Patton and Truth

The U.S. Army and the U.S. people talked things over last week, finally decided they had better trust each other. ”The Patton affair” (see p. 69) became a test for the democratic maturity of both.

On Nov. 21 crusading Drew Pearson, once called a liar by the President, let his nationwide radio audience in on a secret that scores of U.S. correspondents had shared with thousands of U.S. soldiers since August. George S. Patton, the General who does not believe in nerve difficulties, had some himself (TIME, Nov.29). For slapping a hospitalized soldier, Pearson disclosed that the General had been “severely reprimanded” by General Eisenhower.

Next day, at 5:30 p.m., a spokesman for Allied Headquarters in Algiers issued to appalled newspapermen a masterpiece of “public relations” technique: “General Patton has never been reprimanded at any time by General Eisenhower.” Every single word of the denial was true. The sum total was not. In Army language, a reprimand is “an official rebuke administered as a punishment,” following strictly defined rules of disciplinary procedure.—To those millions of Americans whose English is not false-bottomed, the denial could mean only that Patton was beyond reproach.

On Nov. 23, at 10:30 a.m., a high officer in General Eisenhower’s command admitted that such doubletalk had been intentional. Now the spokesman said he was “a little ashamed” of having told the U.S. people, the day before “. . . not the complete truth.” The complete truth was what the Senate Military Affairs Committee demanded next day from War Secretary Stimson.

But the administration of truth in theaters of war, said Secretary Stimson stiffly, is up to the commanding generals.

There were two different problems, confusingly interwoven: “Blood and Guts” and Truth and Confidence. On the Senate’s list of promotions was Patton (to the permanent rank of Major General).

On the people’s mind was, as grass-root William Allen White’s Emporia Gazette stated in plain singletalk, the question whether they can “believe the reports and statements of our leaders … in this war.” The people did not shout for General Patton’s scalp. There were editorial shouts and much dinner-table clamor—and humorists in the Army’s monstrous Pentagon Building in Washington sang: “Pistol Packing Patton Laid that Private Down.” But PM’s honest editor John P. Lewis admitted that his mail was running almost 5-to-1 against the paper’s high-blood-pressure cry for a court-martial. And from Mishawaka, Ind., Casketmaker Herman F. Kuhl, father of one of Patton’s slapped soldiers, wrote his Congressman, forgiving the slap and promoting the slapper’s pro motion. The prevailing Congressional opinon was that Patton, exactly like any other soldier, should stay where his superiors considered him most effective.

But on the more basic matters of truth and confidence, a wave of popular discomfort penetrated deep from the editorial columns. That “the Army has been caught in a barefaced misstaternent of fact” (as the Cleveland Plain Dealer put it), was bound to have repercussions far beyond the personal fate of the Problem General.

Repercussions. One was that General Eisenhower, when General Marshall is called to lead the Anglo-American Armies toward Berlin, perhaps may not replace him as Chief of Staff; the Army is dubious.

Newspapermen began to reconsider whether they should go on complying, as they did in the Patton case, with a commander’s strongly worded proposal to keep from the U.S. people facts that the people are entitled to know.

And Americans wondered: What about Secretary Stimson? The great contribution of the Old Man had been moral. He had stood as a symbol ‘of the Army’s integrity before the American people. But now he seemed to stand with those who hold that generals can do no wrong.

Very clearly, Lieut. General George Patton was a minuscule figure beside the issue his slaps had momentarily raised—the people’s confidence in the leadership of the people’s Army.

* A written communication notifies and informs the officer in question of the charges against him; the accused must acknowledge receipt of the communication, indorse it, may include any demand for trial he wishes to make.