Shifts & Middle Ground

All week long, congressional lobbies were blue with smoke and acrimonious disputes about what General Douglas MacArthur had said, what he would say, and whether he should be heard in closed or open hearings. This week the Democrats prevailed, announced that MacArthur would be heard before the combined Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees (14 Democrats, 12 Republicans) in closed sessions. After each day's testimony, a security officer from the Defense Department and a representative of General MacArthur will edit the transcript before its release to the press.

Besides the outspoken, who had already taken up positions in the debate, there was many a legislator still warily keeping his own counsel, or feeling for a secure hummock on middle ground. Said South Carolina's conservative Democrat Burnet Rhett Maybank: "I think MacArthur would have had us do too much with too little, though his theory is right." Also in the middle was Illinois' independent Democrat, Senator Paul Douglas, who would not bomb Chinese bases in China, but advocated a naval blockade of China as well as U.S. aid to Chinese guerrillas on the mainland and "helping smaller units of Chiang's troops, under their own power," to make raids.

There were others who rose to be heard. Arkansas' Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright, who has had more than his share of disputes with President Truman, came to the Administration's defense. "General MacArthur's views . . . are opposed on military and political grounds not only by his own Government but also by the governments of the free world," said Fulbright. "Are we now prepared for the unlimited requirements of the third world war? . . . Are our allies ready? ... Is today or tomorrow the most favorable moment for the U.S. and its allies? . . . Shall we gain Chiang Kai-shek and lose Britain, France, Italy, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Greece and Turkey?"

Concluded Fulbright: "It may be, of course, that General MacArthur is right, and the whole world is wrong." As for himself, he preferred to defer to the judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

No Acceptance. Ohio's Senator Robert Taft snapped him up. He pointed out that last year the J.C.S. had said that all they needed was $13 billion, but now they wanted $60 billion "to meet exactly the same threat which existed one year ago today." Said Taft: "I have come to the point where I do not accept them as experts. Their recommendations are what the Administration demands that they make."

Next day Taft rose to expound his own views and to signal a Republican shift in fire from Harry Truman to a more battered target, Secretary of State Dean Acheson. "The choice between MacArthur and Acheson is the only issue," Taft declared. It is a choice between "a more aggressive war against China or an appeasement peace.*

"[We] must not be stopped by any hesitation about the possibility that the Russians may come into the war," Taft insisted./- The U.S., he argued, had not let any such hesitation stop it in concluding the North Atlantic Treaty (Taft at the time had dourly warned that the pact would be interpreted by the Russians as "an aggressive move"). Taft wanted to send "such airplanes and warships as might be necessary" to support a Nationalist invasion of the Chinese mainland, bomb Chinese bases, but confessed to some reservations about a naval blockade.

No Change, Really. The Administration was finding its wrinkled-nose attitude toward Chiang Kai-shek increasingly awkward. The awkwardness was compounded last week when Major General Courtney Whitney told New York reporters that "all senior officers" in the Far Eastern command supported MacArthur on the use of Chiang's troops. There were still reservations in the Pentagon about the Nationalist army's effectiveness. The Army considered only 40,000 of the 400,000-man army were ready to fight, and then only under competent non-Chinese command. With U.S. training, the Army figured, the Nationalists might be ready in six or nine months for operations on their own, provided U.S. officers accompanied them down to the battalion level.

But last week there were signs of change in the Administration's attitude. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett announced that arms aid for Formosa now had equal priority with arms for Europe. The U.S. has already shipped $10 million worth of ammunition to Formosa. After the 116-man mission which left last week has reported on Chiang's needs in equipment and the U.S. starts shipping it, the mission will be built up to about 600 men. But just in case anyone might interpret this as a sign that the Administration had really been shaken into doing something, Secretary of State Dean Acheson hastily discouraged the notion. The aid program had been conceived before the MacArthur dismissal, he pointed out carefully, and he insisted that the program meant no change in the U.S. policy of neutralizing Formosa. By the terms of the agreement, he explained, the Chinese government must use the material only for "internal security or its legitimate self-defense."

* For another interpretation of Acheson v. MacArthur, see PRESS. /- A bewildering feature of the Taft position: this week he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the armed forces should be cut by 500,000 men and the mobilization budget reduced by $20 billion. Said he: "I don't believe the Government can take a third of the national product without inflation, loss of morale, resentment, labor trouble and the severest type of controls."

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