The General Retires

In answer to an unusual mid-morning summons, 17 reporters trotted upstairs from the Pentagon pressroom to the Secretary of Defense's third-floor office. They found George Catlett Marshall, trim in a blue-grey double-breasted suit and dark tie, smiling genially. He waved them to seats, crossed one leg over the other, and he broke his well-kept secret: "My resignation as Secretary of Defense takes effect at 11 a.m."

It was a year to the day since Harry Truman had booted Louis Johnson out of the Pentagon and summoned Marshall from retirement for the third time (the other two: in 1945, to head the ill-fated mission to China; in 1947, to be Secretary of State). Marshall had agreed to take the defense job only until June 30, "unless in the event of a full-out war.'' he told the reporters. But at midsummer it would have been a "very bad business for me to drop out" because of "the state of legislation on the Hill." Now, at 70--after 50 years of public life since his commissioning as a second lieutenant--he was retiring to his Leesburg, Va. home for "very personal reasons." His successor was his longtime associate, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Abercrombie Lovett--"Nobody else in the United States will have his understanding and competence."

There would be no memoir postscripts to the Marshall career. The general told friends some months ago that he had turned down an offer of "about a million dollars'' to write the story of his life. "I wouldn't take it because the only thing I'd be able to add to the record would be personalities, and I don't want to do that ... Yet I get criticized for not writing a book. I'm probably the only man in the country who ever got criticized for turning down a million dollars."

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