A POLICY OF "TIMIDITY & FEAR"

Excerpts from Douglas MacArthur's speech to the Texas legislature:

I HAVE been amazed, and deeply concerned, since my return, to observe the extent to which the orientation of our national policy tends to depart from the traditional courage, vision and forthrightness which has animated and guided our great leaders of the past, to be now largely influenced, if not indeed an some instances dictated, from abroad and dominated by fear of what others may think or others may do. Never before have we geared national policy to timidity and fear.

In Korea today, we have reached that degree of moral trepidation that we pay tribute in the blood of our sons to the doubtful belief that the hand of a blustering potential enemy may in some way be thus stayed.

In justification for this extraordinary action it is pleaded by those responsible for the condition of our national defense that we are not prepared to fight. I cannot accept such an estimate.

If we be so weak in fact, that we must cower before the verbal brandishments of others, the responsibility for such weakness should be a matter of the gravest public concern.

Who, we should ask, is responsible?

Who plunged us into the Korean war and assumed other global commitments in the face of such alleged weakness?

The defenders of the existing policy vacuum are the same who, suddenly and without slightest preparation or seeming consideration of the military and policial potentialities, threw us into the conflict, a war which they now seem afraid to win.

My correspondence reflects a growing lack of faith by a large segment of our population in the responsibility and moral fiber of our own process of government. Truth has ceased to be keystone to the arch of our national conscience and propaganda has replaced it as the rallying media for public support. Corruption and rumors of corruption have shaken the people's trust in the integrity of those administering the civil power.

Government has assumed progressively the arrogant mantle of oligarchic power as the great moral and ethical principles upon which our nation grew strong have been discarded or remolded to serve narrow political purposes.

The cost of government has become so great and the burden of taxation so heavy that the system of free enterprise which built our great material strength has become imperiled.

The rights of individuals and communities have rapidly been curtailed in the advance toward centralized power. Our prestige abroad has reached a tragically low ebb, and our leadership is little wanted.

They are the real warmongers--they who refuse to end the Korean war--they who advocate "wait and see" while American blood--not dust as they would have it--settles in growing pools around the 38th parallel.

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