmed among the delegates of the forty-six nations, kneeling in the aisles and all but hanging from the boxes to get their shots. Flashlight bulbs kept going off like summer lightning, and statesmen obediently composed their faces for the camera.

  The affair itself was sobering. The speeches at the opening session were as banal as the juke-box music which was piped into the Opera House as the delegates arrived. The President’s address was disappointing. The occasion called for either Lincolnian eloquence or plain, common-sense statement. Mr. Truman is fully capable in private of the latter, but he seems to have been prevailed upon to indulge instead in windy moralisms, turgid periods, and the kind of untruths which are regarded as inspirational. I pick one of the many examples from the speech. “None of us doubt,” Mr. Truman said, “that with divine guidance, friendly cooperation, and hard work we shall find an adequate answer to the problem history has put before us.” Mr. Truman would never talk that way in private to a visitor. Why does he in a speech? The statement is not true; some of the wisest of the delegates here certainly do doubt whether we shall find the “answer to the problem history has put before us.” The rhetoric is false, the effect is hollow; it is hooey. In private Mr. Truman would say, “It’s a tough job. I’m not sure we can do it. But we’re going to try our best.” Why not say that in public? That kind of plain talk inspires confidence. The tawdry and flatulent rhetoric which marked most of the speeches depressed me. The occasion was so momentous; the danger so grave; the need so great; the utterance so mediocre.

  The San Francisco conference is as important as Versailles or the Congress of Vienna. But one’s first impression of it is how mediocre is its leadership. The second is how little the cast of characters have changed since Geneva. To be quite frank about it, the conference, for all its glamour, is a meeting of pretty much those same old codgers to whose fumbling we owe World War II. They are still dishing out the same old platitudes and thinking in the same old terms. And so, I suspect, are many of the people they represent. The war, for all its terror and destruction, has not brought about that long-overdue revulsion against nationalism which can alone provide the basis for world order and security. The delegations assembled here indicate that the political parties and the dominant classes of the Western countries and of China are emerging from the conflict momentarily sobered, perhaps, but little changed. Except for the French and Yugoslav delegations, there is no sign here of the new men and forces which welled up from underground in continental Europe to fight fascism. The basic idea at San Francisco is that the big powers must stick together to maintain the peace; this was Metternich’s idea in 1815; it is the kindergarten stage in education toward world security. The problem is how to keep the big powers together; it is the problem that these same men—the Halifaxes, the Edens, the Paul-Boncours, the Van Kleffenses—failed to solve at Geneva. Given the same men, the same parties, the same social systems, can one expect a different result?

  These men lost the last peace, and unless they are replaced they will some day lose the next one. They can give us the first tentative framework of a world order; it is the job of progressive forces to take over from there as soon as possible. For whatever these men do on paper, they do not have the capacity to withstand and deal with real crises. The weak handling of the Polish issue, the clerical power politics focused upon it, the covert anti-Soviet urges associated with it, are indicative of the stresses and strains which peace will put on the relations of the big powers. It will take new leadership, deeper understanding, and firmer resolution if big-power unity is to be maintained when peace comes and trouble begins.

  Brass Hats Undaunted

  I. F. Stone applies his classic technique—close textual analysis informed by thorough knowledge of the historical facts and deep understanding of the ways of bureaucracy—to the army and navy reports on the disaster at Pearl Harbor, and issues a scathing attack on the “stupidity” they reveal. What would Stone say if he could evaluate our nation’s preparation for a possible terrorist attack prior to the events of September 11, 2001?

  . . .

  September 8, 1945

  THE REPORT OF THE NAVAL COURT OF INQUIRY on Pearl Harbor begins by explaining that the Pacific Fleet was organized in three main task forces. The operating schedule was so arranged that there was always one task force at sea, and usually two. “At no time during 1941,” the Court of Inquiry assures us, “were all the vessels of the Fleet in Pearl Harbor.” In accordance with this operating schedule, only Task Force One and part of Task Force Two were in Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese attack. Reading thus far, one feels that naval operations were wisely planned to avoid a situation in which the entire Pacific Fleet might have been destroyed in one enemy attack on the Hawaiian base. But then we read that “the preponderance of the battleship strength of the Fleet” was in Task Force One, and that all three of the battleships of Task Force Two were also in the harbor, and finally that “all battleships of the Pacific Fleet, except one undergoing overhaul at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, were in Pearl Harbor on 7 December.” The Naval Court of Inquiry concludes, however, that this was “purely a coincidence.” The disingenuous approach and the fatuous conclusion are alike characteristic of the report turned in by the three high admirals, Kalbfus, Murfin, and Andrews.

  Despite this solemn rigmarole about the three task forces, the fact is that the Japanese attack had the effect, as the Army Board of Inquiry reports, “of immobilizing and substantially destroying the Pacific Fleet, which was a major threat to Japan’s left flank in its southward move.” To dismiss as “coincidence” the crucial blunder that concentrated all our battleships and most of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor that ghastly morning is to demonstrate the continued presence in the armed services of the brass-hat mentality responsible for that disaster. Admirals and generals are supposed to avoid “coincidences” of this kind when they know war is an imminent possibility, as they knew in the fall of 1941.

  On a par with this Naval Court of Inquiry conclusion is its finding that “condition of readiness No. 3,” in effect at the time of the attack, was “that best suited to the circumstances.” This deserves to rank with the medical gag about the operation being highly successful though the patient died. It draws from Admiral King the tart comment that “condition of readiness No. 3” is that “normally maintained in port.” In other words the high admirals of the Court of Inquiry still think the condition of readiness observed by a ship in Brooklyn in peacetime was “best suited” to the circumstances in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This finding will read better in Japanese.

  As can be seen from these samples, the naval report on Pearl Harbor is hardly a masterpiece of forthright self-criticism. The report of the Army Board of Inquiry is by comparison a vigorous and outspoken document. The mealy-mouthed naval report is accompanied by separate statements from Admiral King, as commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, and from Secretary Forrestal. Both King and Forrestal indicate their displeasure with the Court of Inquiry and speak out with manly frankness on the navy’s responsibility for Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, the army board’s report is accompanied by a separate statement by Secretary Stimson which seeks to soften the criticism in that document and to rebut findings which place on the General Staff in Washington and on General Marshall, its chief, a substantial share of the blame for our unpreparedness at Pearl Harbor. The net effect of the reports and their accompanying statements is to leave the impression that the services as a whole are still far from prepared fully to admit the errors which made Pearl Harbor possible. That attitude does not promise well for the future.

  Both the army and navy reports do a great deal of buck-passing. The prize specimen is the naval court’s finding that “constitutional requirements that war be declared by
Congress” made it difficult to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was neatly deflated in Secretary Forrestal’s dour report, “The constitutional inhibition . . . did not preclude long-distance reconnaissance.” The army board’s report blames the state of public opinion and isolationism, but itself contains isolationist overtones; noteworthy is the statement, in discussing contradictory tendencies at home, “we were arming our forces for war and at the same time giving away much of such armament.” Both reports have given fuel to the isolationist press by blaming Secretary of State Hull for not continuing to stall and appease the Japanese in the fall of 1941. That public opinion bears a heavy share in the responsibility for Pearl Harbor is indisputable, but irrelevant. For the question before the army and navy boards was whether the armed services did all they could to prevent the disaster with the means at their disposal and within the existing circumstances. The answer to that question is sharply negative. It is only the criticism of Hull, and by implication Roosevelt, which merits serious consideration.

  Hull is blamed for presenting his ten-point proposal to the Japanese on November 26, 1941, over the objections of General Marshall as Chief of Staff and Admiral Stark as Chief of Naval Operations. Marshall and Stark, supported by Stimson and Knox, said we were unprepared for war and seemed to feel that Hull’s proposals were so drastic as to make war unavoidable. It is implied that Roosevelt ignored or overruled this warning. But it is hard to see how Hull could have stalled the Japanese any longer without in large part accepting their proposals of November 20, and those proposals would have made us a partner in Japanese aggression. The Japs wanted us to supply them with all the oil they needed, to unfreeze Japanese accounts in this country, to end all aid to China, to “cooperate” with Japan in acquiring “these goods and commodities which the two countries need in the Netherlands East Indies.” To accept such terms would have been to risk the complete collapse of China and the dominance of the Dutch East Indies by Japan. There was no assurance that paying this kind of blackmail would have prevented further Japanese advances and an eventual attack upon us anyway. It is to the credit of Hull and Roosevelt that they refused to participate in a Far Eastern Munich and insisted, in the ten-point proposal, on the evacuation of China as a condition for resuming friendly relations with Japan.