National Affairs: The Keynote

The old soldier, whose oratory on returning from the Far East had stirred the nation as it seldom is stirred by the spoken word, strode solemnly to the convention rostrum. The hushed hall waited, in mass expectancy, for another memorable address. Douglas MacArthur, General of the Army and one of the great orators of his day, did not disappoint his audience.

With a trumpet blast of rolling phrases, he sounded at once the call to a great political crusade: “A crusade to which all sound and patriotic Americans, irrespective of party, may well dedicate their hearts and minds and fullest effort. Only thus can our beloved country restore its spiritual and temporal strength and regain once again the universal respect.”

New Leadership. The times, said Mac-Arthur, demand a new national leadership. His indictment of the Democratic Administration “for all of its tragic blunders” crackled and thundered. Resentment against the Administration, he said, has “poured from the hearts of the American people from North to South, East to West, with no distinction of race, creed, color or political affiliation. I know.

“From the four corners of the land, I have seen; I have heard … a deep sense of fear that our leaders in their insatiate demand for ever more personal power might destroy the republic and erase from the earth those mighty principles of government which brought to this land a liberty, a dignity and a prosperity never before known . . .”

With classic cadences MacArthur held up, point by point, the Democratic “failures.” The people, he said, “view with dismay”:

¶ “The once proud and mighty victor. . . in a fight for national survival [deprived] in Korea of the power and the means and the will to achieve victory—our country’s traditional military goal . . .”

¶ “The alarming change in the balance of world power, arising from the tragic decisions taken by willful or guileless men representing us at Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam and elsewhere . . . Soviet ascendancy as a world power and our own relative decline . . .”

¶ “Tolerance of corruption or worse in the . . . public service.”

¶ “The rising burden of our fiscal commitments, the deprivation of the opportunity to accumulate resources for future security . . . the oppressive burden of the tax levy . . .”

Old Virtues. MacArthur quoted from George Washington’s Farewell Address to drive home the basic need for religion and morality in the nation’s life. Then he went on: “Public policy no longer is geared to the simple determination of that which is right and that which is wrong . . . The party of Jefferson and Jackson . . . that party of noble heritage has become captive to the schemers and planners who have infiltrated its ranks of leadership to set the national course unerringly toward the socialistic regimentation of a totalitarian state . . .”

It is “the hypocrisy of self-righteousness” for present-day Democrats to claim themselves as true liberals. “Every move they make to circumvent the spirit of the Constitution, every move they make to centralize political power, every move they make to curtail and suppress individual liberty is reaction in its most extreme form . . . The framers of the Constitution were the most liberal thinkers of all the ages . . . Their concept held to the primacy of the individual’s interest; that of our present leadership to the predominance of the state . . .

Foolish Strategy. The old soldier’s smashing frontal attack was aimed at the Democratic Administration. In no sense was it a speech favoring the Taft faction as against Eisenhower.

Some of his most telling blows were aimed at the Administration’s global strategy: “We practically invited Soviet dominance over the free peoples of Eastern Europe . . . We deliberately withdrew our armies . . . permitting the advance of Soviet forces … to plant the red flag of Communism on the ramparts … of Western civilization . . .

“We foolishly permitted the encirclement of Berlin by Soviet forces . . . We gave over to Soviet control the industrial resources of Manchuria, the area of North Korea and the Kuriles pointed at the heart of the Japanese home islands. We condemned our faithful wartime ally, the Chinese people, to the subjugation of Communist tyranny . . .” And once again, on the issue of Korea and the Administration’s pursuit of a stalemate, MacArthur warned: “It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it . . .”

It was also fatal, continued the general, to neglect Asia for Europe. “One would be foolhardy indeed to quench a fire in the kitchen while leaving another room aflame . . .” MacArthur belabored another pet Democratic policy: “The Administration is obsessed by the idea that we can spend ourselves into a position of leadership abroad, just as it believes we can spend ourselves into prosperity at home . . . Both are based upon illusory premises . . . World leadership can only rest upon world respect. Such respect is one of those spiritual ideals . . . influenced solely by the soundness of … our own civilization . . .”

Moral Strength. With “strong moral leadership,” said MacArthur, the U.S. people and a free civilization would hurl back its enemies. It was up to the Republicans to supply that leadership.

“At the close of the Constitutional Convention, George Washington remarked to Benjamin Franklin that he believed the Constitution . . . was a great and noble charter of liberty . . . ‘Yes, general,’ Franklin responded, ‘if we can make it work.’

“We have made it work in the days of our great past. And come November, we will make it work again—so help us God!”