"A Delightful Trip"

After Douglas MacArthur's triumphal six-city tour, his congressional testimony, and his well-photographed visits to New York's three baseball parks, it had begun to seem as if the Great Homecoming were finally over. But the general had more than one gusher of hospitality in reserve: last week he flew off to Texas (in an Eastern Airlines Constellation chartered by his oil-rich hosts) for a four-day, five-speech circuit of the Lone Star State.

Circus-day excitement reigned in the state capital at Austin when he landed, with his wife and son, for his first public appearance in four weeks. They conquered, as they had in Washington, New York,

Chicago and Milwaukee. Texas Governor Allan Shivers (who hopes to replace Administration Stalwart Tom Connally in the U.S. Senate) was waiting in a five-gallon hat to welcome his visitors. Fifty thousand shirt-sleeved citizens cheered as the MacArthurs were driven into the city.

Hitting the Fan. The general, back in uniform, responded from the steps of the Capitol with a hard-hitting speech full of oratorical thunder, which raked the Administration up one side & down the other. He accused the Administration of appeasing Soviet Russia and thus inviting World War III.

The general did not limit himself to military affairs--either at Austin or in later speeches. He talked of high, taxes, the drift to socialism, the debased dollar, the rise of bureaucracy, the decline of morals, and the way that corruption has "shaken the people's trust in ... those administering the civil power."

Said a Texas legislator at Austin: "An awful lot of stuff hit the fan today. Maybe he shouldn't have said it all--about taxes--but I'm glad he did." The crowd of 25,000 sent him on his way to Houston with a burst of vociferous applause.

It was the high point of his trip, although the hospitality was just beginning. The two most militant of his oilmen hosts, crag-faced Republican Hugh Roy Cullen (who hoped MacArthur would run for President) and Glenn McCarthy (who was hell-bent on publicizing his Shamrock Hotel), had been jockeying for weeks for first place in the MacArthur limelight. Houston's Mayor Oscar Holcombe had diplomatically made each chairman of a welcoming committee; between them they had toiled as if they anticipated the second coming of Sam Houston.

Five hundred thousand people lined the streets to see the MacArthurs arrive. Glenn McCarthy had outdone himself. He had not only strung an electric sign "Welcome General Douglas MacArthur" across the facade of the Shamrock, but had provided artillerymen who fired a 17-gun salute when the general got to the hotel. A $250-a-day suite--provided with two butlers in red tail coats and green pants--was ready for the distinguished visitor.

Next day the Houston Elks presented MacArthur with a modest token of Texas hospitality--a Cadillac. But for all of Glenn McCarthy's planning (which included closing Houston businesses up at 4 o'clock, instituting special bus service, firing off another 17-gun salute and commissioning a special song entitled I Shall Return), the general's speech at Rice Institute Stadium drew only 20,000 to a bowl that seats 70,000.

The pattern was repeated during the rest of his trip. San Antonio, the old Army town with the highest percentage of retired generals in the U.S., treated him to old memories (he had lived there as a boy, and attended Texas Military Academy). General Jonathan Wainwright was on hand, in bemedaled uniform ("How are you, Skinny, you old rascal?"), so was Lieut. General Walter Krueger, General Courtney Hodges.

MacArthur supporters were daunted at the small size of the crowds that came to hear his speeches--27,000 at the 75,000-seat Cotton Bowl in Dallas, 15,000 at a high-school stadium in Fort Worth--but his critics were probably hasty-hopeful in counting empty seats as evidence that he had begun to fade away. In each city, nearly everybody turned out to see him on the parade route; the stadium crowds were small for a football game but large for an evening speech, particularly when it could be heard more comfortably on the radio or seen on TV.

Mac-kado. The unmistakable political tenor of MacArthur's speeches drew quick fire from Oklahoma's trigger-happy Democratic Senator Robert S. Kerr. Said he: "If MacArthur's not a candidate for President, there's not a steer in Texas. The Mac-kado rides again!" Most everybody else seemed to take the general's own disclaimers at face value: before Congress, he had referred to himself as "in the fading twilight of life"; in Houston, asked if he would be a candidate for President, he replied, "Emphatically no." What was plainly clear was MacArthur's determination to unseat the President who fired him.

Said MacArthur, on his return to New York: "It was a short but delightful trip. I revisited the scenes of my boyhood and saw many old friends."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.