TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1950s) Truman Takes Charge </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1950s Highlights </history> <link 11823> <link 11826> <link 11827> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Truman Takes Charge </hdr> <body> [In the last two years of his term of office, President Truman made two controversial decisions that helped establish the growing the dimensions, and the limits, of presidential power. In 1951, in the middle of the Korean War, he dismissed his supreme military commander, General Douglas MacArthur, for insubordination over the conduct of the war and Asian policy in general. At the time, many dismayed people thought the wrong man was being fired. But there was no doubt of the President's authority to do so. The following year, Truman invoked constitutional authority to nationalize the steel industry in order to break a negotiating deadlock that threatened to lead to a critical war-time strike. On this occasion, the Supreme Court declared that he did not have the power to do so.] (April 23, 1951) A White House aide, leafing through a routine sheaf of wire copy from the news ticker, started with surprise. He had come across the report of Joe Martin's speech, made that afternoon in the House, containing General Douglas MacArthur's letter endorsing the employment of Chiang Kai-shek's troops to open a second front in China. The aide rushed in to the President's office. As he read, Harry Truman flushed with anger. As the White House leaked the story later, he made his decision then & there--Thursday, April 5--that Douglas MacArthur must go. The press got the mimeographed sheets: "With deep regret, I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties...It is fundamental...that military commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and the Constitution. The man he fired was a military hero, idolized by many. MacArthur had done a superb job as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in the occupation and reconstruction of Japan. He was the strongest bulwark against the Far East's Communists, who had long cried for his head. If Douglas MacArthur had an admirer in the White House set, it was Truman himself, an ex-artilleryman with an innate respect for soldiering. But strong-minded General Douglas MacArthur had set himself firmly against the policy of Truman, of his Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and of the U.N. itself. Despite repeated efforts to silence him, he had spoken up defiantly and deliberately As a soldier, Douglas MacArthur well knew that he was risking his military career. His bold pronouncements had alarmed U.S. allies, especially Britain. In Truman's view, this threatened the solidarity of the North Atlantic countries, and embarrassed Secretary Acheson in his own plans. (April 30, 1951) A hush fell over the assembled Congress of the United States and the crowded galleries. In the silence, the Doorkeeper's voice came clear: "Mr. Speaker, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur." In a great wave, the applause and cheers burst upon the erect figure who strode down the aisle. Democrats, Republicans, and the crowds in the galleries rose as one, clapped and shouted on & on. Across 8,700 miles, through cheering crowds, clouds of black headlines and storms of angry argument, Douglas MacArthur had come to this podium to make his stand before the nation and to state his case to the world. He stood in a trim Eisenhower jacket without ribbons or medals back rigid, his face stone--a dismissed commander conscious that history plucked at his sleeve, peered down at him from the lenses of the television camera. He waited, impassively. As silence fell, he began to speak slowly, in a deep, resonant voice. "I address you" he said, "with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country." Applause welled up again, interrupting him as it was to do again and again--in all, some 30 times. To his critics who charged him with wanting to start a world war, MacArthur retorted emphatically: "I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting...But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory." Attempts to appease Red China are useless, said MacArthur. "They are blind to history's clear lesson...Like blackmail, (appeasement) lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative. Why, my soldiers asked of me, surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field?" He paused dramatically, then said: "I could not answer." Douglas MacArthur had hurled his challenge, and was ready to make his farewells. "I have just left your fighting sons in Korea," he told his hushed audience, "and I can report to you without reservation that they are splendid in every way...Those gallant men will remain often in my thoughts and in my prayers always." He dropped his voice a little, and went on, "When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams...The hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. "And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye." (April 21, 1952) The midnight strike deadline was only 90 minutes away when the face of the President appeared on the nation's television screens. The voice of Harry Truman came through the loudspeakers: "I have to think about our soldiers in Korea...the weapons and ammunition they need...our soldiers and our allies in Europe...our atomic energy program...our domestic economy." Said the President: "We are faced by the possibility that at midnight tonight the steel industry will be shut down. This must not happen." If Harry Truman had acted on that sound premise to force a settlement in steel, no one could have questioned his course. After five months of negotiations, hearings and mediation, the steel dispute had come to a dead stop. It was a deadlock compounded of errors and intransigence on all sides: steel's long refusal to make any wage offer at all without the guarantee of a price increase; the C.I.O. steelworkers' insistence on the full recommendation of the Wage Stabilization Board (a wage package of 26.1 cents an hour plus the union shop); the Government's optimism about a settlement. But Harry Truman did not see that the blame for the deadlock rested on all three parties. The man who two years ago thought he had no authority to seize the coal mines now claimed the power to take over the steel mills "by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States." (June 9, 1952) This week the Supreme Court decided that the President of the U.S. has no powers other than those named in the Constitution or derived from acts of Congress. He holds one of the most powerful posts in the world, but he may not make law under any circumstances, even in emergencies. This affirmation of the American doctrine of separate legislative, executive and judicial powers is all the more striking because every member of the court was appointed by Roosevelt or Truman, and some of the Justices (e.g., Frankfurter, Douglas) have been mainsprings of the New-Fair Deal. The nation and the world have long understood that the U.S. is strong, but perhaps neither the nation or the world fully understand that constitutional government by limited and balanced powers is the key of that strength. The court trenchantly stated the case for constitutional government at a time when it direly needed restating. </body> </article> </text>