CASE AGAINST GENERAL

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26396, 14 April 1951, Page 7

CASE AGAINST GENERAL

“ PLENTY OF SECRET EVIDENCE” NEW YORK, April 12. "President Truman has plenty of secret evidence to support his case against General MacArthur if it should become a national issue,” says the diplomatic correspondent of the “New York Times,” James Reston. “Mr Truman ordered two or three secret records to be opened yesterday. These provided not only ammunition for the President’s charge that General MacArthur was not following orders, but also asserted that while General MacArthur had been blaming the Administration for failing to rearm the South Koreans, he himself had opposed precisely such a proposal by uie Joint Chiefs of Staff. “White House officers are carefully examining a voluminous file. It w..l not be made public unless General MacArthur's dismissal degenerates into a political row, for every disclosure that General MacArthur really did want a large-scale war with China, fits precisely into the Communist propaganda line. If however, General MacArthur wishes to challenge the authority and strategy of the Administration, the intention in Washington is to let the record speak for itself. ' “The central issue in this conflict, cs officials see it, is not whether to fight a limited war or ah all-out war against Communist China; not whether Europe or Asia is the decisive theatre of action against the Communists; but whether the principle of civil authority over the military is to be sustained in American government.”