Tricks & Dupes

"Warmonger MacArthur," railed Radio Peking, "made a fanatical but shameless statement . . . with the intention of engineering the Anglo-American aggressors to extend the war of aggression into China . . . MacArthur's shameless tricks . . . will meet with failure . . .

"So long as the United Nations does not withdraw its shameless action of branding our country as an aggressor, and so long as the American aggressor and his accomplices block . . . the peaceful settlement of the Korean issue and the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Formosa .... the people of China must raise their sense of vigilance by doubling their effort for the sacred struggle . . . until . . . the complete driving out of all aggressors ... is accomplished."

This response by Red China last week to Douglas MacArthur's proposal for a battlefield conference on a truce (TiME, April 2) seemed plain as plain could be. The words were backed up by a continued massive buildup of fresh Chinese Communist forces on the Korean front, presumably for another, greater Red offensive against the U.N. (see below). But in Washington (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), London and other non-Communist capitals, a lot of diplomats and pundits sounded as though MacArthur rather than Mao Tse-tung was really the warmonger.

Generals & Politicians. In Ottawa, Minister for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson chided generals who intervene dangerously in international policy. The French press, both right and left, voiced the strongest misgivings. "An Asiatic war," said Franc-Tireur, "is too serious to be left in the hands of a military man whose years exasperate his turbulence."

The British belaboring of MacArthur was, as it has been since the Chinese Communist intervention in Korea, most vociferous of all. Defense Minister Emanuel Shinwell told a Labor Party conference in Durham: "It seems .. . that all the speaking nowadays is being done by generals and admirals ... It would be more advantageous if military experts confined themselves to military matters and left politicians to talk about political issues."

Sneered London's Daily Herald: "MacArthur, wearing his self-tailored mantle of proconsul . . . may have . . . wrecked ... a new approach to Communist China." The Times of London shook its august head over the Supreme Commander's mention of carrying the war to the Chinese mainland. The Economist sighed: "One of the most mischievous of all [MacArthur's] pronouncements."

Fear & Courage. A good deal of such anti-MacArthurism sprang from understandable fear that forthright action against Communist China might provoke a third World War and send Russian divisions marching across Europe. Only a few voices in the British press were ready to say that this fear, however understandable, had inspired an unfair judgment.

Lord Rothermere's Conservative Daily Mail flatly said that MacArthur had been "badly supported" in Korea. "In the face of conflicting orders . . . from all points of the compass, what is he to do?" Lord Beaverbrook, once described admiringly by Winston Churchill as a "true, foulweather friend," took even stronger issue with the MacArthur-baiters. Said his Daily Express: "Whatever General MacArthur does is wrong ... If he refuses a truce to the Chinese Reds, that is bad. If he offers a truce, that is equally bad . . .

"MacArthur has to deal with the war at close range. He bears the terrible responsibility for men's lives . . . The real quarrel between the general and his critics is over a simple issue--they propose that he should halt on the 38th parallel. He points out that, as a military proposition, this is not sensible.

"The 38th parallel is an arbitrary line drawn on the map. It corresponds in no way with the realities of military geography or military necessity.

"A halt on the parallel would simply mean giving a gratuitous advantage to the enemy, which might be paid for with allied lives. And that, in practice, would mean American lives. When MacArthur objects to it, he is declaring the good sense of the military situation.

"If that is so why then is General Mac-Arthur vilified? Because the Communists want him vilified. They are leading all sorts of people into their campaign.

"Some of the dupes are just plain foolish. Others are stooge propagandists who know quite well that they are playing the deliberate Kremlin game.

"It is time that the hounding of General MacArthur was brought to an end. It is time that he was given the credit and the authority due to him."

In the shrill and all but unanimous anti-MacArthur climate of British opinion, the Rothermere and Beaverbrook press had shown considerable moral courage in getting down to the real issues of Korean policy.

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