Judge v. General

Through San Francisco's summer fog flickered a fire, kindled under an office chair. The fire was set in an effort to burn the britches off the U.S. Army's most important Western administrator, tight-lipped Lieut. General John Lesesne DeWitt.

The case of the People v. DeWitt might presently reach Congress in the shape of a petition demanding redress. Months of controversy had climaxed in a set of high crime & misdemeanor charges.

Inferno. The plaintiff was chalk-haired, Roman-featured Federal Judge William Denman, 69-year-old chairman of World War I's U.S. Shipping Board. Jurist Denman accused General DeWitt of:

P: Deliberate intent not to instruct not train San Franciscans in evacuation from their hilly, water-bound peninsula.

P: Negligence which had created conditions for panic in the civil population.

P: Formulation of a "ghastly" plan to evacuate the city's 650,000 residents if & when the emergency arose.

Judge Denman accused John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, of the new crime of "bureaucratic omniscience" for coming to DeWitt's defense. He prepared a petition to Congress, printed 5,000 exhibits of a letter he had written McCloy.

Charged Denman: 1) From 50,000 to 100,000 people might perish in an enemy-set fare engulfing San Francisco's wooden structures, with the prevailing west wind; 2) the heavy inbound blanket of summer fog invites a Jap attack; 3) telltale water outlines make an efficacious blackout impossible; 4) the fire department could not cope with incendiary bombs; 5) the military had discouraged a systematic tryout of the city's air raid sirens.

In reply, able Mr. McCloy (see p. 20) backed DeWitt to the hilt. Wrote he: "I know of no Army officer in whom I would place greater confidence. He has thought of more dangers that might threaten the West Coast than even you with your alert mind have thus far conceived of."

General DeWitt, as he has right along, kept mum. As military dictator over 12,000,000 apprehensive citizens in eight States and Alaska, General DeWitt was credited by the Army with having done a superb administrative job. Since Pearl Harbor, without fuss, he has moved thousands of Coast Japanese to places of safekeeping for the duration, has closed race tracks, bidden Pasadena's big Rose Bowl game go East.

At the root of the trouble lies General DeWitt's tight-tongued refusal to make his plan public. The trouble seemed to lie in the Army's tell-the-people-nothing attitude.

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