Announcement from Tokyo

In his grey-carpeted, leather-chaired office on the sixth floor of Tokyo's Dai Ichi (No. 1) Building, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur puffed at one of his 17 pipes (including five corncobs) and ran a careful eye over the words he had penciled on two sheets of blue-lined paper. Satisfied, he touched the buzzer, handed the sheets to an officer and said: "Have this released to the press."

What he had written was in keeping with the general's style and past performance: "In this hour of momentous import, national and international, temporal and spiritual ... I can say, and with due humility, that I would be recreant to all my concepts of good citizenship were I to shrink because of the hazards and responsibilities involved from accepting any public duty to which I might be called by the American people."

An Actor of Olympian Manner. Thus last week Douglas MacArthur strode on to the U.S. presidential-election stage. The audience perked up immediately. Here, among characters whose performances were greying with familiarity, was an actor of Olympian manner and delivery, a man to put emotion into the show. General MacArthur was a candidate to arouse either intense hostility or deep admiration. Ever since the early days of the Pacific war, anti-MacArthur feeling (e.g., "Dugout Doug") has been whipped up by a strange medley ranging from Navy men to Communist-fronters. This hostile sentiment on personal rather than professional grounds was never founded on rational analysis. Nevertheless, it remained one of the emotional realities of the Pacific war to the end. Last week, when the MacArthur candidacy was announced, it flared up into fresh flame and attracted more press attention than the political cheers for the general.

There was an immediate chorus of angry jeers by some World War II veterans. In Chicago an ex-G.I. started a "Veterans Against MacArthur" club. Overnight it spread to almost every college campus and to more than a dozen large cities. In Boston, student veterans at Harvard, M.I.T. and Boston U. rallied around a slogan: "Give him a medal, but not the White House." The extreme criticism was matched by extreme praise in the Hearst press which had been beating the tom-toms and claimed the general as its "Man of the Hour" (TIME, March 15). In general, the U.S. press welcomed him to the stage.

Said the New York Times : "There can be no doubt that his candidacy would command wide support in a national election." Almost all U.S. journals had praise for him as a soldier and a military governor, but wanted to hear MacArthur express his views. In Wisconsin, where his Republican supporters had centered their campaign, there was also jubilation. But there could be no doubt about it, in the first week the boos were larger than the cheers.

This fact hardly dismayed the general or his supporters. But they did have to face up to some practical political problems. One of them was created by Douglas MacArthur's position. As a General of the Army on active service, he was screened by Army regulations, which forbid his making political speeches or engaging in any political activity. His gold-braided cap was not actually in the ring at all, but at its edge. He could pull it out at any time--as he had, in effect, after running second to Tom Dewey in Wisconsin's 1944 primary. Even more important was the fact that General MacArthur has not been in the U.S. for almost eleven years. To many Americans he is almost unknown except as a legendary military man who had been one of the great captains of World War II, who had ruled the conquered Japanese, most of his countrymen assumed, with justice and magnanimity. If this remoteness was a political handicap, it was also a potential asset which could be realized if MacArthur chose to come and receive his conqueror's welcome.

Activity at GHQ. There was no sign from Tokyo this week that he intended to return to the U.S. soon to go into active campaigning. But there was no doubt that 68-year-old Douglas MacArthur wanted to crown his career with the U.S. presidency. His headquarters buzzed with a new activity. Cables of congratulations, support and advice began to pile up on his desk. As he always had in his military campaigns, the general was gathering intelligence reports. As he had in his war moves, MacArthur would reveal his political decision in his own good time.

In Japan itself, outside the general's own immediate circle, his entry into politics and the U.S. reaction created no great stir. MacArthur, acutely sensitive to criticism and impatient with opposition, has guarded his position as Japan's ruler by a tight censorship, designed to maintain his dignity, and thus the dignity of the U.S. As the first reaction to the candidacy began to filter back to Japan, the censorship was drawn tighter for both the Japanese press and U.S. Army publications.

Army censors blue-penciled many unfavorable references to the Supreme Commander that came in from the States. One U.S. correspondent wrote that "the thinness of [MacArthur's] hair is hidden by careful combing." That line never got to the Japanese press. The Armed Forces radio was told by headquarters that such information as the formation of "Veterans Against MacArthur" clubs was "controversial" and should not be broadcast. The same order went to the Army's Stars & Stripes. When the censorship was reported back to the U.S., the ban was lifted. GHQ explained that the general had not known about it, that he had given orders that the Japanese and the Army's press and radio wires be permitted to report any U.S. political attacks on him.

Behind the Bamboo Screen. The general had no real need of such censorship. The Japanese have a phrase of praise for him, which they once reserved for their Emperor: "the man behind the bamboo screen." It connotes strong character, wisdom, decisive power. They also know what their ruler thinks of Japanese problems. By the actions of his Military Government, and by many a pronouncement of policy, he has made his stand clear and decisive, even on the detailed problems of Japanese economics. But as a soldier, he could not discuss U.S. politics. Neither his many V.I.P. visitors from the States nor the closest members of his staff know where Douglas MacArthur stands on such domestic problems as tax reduction, prices, civil rights.

But on the one overriding problem of the time, the U.S. and Russia, Douglas MacArthur's views are unequivocal. They are probably farthest north of any of the candidates' views on stern, determined opposition to Russian expansion. He believes that the U.S. should negotiate directly with Russia to solve the differences, give Russia a chance at a realistic settlement. If that should fail, the U.S. should stop the U.S.S.R. as he decisively stopped it when the Soviets tried to muscle in on Japan at war's end. They were stopped by a show of iron determination, without the use of force or the open threat of force.

MacArthur has not said so, but there never has been any doubt in the minds of people with whom he discussed Russian conquest that the man Douglas MacArthur believes could persuade Joseph Stalin is Douglas MacArthur.

Obsolete Praises. Many a Republican had wished in the last dozen years for a candidate with Douglas MacArthur's appeal, experience and talents. Among them was Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg, now coming up strong as the man on whom the Republican convention might settle (see below). In a 1944 magazine article (Collier's), Vandenberg pleaded for the general to come back and run for President. Vandenberg's appraisal then: "MacArthur has what it takes . . .a composite of all our necessities ... a great mind, a great heart, a great capacity, a great devotion. . . ." Vandenberg was not squeamish then, as many Americans are now, about a military man in the White House. The Senator wrote: "I venture the prediction that . . . every President for two generations to come will have been a stalwart figure in this fighting war."

Such high praise from a high Republican seemed no longer quite so pertinent. The need for such a Republican leader was not so acute. MacArthur's announcement drew him no notable supporters.* His boosters, with the exception of Wisconsin's Phil La Follette (once an officer on his staff), had little party following; most of them were amateurs at political organizing.

To the professional politicos, MacArthur no longer looked like a man on a white charger about to run off with the presidency; instead, his horse was one of the darkest on the track. There was little doubt that if he ran well in Wisconsin's primary he would pick up backing a week later in the Nebraska primary. If Douglas MacArthur decided to come back and make a whirlwind campaign, and if the U.S.S.R. continued its world aggression, other candidates might have to think hard & fast about the man from Tokyo.

*Acting as the front man of a national MacArthur organization last week was a Chicagoan named Warren Wright, onetime Illinois State Treasurer, long a GOParty hack. The two men who chiefly told Wright what to do and what not to do were 1) General Robert E. Wood (retired), Sears, Roebuck & Co. chairman; 2) Edward A. Hayes, onetime American Legion national commander. Other MacArthur strategists: Hanford MacNider, also a onetime Legion national commander; Pennsylvania's Congressman James Van Zandt, onetime commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars; Nebraska's Congressman Arthur L. Miller; Alfred O'Gara, Chicago investment broker; Fred Zimmerman, Wisconsin's Secretary of State; William Campbell, Wisconsin industrialist.

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