Man of the Hour

For five days after his New York reception, General Douglas MacArthur stayed secluded in his ten-room, $130-a-day Waldorf-Astoria suite, but all the while his name--and the debate he set off--went on blooming steadily in black headlines.

During MacArthur's five days of retreat in Manhattan, coveys of cops, MPs and hotel dicks turned both press and public aside. Special switchboard arrangements diverted almost all of his 3,000-odd daily telephone calls. His zealous military secretary, Major General Courtney Whitney, onetime Manila lawyer, carried his word to Manhattan's clamoring reporters.

Doubting Thomases. "MacArthur," Whitney said, still did not have the "faintest idea" of the President's reason for firing him, added that the abruptness of the dismissal had "deprived" MacArthur of the opportunity of making farewell addresses to his troops and Japanese people.

When he was asked how MacArthur might react to a presidential draft, Whitney replied: "The general told me that if any such question was raised he would advise the questioner to go home and read the Bible. Especially the chapter on St. Thomas . . . the part pertaining to doubting Thomas."

Whitney, long MacArthur's spokesman in Tokyo, was not an unqualified success in New York. The New York Herald Tribune, Post and the tabloid Daily News cried editorially, as one, that his pronouncements were a liability to the general. The News, while applauding MacArthur, did not conceal its restiveness at his Olympian remoteness, and noted in irascible tones that the cops who were holding back its reporters had let a burglar enter the exclusive Waldorf and get away with a fur coat.

"What Is Our Policy?" But these sounds of criticism were drowned by cheering when the general and his family took to the road again. Chicago, like San Francisco, Washington and New York, gave him the biggest welcome in memory. Downtown business closed up, stores barricaded their windows, and crowds applauded wildly as he was driven along a 23-mile route from the airport to his hotel in a geranium-red Lincoln with 100 motorcycle cops leading the way. That night at Soldier Field, 50,000 (not a capacity crowd) cheered him to the echo when he rose--after being driven around the great bowl in the dramatic glare of a single searchlight beam--to make the second formal speech since his return.

"What," he asked, "is our policy in Korea? ... Our losses there in ratio to the men committed have already reached staggering proportions ... I have strongly urged the need for a positive policy . . . designed to stop, through strength, this slaughter of America's sons. [We have] a policy vacuum heretofore unknown to war."

When he said: "Although my public life is now closed . . ." he was interrupted by cries of "No!" "It is closed," he went on, but "I feel my responsibility of national citizenship no less deeply ... I shall continue to fight against that greatest scourge of mankind, Communism, as long as God gives me the power to fight."

He concluded: "Although without command, authority or responsibility, I still proudly possess what to me is the greatest of all honors and distinctions. I am an American." At the moment the speech ended, a huge fireworks replica of the U.S.S. Missouri flared into view, rockets soared into the sky, and the band played God Bless America. MacArthur stepped into his car and was driven away.

Milwaukee, the city he calls his "ancestral home," cheered him the next day. So did thousands who knotted up along the 90 miles of highways he traveled at 60 to 70 m.p.h. on the way up from Chicago. MacArthur and his 13-year-old son Arthur both looked tired on arrival (Mrs. MacArthur remained as fresh and chipper as ever), but the general seemed genuinely delighted to see the three-story Victorian house which his parents had rented from 1907 to 1912, to receive an honorary LL.D. degree from Marquette University, and to hear the ringing applause of half a million of his former townsmen.

He returned to Manhattan to discover that many a New York Protestant had been thrown into a tizzy over plans for the city's annual Loyalty Day parade: the general was to ride in an open car with his old friend and admirer, Cardinal Spellman. But all went smoothly. The cardinal himself settled things by walking with a group of other churchmen, among them the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, the Right Rev. Horace W. B. Donegan.

Sound of Dixie. This week, on their wedding anniversary, the MacArthurs flew South to spend a day in Mrs. MacArthur's old home town: quiet, elm-shaded Murfreesboro, Tenn. (pop. 13,000). Murfreesboro had been getting ready for its first glimpse of "Jean Faircloth's husband" for weeks.

Fifty thousand people, the biggest crowd since the Battle of Murfreesboro (in which 37,000 Rebels and 44,000 Yankees were engaged) were on hand to cheer the famous couple. The general (who surrendered to the 83DEG weather, and doffed his trench coat for the first time in any of his outdoor appearances) did not disappoint the crowd.

"Fourteen years ago, I married this lovely woman," he said. "How she has managed to put up with me during all these long years is quite beyond my comprehension ... I am no stranger to the South. I am a part of it. Born in Arkansas of a Virginia mother, I grew up with the sound of Dixie and a rebel yell ringing in my ears. Dad [General Arthur MacArthur, who fought in the Union Army] was on the other side, but he had the good sense to surrender to mother."

Murfreesboro cheered happily, and let out a few appreciative rebel yells.

But it was still Mrs. MacArthur's day, and before the distinguished visitors left for New York, her old friends gave her the proof--a six-starred general's insigne.

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