by Gore Vidal
Peter called for a symposium on the subject. Most of the worthies who participated affected alarm at the thought that the vast wartime powers Roosevelt had armed himself with might somehow have become permanent. Aeneas had then interviewed Clifford, found him charming if evasive. “I suspect,” Aeneas had summed up, “that they are not very thoughtful over at the White House. Everything’s calculated for short-term political advantage. During the strike, Truman was accused of being weak. So he does something that looks to be strong.”
“Dangerous,” said Peter.
“Irresistible,” said Aeneas. “Wartime powers are the dream of every peacetime president, even the meek and mild Harry.”
“Why don’t we print the Bill of Rights on the front page of the magazine?” Peter made the suggestion casually. Aeneas could be scathing.
“Every issue?”
“Why not?”
“Wouldn’t it be too radical?” Aeneas was not joking.
“Perhaps un-American.” Peter was now tempted to act upon his sudden seditious impulse. Curious things were happening in the city and, presumably, in the country as well. A series of strikes by militant labor unions had caused considerable unease. Yet why was anyone surprised? The wage and price controls made necessary by war could not be maintained indefinitely in a so-called free economy. Then a serious shortage of housing affected everyone, while the election of 1946 had been called “the beefsteak election,” thanks to a mysterious shortage of beef. At the center of the turmoil was the timid nearsighted little President eager to be farsighted and formidably strong, particularly with the Russians, who were now being blamed for whatever was wrong in a world where nothing seemed to be going right for the triumphant new world empire whose mock Roman and Greek temples looked more than ever out of place beside the homely Potomac River where once wigwams had housed an earlier, less busy race.
Peter and Aeneas disagreed on Truman’s character. Peter thought him ignorant and hopelessly ineffective. Aeneas thought him almost as decisive as he pretended to be in his odd outbursts at the Russians, not to mention at political rivals like Henry Wallace, whose sensible speech in Madison Square Garden the previous fall had lost him his Cabinet seat. Although Wallace had cleared the speech in advance with Truman, the President had not grasped its hardly complex message: “We have no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States.” When faced with this attack on his Administration’s tendency to meddle everywhere, Truman had told the press that he had not approved the contents of the speech, only the Secretary of Commerce’s right to make it. Even the most ardent Red-baiter found Truman’s lie unhelpfully crude, as was his furious letter to Wallace firing him from the Cabinet, a letter which, upon uneasy second thought, Truman asked Wallace to return to him. Wallace gracefully gave back the letter; then quit the Cabinet, to begin a race for the presidency in 1948. The Wallace business had finally convinced Aeneas that Truman was simply too inept for the office that Roosevelt had so absently placed him in line for.
The two editors then chose as their “Fool of the Week” the favorite Christian divine of the reactionary liberals, one Reinhold Niebuhr, Life magazine’s resident saint, who had declared war on the Soviet in the name of Henry Luce: “Russian truculence cannot be mitigated by further concessions. Russia hopes to conquer the whole of Europe strategically and ideologically.” This did not seem to be possible, wrote Aeneas at his most reasonable, since the United States had already established itself as the master of Europe. Meanwhile, he noted that Neibuhr’s analysis was very close to that of Clark Clifford’s memorandum to the President in September of 1946 entitled “American Relations with the Soviet Union.” Clifford had “proved” that the Soviet Union was aiming, like Nazi Germany before it, for eventual world domination. Since the President had insisted that all copies of the report be kept under lock and key, Aeneas had only been able to ferret out key passages, copied by others before the top-secret memorandum was withdrawn. But it was known that Soviet military power had been greatly exaggerated in order to justify an American military buildup. “It’s pretty much the usual stuff,” said Aeneas. He handed Peter a page of quotations. “Red Flag over the Tower of London. The Kremlin’s flag, not the Labour Party’s. It’s very alarmist.”
Peter’s eye had caught one line at the end of the page. He read aloud. “ ‘The United States should support and assist all democratic countries which are in any way menaced by the USSR.’ Isn’t that a bit broad?”
“Mr. Clifford’s strokes are very broad indeed. He can only mean that we have the right—in fact, the God-given duty—to interfere in any country anywhere.”
“Has Truman really bought this?”
“We’ll know when he speaks to Congress. On Greece and Turkey.”
Aeneas promptly read: “ ‘Two freedom-loving democracies are now threatened by monolithic communism,’ except that they aren’t enthusiasts for freedom nor are they democracies, and now with Tito and Mao off on their own, communism isn’t monolithic. Curious how nothing our government says ever means anything at all.”
“More curious how no one notices, except us.” But Peter had been impressed by the Administration’s ability to manipulate the crisis brought on by England’s financial inability to support a thuggish Greek government faced with an internal communist threat. Although Stalin had agreed at Yalta that Greece was within England’s sphere of influence, he was now faced with a communist Greek party eager to overthrow the newly restored monarchy with, it was said, the aid of Yugoslavia, whose leader, Tito, had recently broken with Moscow. Stalin, Peter had written, was in a no-win situation. If he helped the Greek communists, the United States would be certain to intervene at a time, to put it minimally, of considerable inconvenience for him. But if he did not aid the Greeks, acting in his name, the apostate Tito would help them, thus expanding a dangerous new Slav hegemony in Southeast Europe. Into this complex situation the bold certitudes and misrepresentations of Clark Clifford had, suddenly and forcibly, been reinforced by the new under secretary of state from the Union Trust Building, the polished Groton-Yale lawyer Dean Acheson.
Happily for The American Idea, Senator James Burden Day had attended a high council of state chaired by the President himself and consisting of the new secretary of state, General George Marshall, and leading congressional figures. Although Marshall was still unable to recall the events leading up to Pearl Harbor, he was, otherwise, a respected and respectable figure in an Administration that was more and more coming to resemble a Mississippi River gambling boat on a Saturday night.
Senator Day had prepared a memorandum immediately after the meeting; he had sent Peter a copy, not for attribution.
February 27, 1947. The White House.
We met in the Cabinet room. The President was in a low-key mood. He had nicked his cheek shaving and a piece of Kleenex clung to the forming scab. On his right sat General Marshall with a State Department folder in front of him. Next to Marshall was Dean Acheson, looking more than ever like a British colonel with his bristling moustache and clear hawk’s eye and what I suppose to be an authentic English accent, or is it just that prep school where he and FDR went? School’s name beginning with “G”? On the President’s left was Speaker of the House Martin; then Vandenberg, very much the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; then Styles Bridges, looking mighty sleek as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee; finally, Tom Connally and myself for the Democrats’ minority in the Senate. The presence of Bridges meant that the substance of this meeting was to be—what else?—money. The week before the House had cut $6 billion from the President’s budget. This made it impossible, said the Secretary of War, for us to maintain our occupation of Germany and Japan.
General Marshall in civilian clothes is somewhat unimpressive. Like a small-town bank president trying to persuade his board of directors to lend money to an undesirable client. A Southern small-t
own bank, for the accents of the great-eared Tom Connally of Texas and the bullet-bald Rayburn, also of Texas, set the tone of the entire congressional leadership while the Virginian Marshall and the Missouri President made me think the Civil War might just as well not have been fought. Incidentally, the Southern senators have their offices all in a row in the Senate Office Building—Rebellion Row we call it. I digress.
Marshall gave us an overview of the current crisis in Greece and Turkey. Apparently on Monday the British ambassador presented him with what is called a “blue paper.” This means not only “urgent” but “crisis.” The British are out of money again and can no longer sustain the Greek government. They feel that if we do not step in, Greece would soon have a communist government and Turkey, everyone’s traditional enemy, would be at risk, thus weakening Britain’s position in the Middle East, all-important to us because of the Arab oil reserves.
I have never understood the public’s reverence for professional military men nor their habit of electing them, from time to time, to the presidency, usually with disastrous results. Admittedly, Marshall’s executive talents are of the highest order, or so everyone says. Certainly Roosevelt thought so and kept him on in Washington and out of the war, leaving all martial glory to MacArthur and Eisenhower, the first a master of publicity and the second another chairman of the board, like Marshall himself.
But my objection to Marshall, not least as of last Thursday, is his inability to show us where the danger really lies. We are, all of us, professional politicians, with a tendency to speak in a special code known only to each other and incomprehensible, thank God, to the public. But on an occasion like this where the issue could well be a war with the Soviet Union over Greece and Turkey and our competing spheres of influence, Marshall sounded as if he wanted us to appropriate more money for the acquisition of cavalry horses or military bands. During his recital, I watched Truman, who was beginning to fidget. Was he thinking that he had made a mistake in exchanging sly Jimmy Byrnes for this sea-green incorruptible but slow-witted Army officer? I also could see that Dean Acheson was less than happy with his boss’s presentation. Marshall ended with a request that the military budget not be cut; rather it should be increased. “We must act with energy,” he said, “or lose by default.” He did not say what we would lose.
Truman, plainly unhappy with Marshall, asked for questions.
Bridges, in charge of appropriations, wanted to know just how much this somewhat ill-defined operation would cost.
Connally boomed on about unforeseen consequences. Were we ready for a third world war just to save face for the British, who are forever running out of money just when their presence is actually needed somewhere? The Speaker wanted a price tag. Vandenberg wanted to know if it was true that Stalin was not helping the Greek communists since he was too busy disciplining Tito. In which case this is more of an embarrassment for Stalin—as well as the British government of the day—and hardly a world crisis for the United States.
Acheson was now whispering loudly into Marshall’s ear. Marshall nodded and asked the President if the Under Secretary could speak.
I guess Acheson has to be a really sharp lawyer. Also, unlike Marshall, he has mastered his brief—perhaps too well.
He began with an overall look at developments during the last eighteen months. Apparently, unnoticed by us, the Soviet is conquering the entire world.
Acheson’s aristocratic dislike of our Southern Congress is always apparent. Up to a point, I can sympathize with him. He thinks in great historical terms. He says that our world is now as polarized as it once was between Rome and Carthage—though he hasn’t yet repeated Cato’s insistent cry “Carthage”—the Soviet Union, that is—“must be destroyed.”
For most of our Congress, Carthage is a dull town set in Tennessee’s chigger belt. On the other hand, for all their hickish ways, our congressmen are not interested in replacing the European colonial empires with one of our own or making everyone on earth a believer in Dale Carnegie’s gospel. This is difficult for a no doubt bookish and delicate lad like Acheson at that school beginning with “G” to grasp.
Those rich boys daydream about vast armies and navies conquering all the seas and lands while we humble folk think of boys that we know—sons even—dying in a process that benefits no one but the international banks and their lawyer-lobbyists, like Mr. Acheson himself. The real political struggle in the United States, since the Civil War, has been between the peaceful inhabitants of the nation with their generally representative Congresses and a small professional elite totally split off from the nation, pursuing wealth through wars that they invent and justify and resonate for others to die in.
Acheson resonated. Currently, the Soviet is putting pressure on the Dardanelles, Iran, and northern Greece, where the local communist firebrand (begins with a Z) is an agent of the Soviet; there is, as usual, no evidence. My subcommittee held hearings on the matter. Man’s name is Zahariadis. In a trembling voice, Acheson told us that practically any day now Soviet armies—tanks pulled by horses?—will break through into the Balkans, putting at risk three continents. Since he didn’t name them I assume he means Europe, Africa, and North America. Russian troops in Carthage, Tennessee: I see it now—the blood of the Reds will be a rich diet for our homegrown chiggers and mosquitoes.
Acheson, in a hurry to start the next war, abandoned his usual Gibbonian eloquence for some down-home rhetoric calculated to excite us yokels. Yes, the one rotten apple in the barrel was his metaphor of choice. Before our eyes he demonstrated how that one spoiled apple would infect Iran and everything to the east as far as—he didn’t say but one knew he feared for the health of Mikado MacArthur. Then the same busy apple would infect Africa by way of Asia Minor and Egypt, where Marc Antony died in Cleopatra’s arms—or was it Martha Washington’s stout arms? One can get carried away by the sheer poetic beauty of Acheson’s internationalistic vision for all us plain folks who’ve just become, practically overnight, heirs to the Roman Empire, to the Macedonian Empire, to the Aztecs … But I write too soon: that infected apple has not yet finished its terrible work. Acheson completed his tragedy with the warning that Europe was already at risk thanks to Italy and France, two frivolous nations that, in the interest of suicidal democracies, had allowed powerful domestic communist parties to turn the entire barrel into potential poison. “America has no choice,” he cried. “We must act now to protect our own security, to protect freedom itself!”
It is always amazing to watch the discomfort of professional politicians outplayed at their own game by what they take to be—mistakenly in this case—an amateur. We are a bit like ministers or priests when a member of the congregation claims to have seen a vision. We don’t quite know where to look. What to say. Truman was nodding his large rosy head, whose glasses these days now magnify his eyes to Cyclopean proportions. As usual, it was Vandenberg who leaped upon the caboose just as the train, Freedom, was leaving the station. “Mr. President, if you will say that to the Congress and the country, I will support you and I believe that most of Congress will do the same. But, Mr. President, the only way you are ever going to get what you want is to make a speech and scare the hell out of the country.”
If Herbert Hoover said, “What this country needs is a great poem,” I’d like to say that what I think it really needs is another Mark Twain, to record “The Administration of Colonel Sellers” or “More Deadly Innocents Abroad.”
Peter made his way on foot to the Capitol. For March the day was unpleasantly warm and humid, and he himself was both warm and humid when he got to the Diplomats’ Gallery, already full up while the floor of the House of Representatives was crowded with senators as they, irritably, tried to find places for themselves on the fringes of the House. The front row had been reserved for Supreme Court and Cabinet.
Peter ended up on the steps of the Diplomats’ Gallery with one half of the Herald Tribune’s Washington column “Matter of Fact,” Joe Alsop himself. After an active war, attemptin
g single-handedly to defeat the Chinese communists, Joe had resumed his political column in tandem with his brother Stewart.
“The American Idea made flesh,” said Joe, merrily malicious as Peter lowered his heavy self onto the step beside him.
Seated nearby, Joe’s cousin Alice Longworth waved at Peter—to annoy Joe?—“Come to lunch Sunday.” Peter said that he would. Although he had served a good deal of time at Laurel House lunches and dinners where the grandees of national politics were to be observed, exchanging information for publicity, only recently had he begun to exist in his own right as a guest in demand. The American Idea was not much read by the reigning hostesses, except for Virginia Bacon, who read everything, doggedly. But Pauline Davis, the grandest of all hostesses now that Frederika had cut back on her entertaining, quite liked him, or so she said, “because you are the balance of power to Joe—at least at table.” Peter feared that they were doomed to become a clown act, Joe with his Achesonian warnings of the noxious apple of communism and Peter with his unfashionable view that nations were nations and did not change identity despite revolutions and invasions. Czarist Russia and even Roman Scythia had seemed to him more worthy of study than Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, recent phenomena only to be understood in the light of what had preceded them for a millennium or two.
“I suppose,” said Joe, “that you will take the view that today we are crossing the Rubicon.”
“With Harry Truman—your little gray man—as Julius Caesar?” Peter knew that Joe much regretted his first summing-up of his great kinsman’s heir. “No. We’re not dealing in clichés except for your neighbor in P Street, who has compared our rivalry with Russia over Greece as the greatest conflict since the Punic Wars.”