Flippant Philosopher

ARMY & NAVY

As if it were so much raw meat, politicians in & out of Washington last week sank their teeth in the strange case of Major General Johnson Hagood who, for speaking flippantly of WPA, was fortnight ago summarily relieved of his command of the Eighth Corps Area and ordered to his home (TIME, March 2).

A South Carolinian, nephew and reverse-namesake of Brigadier General Hagood Johnson of the Confederacy, Johnson Hagood was graduated from West Point. Later he taught philosophy to the cadets at the Military Academy, where philosophy has mostly to do with mechanics, hydraulics, aerodynamics. From pedagogy he went to the Artillery. In 1917 he was sent to France where his executive abilities were soon recognized. He organized the A. E. F.'s Line of Communications, later did the same for the Service of Supply, saw combat service in the Argonne.

Good soldier though he was, General Hagood had one serious defect as an officer: he did his own thinking. As long as he confined his originality to the Artillery, his superiors had no objections. After the war he wrote a book called The Service of Supply in which he minced no words, spared no names, and failed to ask the War Department's permission to publish it. The Inspector General called the volume "unmilitary in tone and tenor and at times intemperate in both. . . . Among the uninformed it will bring ridicule upon the War Department." Also unmilitary in tone was an annual report General Hagood was once supposed to have written: "Nothing to report."

In late years General Hagood has advocated a number of unorthodox military ideas. By simplification of army training he claimed that in wartime raw recruits, "taught to shoot instead of to salute," could be made into efficient fighting men in three weeks or less. By reducing paper work and simplifying the War Department, he asserted, the U. S. could have a much more efficient army for much less money. In case of war he advocated sending only the National Guard to the front, ordering all regulars to the rear to train recruits--the system practiced by the Confederate Army and advocated by General Grant.

Called before the House Military Affairs Committee three years ago, the tart-tongued General was discreet enough to give no testimony until the Committee assured him that it would "take the blame for anything that might happen." Then he cut loose: "The Army has become so complicated that an archangel right out of Heaven could not operate it. ... The War Department has always collapsed at the outbreak of every war and the present organization will collapse at the outbreak of the next war because it is too topheavy, contains too many conflicting agencies, has too much divided responsibility."

Last December Representative Blanton of Texas wrote Secretary of War Dern asking to have Generals Brown, Drum, Malone and Hagood testify before a House Appropriations subcommittee, and requesting that they be not restrained by the War Department from making full and frank answers. General Malin Craig, Chief of Staff, replied that the officers named "will be instructed by me in person that they are to answer you freely, fully and frankly."

Testimony. In answer to this Congressional call, General Hagood traveled to Washington from his headquarters at San Antonio and appeared three months ago before the House subcommittee in executive (secret) session. Congressmen plied him with questions which he answered "freely, fully and frankly." Typical Hagood testimony: "I want to say to you gentlemen that, since I came home from the World War, I have seen families of soldiers and civilian employes of the Army living under conditions worse than anything I saw among the Belgian refugees. ... In one case, at Omaha, as late as 1929 there were 16 families with only one bathhouse and toilet among them. Women on one side and men on the other, not even a suitable partition for privacy between the occupants of the different sides. . . .

"I am asking that you take the Army and its supplies out of Wartime shacks and put it into permanent buildings. You have got to do it. You have no choice. If you do not do it this year you have got to do it next year, or the year after that, or you have got to abolish the Army.

"I am suggesting that you do it now, when there is a lot of money floating around, and not wait until you are skinning the budget to the bone in order to make up for past extravagance.

"I got $45,000,000 last year for the CCC and I got a lot of stage money from the WPA. I call it stage money because you can pass it around but you cannot get anything out of it in the end. Now the CCC is a fine thing--the best thing perhaps in the whole relief program. But the $45,000,000 I spent on it last year will all be gone next year. Give me $38,000,000 for Army housing and my great-grandchildren will show it to your great-grandchildren 50 years from now."

The subcommittee questioned General Hagood so long that its members apologized to him.

Publication. Back to his Texas post went the free-spoken General with mind at rest. Month ago, when he heard that his testimony given in private was about to be published, he wired to the Committee: "Please eliminate my entire testimony from the printed copy of the hearings, but if this cannot be done at least strike out everything that is inconsistent with the budget or could be construed as a criticism of the New Deal.*"

Same day the printed record of the hearings was delivered to the House Appropriations Committee by the Government Printing Office, distributed among newspaper men for future release. Last week Senator Byrnes charged that the printed record contained General Hagood's testimony but not the questions put to him by members of the subcommittee. Thus the impression was given that General Hagood made a stump speech, volunteered nearly everything, whereas the Committee had, as a matter of fact, led him on to express his opinion in full. Two days later the Press published the testimony and General Hagood's "stage money" made headlines. The General sent another telegram to several members of Congress: "I am deeply shocked at being accused of criticizing the President. No criticism could have been intended, as I am personally a staunch advocate of the Administration and know full well that the President has done more toward proper housing of the Army than has ever been done before. . . ." By that time, though, the fat was in the fire.

Discipline. Chief of Staff Craig, reading General Hagood's testimony in the Washington Star, wrote his subordinate to ask whether he had really said what was reported. Fourteen days later "by direction of the President" General Hagood was deprived of his Corps Area command--a terrific slap for an officer of his rank. What happened in those 14 days kept Washington guessing last week. New Dealers, doubly sensitive in a campaign year to such catch phrases as "stage money," were incensed at General Hagood. Harry Hopkins was supposed to have protested violently to Secretary Dern that the Army should not allow such an attack on his WPA. The War Department undoubtedly felt that General Hagood had been talking out of turn too long. Republican Senator Metcalf hung full responsibility for the Hagood ouster on President Roosevelt by declaring on the floor of the Senate, and it was not denied, that the General's case had been discussed at a recent Cabinet meeting at the White House. To take the curse of politics off its action, the War Department resorted to the extraordinary procedure of publishing a memorandum from Chief of Staff Craig to Secretary Dern. It cited all the black marks on General Hagood's service record for the last 18 years--"eccentricities," "intemperate statements" "flippancy." Said General Craig:

"In stating that [Hagood] was instructed by me that he was free to answer any question or to make any statement which he might choose, common sense, of course, should have made him understand that political comments and criticisms, never proper in an Army officer, might not freely be made. ... I am strongly of the opinion that disciplinary action is called for. ... A mere reprimand would be no more effective than it has been in the past."

Right v. Wrong. Having received his orders to surrender his command, General Hagood last week wired the War Department, got permission to remain a month in San Antonio to wind up his personal affairs before retiring like a bad schoolboy to his home at Columbia, S. C. In Washington Senator Byrnes and Representative McSwain, head of the House Military Affairs Committee, both of South Carolina, protested vigorously but in vain to Secretary Dern. So did Representative Blanton who got General Hagood permission to testify "freely." Republicans in the Senate made a political holiday of the case. Senator Metcalf called it "typical New Deal terrorism," asked for a Senate investigation. Senator Robinson, as angry as only that Democrat leader can get, pointed out that the late Brigadier General William Mitchell had been court-martialed by a Republican Administration for publicly criticizing his superiors.

New Dealers made a great point of the necessity of keeping the Army out of civilian politics, of shushing an officer who steps across the line. With equal vehemence anti-New Dealers accused the Roosevelt Administration of being unable to take criticism, of exhibiting a vengeful spirit against General Hagood. Bitterest comment along this line came from Cartoonist Jay ("Ding") Darling, who lately retired from the New Deal as the disillusioned Chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey. For the New York Herald Tribune syndicate he drew a picture entitled "The New Deal Administration Welcomes Constructive Criticism," and below, "X marks the spot where the last critic tried it." The X was in a shell hole, around which lay a head, a body, a severed hand, two severed legs and, on a shattered tree, a fragment of shirt labelled "Gen. Hagood." (See cut.)

Another ex-New Dealer, General Hugh Johnson, whose own words are none too mild, wrote: "Freedom of speech, like trial by Jury, is a constitutional right--but not for Army officers. . . . The Army is for defense and not for dialectic. The minute it becomes a debating association in the public Press, it is no good for fighting."

A different opinion of General Hagood's offense was strongly put forward last week by Pundit Walter Lippmann: "He was testifying, remember, by invitation of Congress; he was testifying, remember too, at what he thought was a private meeting. He was making no public speech. He was conducting no propaganda. He was speaking solely to the body that under the Constitution originates money bills. Nearly two months later the committee published his remarks. General Hagood did not publish them. . . .

"The events that have happened in Japan (see p. 23) are not likely to make any one wish to encourage the political activity of Army officers. . . . But what has happened in Japan merely put into high relief the utter unreality of General Hagood's offense. He was not conducting an agitation. He was not forcing his opinions on Congress. On the contrary, he was speaking in private and by invitation to the very civil authorities from whom an officer ought to conceal none of his opinions."

*All Army officers are forbidden to recommend any appropriations not provided in the budget. At the time of General Hagood's testimony the budget had not, however, been prepared.

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