A Familiar Rumble

To Douglas MacArthur's alert military ear, the Communist sweep through China carried an ominous and familiar rumble. Only seven years ago, in Manila, he had seen the gathering storm of Japanese conquest. He appealed for reinforcements which could not be supplied, hopelessly watched the envelopment of the Philippines. Could Japan become a latter-day Bataan?

In his Tokyo headquarters, the 68-year-old Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers took a seasoned soldier's look at the Red tide now lapping down over his map of China. Last week he sent a 16-page radio report to Washington. Its heading was mild enough: "Strategic Implications of the Developments in China." But to the Joint Chiefs of Staff last week, the report was a stinger. Once again, Douglas MacArthur found himself in a potentially untenable position. And he was calling for help.

Cozy Concept. For months, the JCS hopefully contended that the Communist conquest of China constituted no immediate threat to U.S. security in the Pacific; Japan was the U.S.'s bastion and it was safe in MacArthur's hands. MacArthur himself now blasted this cozy concept. In the north, the Russians had always been in position to attack the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido from Vladivostok and their bases in the Kurils. The southward plunge of Chinese Reds now threatened to give Russia domination of the China coast down to Shanghai.

In the newly won southern territory, MacArthur reasoned, the Reds would soon be able to establish bases from which an airborne conquest of thinly guarded Okinawa would be a cinch. The waters from Okinawa to Hokkaido could be patrolled by their 100 long-range submarines. In short, the fall of China, MacArthur observed, had made possible the military threat of a "double envelopment" of Japan. There was no evidence of an impending Soviet attack. If it came, it could only precipitate, or be part of, the world's worst war. But the business of a commander is not to guess whether a potential enemy intends to attack but to estimate, his ability to attack successfully.

Ten to One. On his thin chain of islands picketing the vast Red-dominated land mass of Asia, Douglas MacArthur stood overwhelmingly outgunned, outmanned, and out-planed by actual and potential Soviet power. In every category of military strength (except the atomic bomb), the Soviet Union, stretching from the Bering Strait to Vladivostok and deep inland, held at least a ten-to-one superiority. Reported Douglas MacArthur: the time to prepare is now. He asked immediately for six divisions, hundreds of aircraft and increased naval forces.

But the U.S. had only 2 1/3 divisions in reserve in the U.S., was already curtailing its draft schedule. The problem was up to the JCS and the U.S. people. They now had Douglas MacArthur's word for it that, one way or another, the U.S. could not escape sharing the cost of Nationalist China's defeat.

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