The Secretary’s Rebuttal

This week, behind the doors of Room 318, the Administration’s formal rebuttal began. Clad in civilian dress and the civilian authority of Secretary of Defense, stern-faced General of the Army George Marshall appeared to testify.

“It is a very distressing necessity, a very distressing occasion that compels me to appear here this morning and in effect in almost direct opposition to a great many of the views and actions of General MacArthur,” said Marshall. “He is a brother Army officer, a man for whom I have tremendous respect…”

Opening Broadside. With a flat, unemotional voice and sparse phrases that contrasted sharply with his antagonist’s flow of words and orotund delivery, the wartime U.S. Chief of Staff coldly attacked both Douglas MacArthur’s proposals and his conduct. Said Marshall:

¶ Contrary toMacArthur’s implication, there has been and is “no disagreement between the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff” on U.S. policy in the Korean war.

¶ There have been “basic differences of judgment” between General MacArthur and his superiors—the President, Marshall and the J.C.S.

¶ The Truman Administration is unequivocally opposed to any Korean settlement which would give Formosa and United Nations membership to Communist China. “It will oppose any settlement . . . which would reward the aggressor in any manner whatsoever, and it will oppose the attempt of any nation or regime to shoot its way into the United Nations.”

¶ The Jan. 12 memo of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on which MacArthur based his claim to J.C.S. support of his program, was, in Marshall’s words, a set of “tentative courses of action to be pursued if & when” the U.S. was faced with evacuating Korea. There were 16 tentative recommendations, not just the four read to the Senate committee by General MacArthur, and some had been carried out. Sample: getting Communist China branded in U.N. as an aggressor. The rest, including the four that MacArthur advocated, had been shelved with the concurrence of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the war in Korea started going better.

“General MacArthur . . . would have us accept the risk of involvement not only in an extension of the war with Red China, but in an all-out war with the Soviet Union. He would have us do this even at the expense of losing our allies and wrecking the coalition of free peoples throughout the world.

“This fundamental divergence is one of judgment as to the proper course of action to be followed by the United States.”

“What Is New.” Cases of military commanders who did not like the orders they received from above are not new to U.S. military history, he said. “What is new is the wholly unprecedented situation of a local theater commander publicly expressing his displeasure at and his disagreement with the foreign and military policy of the United States . . . There was no other recourse but to relieve him.”

Pressed for the details of MacArthur’s dismissal, General Marshall disclosed—in a passage heavy with Pentagonese—a surprising story of the failure of bureaucratic machinery. “Originally, it was decided to transmit the notification to General MacArthur … on Wednesday, April the 11th. Secretary of Army Frank Pace, then in Korea, was instructed to make the delivery of the messages to General MacArthur at his residence. However, late on Tuesday, April the 10th, there were indications that the action to be taken had become known publicly, and it was then decided by the President to accelerate the transmission of the official notification to General MacArthur by approximately 20 hours . . .

“Mr. Pace . . . incidentally did not receive his instructions due to a breakdown in a power unit in Pusan.”

“Not Very Large.” Repeatedly in his testimony, to the irritation of Senators, General Marshall withheld passages and facts from the Senators on security grounds, and he insisted that many of his words—in one case, a chunk of more than eight pages—be censored out of the public transcript.

Said Senator Russell, who is as security conscious as any Senator present: “General, I am afraid that this record is not going to be very large that we will be able to release. You have put the [secret] classification to practically all your statements.”

“Well, Mr. Chairman,” responded Marshall, “I will probably be taken to task very severely for going into so many details here . . . from the other end of the line. Because if I may say so, I have felt through a good deal of this as though I were sort of acting as an intelligence agent for the Soviet government and the Chinese Communist government, but they don’t provide one for me . . .”

“Better make that classified,” interjected Wisconsin’s Alexander Wiley sourly.

The questioning turned to the military efficacy of MacArthur’s proposals for extending the war.

RUSSELL: “Now, general, as a military man with distinguished service to your country over a long period of years, I would like to get your professional opinion as well as your views as Secretary of Defense as to whether or not the Chinese Reds can be driven out of Korea, and Korea pacified, without the implementing General MacArthur recommends?”

MARSHALL: “I should say that if the Chinese Communists continue in force in North Korea, with the potential of additional reinforcements that might be made available, and with our situation where we visualize no considerable reinforcement of the United Nations army, that they could not be driven out of North Korea. And I have my own doubts as to whether the actions recommended by General MacArthur would bring the conflict to a victorious end. I am afraid in my own opinion it might result in a great increase in casualties without a decisive finish.”

RUSSELL: “Wait a minute. Do you mean to say in your opinion there is doubt even if we do bomb them whether they could be driven from there?”

MARSHALL: “Yes, sir.”

RUSSELL : “How will we ever bring the Korean episode to a conclusion?”

Several parts of Secretary Marshall’s answers were censored, but what remained for publication gave the essence of the Administration’s hope that the Chinese Reds would die in Korea from loss of blood.

“They have had tremendous losses,” said Marshall. “We speak of their very large forces, but when you take the percentage of the losses that they have suffered, they are tremendous. Now the question is, how long can that go on unless they are assisted by the Soviet government? . . . Now on their part, that cannot continue without wrecking them very seriously because they have troubles in China themselves.”

With that, George Marshall closed the first chapter of the Administration’s rebuttal. There were still many more voices to be heard.