Instituting a War

Before an audience of 100,000 in Boston last week, Navy Secretary Francis Matthews put himself out on a long, shaky limb. He did it deliberately.

Francis Patrick Matthews, who had made no splash in 15 months in office, is a mild-looking and prosperous Omaha lawyer, a good Democrat, a prominent Roman Catholic layman (a Papal Chamberlain with Cape and Sword), and a dedicated and fervent antiCommunist. One of the things he is not is a military strategist (he admitted, when he became Secretary, that his knowledge of naval affairs was confined to operating a rowboat). As Navy Secretary, he had apparently got to thinking of the danger of being Pearl

Harbored. The idea came to him: Why wait to be bombed? Why not strike the first blow? He tried the idea in a speech last week in Omaha,* but nobody seemed to be listening. Two days later he added more powder to his charge in a speech at the Boston Navy Yard, and this time the shot was heard 'round the world.

Attack. The U.S., he said, must take the offensive against Russia. "It is a role which, in my opinion, we cannot escape . . ." he declared. "We should first get ready to ward off any possible attack and ... we should boldly proclaim our undeniable objective to be a world at peace. To have peace we should be willing to pay, and declare our intention to pay, any price--even the price of instituting a war to compel cooperation for peace."

The U.S., he said, would have to assume a character new to a true democracy and become "an initiator of a war of aggression." "It would win for us a popular title," said he. "We would become the first aggressors for peace."

Counterattack. The reaction came quickly. Though Labor Secretary Maurice Tobin, who was speaking on the same bill with Matthews, solemnly assured reporters that "Secretary Matthews speaks as the official representative of President Truman," it was soon clear that he did not. Next morning, there were hurried consultations at the White House between Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and Louis Johnson. State was worried; Matthews' ill-considered remarks would be picked up by Moscow to prove to the world what the Communists had said all along: Americans were warmongers itching to start World War III. With Harry Truman's approval, the State Department released a terse statement. "Mr. Matthews' remarks about instituting a war for peace do not represent U.S. policy," it said. "The United States Government does not favor instituting a war of any kind." Matthews assured everybody that his speech represented "my own personal thinking, not that of the Administration." Up on Capitol Hill, West Virginia's 76-year-old John Kee, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, suggested that Administration officials not concerned with foreign policy should "keep their big mouths shut."

All in all, it was a current high of flustered muddle in the Truman Administration and it might be comic were it not so dangerous. The previous high was in 1946 when Truman's Secretary of Commerce, Henry A. Wallace, made a speech in Madison Square Garden calling for appeasement of Stalin. Wallace swore that he had personally shown the speech to Truman beforehand, but nobody ever figured out whether the President changed his mind after the speech was delivered, or whether he didn't realize what it meant in the first place. The White House announced that Harry Truman did not intend to fire Matthews as he had Wallace.

*Which is also the headquarters of Strategic Air Commander Curtis LeMay, whose business it would be to deliver an attack on Russia if war came (see Background for War).

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