TRUMAN’S REMARKS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30602, 19 November 1964, Page 17

TRUMAN’S REMARKS

MacArthur Defended

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK,

November 18.

Comments on the late General Douglas MacArthur made in recent television broadcasts by the former President Harry Truman were described today as “a low-level, guttersniping form of personal attack.”

Major-General Courtney Whitney, who was general MacArthur’s aide until the war hero’s death last April, said that Mr Truman’s comments in the first two of a television series on his Presidential decisions were “a violent personal attack upon the general’s character, timed some seven months after death had sealed General MacArthur’s lips and rendered it impossible for him to defend himself.” Mr Truman, who dismissed General MacArthur from his Far Eastern command in 1951, described the general as an egotist “who thought he was greater than the President of the United States.” General Whitney said the comment “tragically illbecomes a man who at one time held the exalted office” of President.

He added: “It may only be explained as a desperate effort to influence the inexorable judgment of history.”