That's Democracy

One day last week, U.S. citizens read in the inside pages of their newspapers that Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall was the commencement speaker at Washington University in St. Louis. Two days later, they were reading of George Marshall on Page One: the 70-year-old Secretary was in Korea for a front-line look at the battle situation.

A special Pan American Constellation carried Marshall to Tokyo's Haneda airport, where he joined General Matthew B. Ridgway. They took a waiting C-54 and roared off to a forward area landing strip in Korea. Within minutes, eleven light planes had joined it--like rooks gliding in for a fence-rail convention. Almost all the brass in Korea, from the Eighth Army's Lieut. General James A. Van Fleet to commanders of the allied detachments fighting in Korea, had been summoned. In Washington, Dean Acheson said that he didn't know that the Defense Secretary had left town.

After touring the battle area in a light liaison plane, Marshall said his trip was "purely military," and had "no connection whatever" with peace rumors. Later, in Tokyo, a Chinese reporter asked him where the U.N. forces would halt in North Korea, if they decided to stop advancing.

"In the first place," said Marshall quietly, "I wouldn't tell the enemy about it now anyway. I wonder what some of you gentlemen would do if you were in the position, for instance, that I am, or General Collins, or the other Chiefs of Staff. We have to tell literally everything we are doing. But if you can tell me one thing on the other side, I'll be very grateful. That's an awfully hard way to make war." Marshall paused and looked around at a group of newsmen which included Evgeny Egorov, chubby, blond Tass correspondent in Tokyo. "We are certainly working at a tremendous disadvantage," the Defense Secretary sighed. "That's democracy--but I think democracy has got to watch itself."

A few hours later, Marshall headed back to Washington, passing somewhere en route another Air Force plane carrying another high Pentagon man--Secretary for Air Thomas K. Finletter--who, like his boss, was inspecting the Korean area. The Administration's top brass were determined never to be criticized again for failure to see for themselves.

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