National Affairs: Hero’s Welcome

One after another, the great cities of San Francisco, Washington and New York found themselves gripped by a kind of patriotic emotion seldom evoked in the doubting cynical midcentury. A similar excitement spread across the rest of the country. General Douglas MacArthur, after 14 years in the Pacific Ocean area, had come home to the greatest ovation ever given an American.

Even to those who fully sensed the U.S. public’s indignation at Harry Truman’s summary firing of the nation’s No. 1 soldier, it was an amazing phenomenon. For even to those who looked on his battle plan for Asia with misgiving, Douglas MacArthur was a hero, a brave, powder-stained old warrior-statesman who had already taken his place in history beside Grant and Lee, Pershing and Farragut. The very sound of his name—after a steady diet of heroes who seemed half-ashamed of being heroes at all—seemed to leave millions with a lump in their throats and a cheer on their lips.

San Francisco reacted, from the moment of his arrival, as though every man, woman & child had been given a massive shot of adrenalin. Ten thousand people roared deliriously as he stepped out of his Constellation Bataan into the glare of massed floodlights at San Francisco airport. As he reached the ground, hundreds broke past police lines and surrounded him in a gabbling, jostling, hand-grabbing throng; they stayed around him as an Army band pumped unheard music, while officials pushed & shoved, and cannon banged out a 17-gun salute. It took 20 noisy minutes before the MacArthurs got into their car.

It was only a beginning. It took the general’s motorcade two hours to crawl 14 miles through the yelling crowds, and he got to his suite in the St. Francis Hotel only by the desperate efforts of a flying wedge of cops—75,000 surging, shouting, fainting people had jammed all the streets and the square in front of the building.

No Political Aspirations. Next day, standing before a sea of faces in San Francisco’s Civic Center, MacArthur alluded for the first time to the controversy which had brought him home:

“I have just been asked if I intended to enter politics. My reply was ‘No.’ I have no political aspirations whatever. I do not intend to run for any political office. I hope that my name will never be used in a political way.” He added: “The only politics I have is contained in a simple phrase known to all of you—God Bless America.” The crowd roared.

Then he flew on to conquer Washington. Though the Bataan did not land until after midnight, 12,000 were on hand to welcome him. Among them were his critics in the highest brass: Defense Secretary George Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On hand, too, was Harry Truman’s military aide, Major General Harry Vaughan, who shook Mac Arthur’s hand and retreated, announcing with some relief: “Well, that was simple!”

The big drama of MacArthur’s 20 hours in Washington was played out the next day on Capitol Hill with his address to the joint meeting of the House and Senate. But he also appeared before more than 500,000 people, 250,000 of them gathered in one enormous, rumbling throng around the Washington Monument. He strode gallantly into Constitution Hall to make a three-minute speech to 6,000 ladies of the D.A.R. (who carefully removed their hats en masse to provide a clear view for all). “I have long sought personally to pay you the tribute that is in my heart. . .” he said. “In this hour of crisis, all patriots look to you.”

Jugs & Pipes. The whole country was being caught up by the drama and excitement of the general’s return. Record companies rushed MacArthur’s congressional speech into wax. Telegrams and letters descended upon the MacArthurs. Long-bowled corncob pipes, Toby jugs bearing the MacArthur visage, MacArthur pictures of all descriptions were rushed on sale. In Seattle, an infuriated logger tried to drown another by pushing his head into a bucket of beer for saying that the MacArthur speech was tripe.

On this wave of enthusiasm, the Mac-Arthurs invaded New York. Mrs. Mac-Arthur and 13-year-old son Arthur approached the Big City, not only as celebrities but as sightseers. In all the welcoming ceremonies, the boy had seemed quiet and a little nervous. But he displayed no awe at his first sight of Manhattan’s glittering skyline. “Where is the Stork Club?” he asked Mrs. Vincent Impellitteri, the mayor’s wife.

When Mayor Impellitteri presented Arthur with a football, he confided to him that the trip had been a profitable one; he had also gotten a racing bicycle in San Francisco. On Saturday, one of his father’s aides took him to the Polo Grounds, where more gifts flowed in: Leo Durocher himself presented Arthur with a Giant cap, a mitt, a Giant windbreaker and two autographed baseballs. And when he left, just before the end of the New York-Brooklyn game, a Dodger fan gave him that final badge of acceptance—the bird. “Hey Artie,” cried a rasping verce: “How’s Truman?”

But New York’s great gift to the Mac-Arthurs was an awesome one—the greatest and most exuberant welcome the city had ever seen. When MacArthur strode from the Waldorf-Astoria to his open car —the same two-toned Chrysler in which Eisenhower had ridden six years before—millions of people were gathering on sidewalks, in trees, in windows, on countless rooftops along a 19.2-mile parade route to catch a glimpse of the famed cap and the famed profile.

Holiday Mood. Everybody cheered. Even those who hadn’t made up their minds on the military course that MacArthur recommended cheered the man—the returning hero to whom the nation was paying its belated thanks. They cheered a man of chin-out affirmations, who seemed a welcome contrast to men of indecision and negation. A good many in the crowd saw Douglas MacArthur as a symbol of a kind of patriotism that still existed for them even if sophisticates dismissed it as oldfashioned. They felt that, at the very least, a great soldier had been wronged in the way he had been dismissed, and they were determined to show that the country itself did not consider him dishonored or disgraced. It was they who clipped his. photograph and hung it on the wall, who stood hours in patient queues waiting for the flashing moment when MacArthur’s car would pass, who made the reception for MacArthur—as it was in Honolulu, San Francisco and Washington—something more than a gathering of Americans who love a parade and cluster curiously to see a celebrity. The man in the street, whatever his politics, honored a military hero. The mood was holiday.

From the moment the general’s motorcade moved off, the city’s great towers—which stood clean and glowing under a bright blue sky—resounded to a flowing torrent of sound. At the tip of Manhattan it increased. Ships and tugs lent their whistles to the din. Then, lower Broadway —the financial district’s Canyon of Heroes —began to resound to the clop of police horses, the crash of brass bands, as paraders moved out to lead MacArthur a mile; to City Hall. History’s greatest fall of paper, ticker tape and torn telephone books (2,850 tons) cascaded down, filling the street ankle-deep. It fell so thickly for a time that it completely blurred thet lenses of television cameras.

Through the carnival scenes beat the steady, deafening sound of cheering as the general passed by. He got out twice—once to speak a few words at City Hall, once before St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Francis Cardinal Spellman walked into the street in his brilliant red robes to shake the hero’s hand.

For the rest he simply sat, waving, plainly conserving his strength after a week of excitement and strain that would have exhausted many a younger man. His car moved slowly through a rain of colored cloth in the garment district, through new barrages of paper on Fifth Avenue, and on at last back to the Waldorf-Astoria. There for a few days he shut himself away from reporters, crowds and flashbulbs. This week in Chicago and Milwaukee, more parades, salutes and ceremonies awaited the conquering hero.