Newspaper Editorial, "Truman Had to Drop MacArthur," Richmond Times-Dispatch

18 Richmond Times-Bisputrhy JOHN STEWART BRYAN, 1871-1944 DAVID TENNANT BRYAN, President and Publisher VIRGINIUS DABNEY, Editor ESTABLISHED 1850: Published every day in the SUBSCRIPTION RATES year at 110 North Fourth St., by Richmond News- papers. Incorporated. Entered at the Post Office at By carrier. Daily and Sunday. 35c wk.; Dally only 25c wk.; Sunday only. lãc wk. Richmond, Virginia. as Second Class Mail Matter MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATE PRESS. which RATES BY MAIL_PAYABLE IN ADVANCE is exclusively entitled to the use for publication of 1 Yr 6 Mo. 3 Mo. 1 Mo. all :news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise Daily and Sunday $17.00 +9.00 $5.00 $1.75 credited in this paper and also the local news Daily only 11.00 6.00 3.40 1.20 published herein. All rights of publication of special Sunday only 7.50 3.90 1.95 .75 dispatches are also reserved. Rates to .Foreign Countries will be furnished upon TELEPHONE 7-1851 request, Subscriptions by mail not accepted in Adv. Representative: Sawyer-Ferguson-Walker Co. localities in which carrier service is available. Thursday, April 12, 1951 Truman Had to Drop MacArthur DRESIDENT TRUMAN had no alterna- right in advocating this program, most tive but to relieve GENERAL MACAR- of the nations who are our friends in the THUR, The general had ignored at least UN are wrong. two directives from the President and How many Chinese Nationalists are the joint chiefs of staff that he clear all there on Formosa, anyway? A. J. LIEB- policy statements with them. He was LING recently showed in the New Yorker apparently preparing to make further that estimates by those who favor MAC- moves on behalf of a "freer hand" in the ARTHUR'S plan to use them range all the Korean war, No self-respecting com- way from 450,000 to 1,000,000. He also mander-in-chief could permit this. showed that there are even greater Talk of impeaching MR. TRUMAN is variations in the figures given for the absurd. MACARTHUR'S program was in number of anti-Communist guerrillas on direct conflict with that mapped out by the Chinese mainland with whom it is the President, the joint chiefs of staff hoped the Nationalists might get into and the Congress. They consider Eu- contact, These totals range from 1,000,- rope to be the most vital theater, and the 000 to 6,000,000. There is also the prob- one where Russia must be fought hardest, lem of how reliable these Chinese are. MACARTHUR considers the Orient to be the Would they put up a real fight, or would central battleground, and he sought re- they sell out, as the supposedly anti-Red peatedly to obtain permission to bomb Chinese did last year on the island of Manchuria and to use the Chinese Na- Hainan ? tionalist forces now on Formosa for an The only other near-paralle] in Amer- invasion of the Chinese mainland. ican history to the situation presented TRUMAN had no alternative but to re- by GENERAL MACARTHUR'S open divergence lieve MACARTHUR, even if MACARTHUR from his superiors would seem to have was right in his view as to the best grand been offered by GENERAL GEORGE B. Mc- strategy against Soviet Russia. No com- CLELLAN during the Civil War. PRESI- mander-in-chief can permit a subordi- DENT LINCOLN disagreed with McCLELLAN nate commander, however able and dis- concerning various military moves, no- tinguished, to issue repeated statements tably the Peninsula Campaign below in flat disagreement with the over-all Richmond in 1862, and the general strategy he has been ordered to follow. claimed that he had to abandon that If there is one military maxim which effort for lack of support from Wash- stands out above all others it is that ington. Later in the year he was ordered orders must be obeyed. GENERAL MAC- to turn his command over to BURNSIDE, ARTHUR disregarded that maxim. and he was never again used as a field Yet it is tragic to contemplate the dis- commander. missal of a man of GENERAL MACARTHUR'S character and stature, with a magnificent McCLELLAN was nominted for the war record and an apparent success in presidency as a man who had suffered administering defeated Japan, by a man injustice at the hands of his opponent, whose own achievements are far less PRESIDENT LINCOLN. He got only 21 elec- striking, whose political associates and toral votes to LINCOLN'S 212. appointees are often venal and selfish, Now that GENERAL MACARTHUR has ac- whose behavior is erratic and unpredict- cepted an invitation to address a joint abue, and whose presidential administra- session of Congress there is the possi- tion has been far from successful. bility! that he will stump the country. It probably was unfair to make GEN- Certainly there will be no lack of invi- ERAL MACARTHUR a political dictator in tations for him to speak. Just what all this will lead to is any- body's guess. It may even lead, despite GENERAL MACARTHUR'S 71 years, to an- other effort on his part to get the Re- publican presidential nomination. It will be recalled that in 1944, when he was on active military duty in the Pacific, he was boosted for the nomina- tion by various persons, including SENA- Ten VANDENBERG, lle allowed his name to be entered in the Wisconsin and Illi- nois primaries. He ran next to last in his own State of Wisconsin, and got 500,000 votes in Illinois against a real estate man named BENDER, Not long afterward he took note of widespread criticism of these efforts on behalf of an active field commander, and said he would not accept the nomination, Early in 1948, he announced that he General MacArthur Japan, and then to expect him to be wholly unpolitical in discharging his duties a commander of the United Na-