The Generals: Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, and the Winning of World War II by Winston Groom

Author:Winston Groom [Groom, Winston]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781426215506
Publisher: National Geographic
Published: 2015-11-10T10:00:00+00:00

ON FEBRUARY 21, 1938, Jean MacArthur presented her husband with a seven pound, eight ounce boy who was christened Arthur MacArthur IV. He was tended to by Jean and a Cantonese nurse named Ah Cheu, and quickly the boy became the light of the general’s life. The baby soon learned to walk, and before long MacArthur had created a morning ritual of martial bearing. When young Arthur would toddle into the couple’s bedroom about 7 a.m., MacArthur would spring out of bed and come to attention. Then they would parade around the bedroom with the field marshal of the Philippines making the sound of drums until he burst into song, usually those from the turn of the twentieth century, which he taught to Arthur IV so the two of them could sing duets.

The birth of the child had a profound effect on Douglas MacArthur, who was going on sixty but looked and now acted twenty years younger. Practically everyone who knew him commented on this.

Unfortunately, by then, MacArthur had created a number of powerful enemies in Washington, including the new chief of staff Malin Craig, who resented MacArthur’s prominence in the press and ordered him to return to duty in the United States. Soon after, the field marshal of the Philippines resigned from the U.S. Army, while numerous members of Congress simply wanted the army to withdraw from the Western Pacific and make the Hawaiian Islands the extent of U.S. influence in that ocean. But MacArthur always had President Roosevelt, who repeatedly called him “our greatest general” (though he told him privately, to his face, that he would be “our worst politician”). And Roosevelt trumped everyone.

MacArthur and Quezon continued to be “estranged,” with the president of the Philippines now publicly suggesting that the islands were indefensible. MacArthur was irate not only with Quezon but with the politicians in Washington, who continued to refuse to send any arms and had put the islands on a low defensive priority.

Another loss came when war broke out in Europe on September 1, 1939, and Eisenhower, now a lieutenant colonel, asked to be released and sent back to the States, where he hoped to receive a combat command. MacArthur graciously let him go, and as his replacement he selected Lieutenant Colonel Richard K. “Dick” Sutherland, a gloomy, unctuous Yale graduate, whose father was a retired U.S. senator. Sutherland had some strange political views that didn’t sit well with MacArthur, and one night, at dinner, MacArthur set him straight. Sutherland told the general and several other officers that democracy should be abolished in wartime, that Congress wasted too much time arguing. Elections, he asserted, ought to be eliminated in favor of a presidential dictatorship.

“No Dick, you are wrong,” MacArthur told him. “Democracy as we have it in the United States is the best form of government that man has ever evolved.” When people have freedom of speech and thought, MacArthur continued, they will keep their minds flexible and progressive. But, he said, in a dictator state freedom disappears and people’s minds become rigid and regimented—“especially in time of war.

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