No Plans To Call Gen. MacArthur Home

Northern Advocate, 25 September 1943, Page 3

No Plans To Call Gen. MacArthur Home

WASHINGTON, September 23,

Responding to Press conference questions about General MacArthur’s recent statement, the Secretary for War (Mr. Stimson) said he knew of no plans to call General MacArthur home for a conference and added that General MacArthur was very busily engaged and was very active in very important operations. “I doubt if he would want to leave at this time,” he said. “People from hei’e are all the time going out to see him.”

Reporters asked whether Lord Mountbatten’s “south-east Asia command would overshadow or overlap General MacArthur’s South-west Pacific theatre and Mr. Stimson replied: “I’ve never heard it suggested.”

High quarters commenting on General MacArthur’s controversy, say that General MacArthur himself suggested the strategy now operating in the Pacific and the major blows at present being delivered under his command.

If General MacArthur’s statement has puuzzled the public, it has puzzled officialdom fully as much. However curious its terms, General MacArthur’s statement is regarded in Washington as answering an Australian newspaper and possibly Senator Chandler, says the United Press. In the wake of all the clamour over what General MacArthur meant, it can be stated on high', if unquotable, authority: (1) No controversy exists between General MacArthur and the High Command.

(2) Nothing has happened in Quebec changing General MacArthur’s status.

(3) General MacArthur’s strategic plan was adopted virtually intact at Casablanca and details were settled at a subsequent Pacific staff officers’ conference.

The Associated Press points out that the position of General MacArthur’s command has been clarified by a London announcement defining Lord Mountbatten’s and General MacArthur’s areas. Eventually some adjustment of responsibility may be necessary, but both must retake large portions of conquered territory before their respective theatres can conceivably overlap. Both apparently aim at an eventual break-through into the China Sea.