Show THE GREAT CONTROVERSY History Shows That the Symptoms Underlying MacArthur's Dismissal Have Existed for Many Centuries By W. P. Managing Editor There is a kind of universality about Douglas MacArthur that communicates itself to many something of the same stuff that leads nearly everyone to believe in his own heart that he can run a newspaper and play Hamlet with a deathless Was MacArthur right or wrong in his belief in the strategic priority of the bombing of the of Chinese Nationalist Did in his public and private rejection of administration and United Nations policies In the Far express a subconscious desire to achieve for his Did President Truman take the right action but at the wrong time in relieving MacArthur of his multiple It doesn't make any difference who you are you undoubtedly have your own definite and perhaps impassioned answer to each of those And according to your you align yourself on one side or the other of the MacArthur controversy the great American schism of It is a basic a schism of the soul and and the rock upon which the split has occurred is a military a even a Military Men's Drama That in itself is not It in point of a fairly sound historical tradition that great epochs of man's development are likely to turn upon the personality of a military probably because it is easy for the public to focus Its attention upon a man who can be identified with the drama of danger and physical and with the glamour of military General MacArthur follows vigorously in that It has been his peculiar destiny to help lead this nation in smiting tyranny both right and left within the past striking to the right at Japanese imperialism in World War II and fo the left at Communist efforts at domination in Korea and the Far Thus he has become a political having stood at the spearhead of America's often inept and fumbling but always intense desire for peace that patently will not be had for the asking but which may come if we fight hard enough for Whether the principles he has advocated are right or lt is the not Mac-Arthur the around which very very basic foreign policy quarrel has From that point of the MacArthur controversy is an old and elemental form of domestic strife that has occurred and recurred within this or that national community ever since man has ben able to formulate and an Without to make any Invidious a number of historic parallels to the Mac-Arthur case become apparent from a quick glance at the There is a superficial for between the firing of MacArthur by President Truman and Calvin Coolidge's dismissal of the late General Mitchell for defying orders Coolidge made it however that he was in sympathy with the cause of aviation which Mitchell was But he also made it plain sympathy or no he could not overlook the Insubordination of which General Mitchell was found An Assist to Air Power The violent closing of Billy Mitchell's we know marked the turning point of the controversy over the future of military and the pioneering general did much to advance U.S. air power to the mighty peak it reached in time to help win World War Whether time and events will vindicate General MacArthur's ideas as fully as they have those of General Mitchell is anybody's One of the abiding characteristics of many powerful and successful military leaders in the past has been their capacity to capture the imagination and sympathy of the people and carry them along a chosen course to a at This makes for power and And the possession of broad authority is like having a permit to carry a Keep it in the holster and depend upon its presence there to control and chances are you won't get into The Ganger of carrying a gun lies in the possibility that sooner or later you might start firing it indiscriminately and a lot of people will get including Julius an overwhelming military and political amassed for Rome and for himself a creat reservoir of power which he was able to exercise pretty much at But there were those who felt he had too much they mistrusted feared that Caesar might mis-use No single man or group of men were strong enough to fire or depose the ruler by legal So Brutus and fas-sius and on a day in powerful and walked up the steps of the Capitol to meet the knives of his Too That stirred up a great civil controversy in Was Caesar right in bis principles and policies concerning Roman or were the men who deposed him by liquidating him It might be argued that under reached its peak of dynamic ex-p- and that its decline began aliet death in 44 B.C. But regardless of the truth of that the split over the aims and policies of Julius Caesar an epochal turning point in the history of the Roman Scotland s Immortal Robert Bruce was storm center of a raging controversy much his while he held tu and for his of a free and independent na He settled that issue by decisively defeating the English forces under Edward II at the battle of Bannockburn in and assuring the continuance of Scotland as an Independent Every student of American history knows of the quarrels and differences of opinion that flared after Abraham Lincoln put General Grant in charge of the Union Some members of Lincoln's own cabinet not only refused to support but actively opposed Grant's It in a a MacArthur situation in Grant's Problem And when Grant took command in he found he had to fight not only the enemy but the torpor and passivity of his own generals in me The military issue at stake that time was whether or not McClellan and others in the string of Union generals were right in fighting r i r- avoiding battles wherever and choosing more often to retreat than to Grant favored action and offensive contact with the Confederate Over the protestations of his he decided to attack wherever possible and carry the war to the The ultimate surrender of General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox proved the Tightness of But who went on to become President of the United albeit not an especially popular remained the center of a maelstrom of violent opinions all his So the MacArthur story Is by no means a new Call his actions and utterances in Korea Hi GENERAL MACARTHUR he went his own way or call them an honorable defense of his own they have basic meaning for us as a dramatic Illustration of the grim fact that the United States has to choose between two basic and different courses in this battle against the evils of One way is going to be the other We say that the in Its collective has f A PRESIDENT TRUMAN he lowered the boom split over the Issue of which is the best way to deal with Communist aggression in the Far But it is it cannot a fatal The doubt that has been lurking behind our thinking and our attitude on the question of how best to fight the monstrosity of world communism has been brought plainly into the open and is clearly There is no longer reason for anyone be he military storekeeper or factory worker to deny the existence of that Now it can be talked about and it can be That Is the great service that President Truman and General MacArthur have unwittingly performed for the nation and the free They have managed to get all the cards on the The still to be is there |