“I understand that these documents have been shown to you and have received your approval.” What could General Marshall think himself to be, an ostrich with his head in the sand?
Much has happened since 1946, particularly as pertains to the relationship between China and General Marshall. A few excerpts from the September 15th, 1950, issue of the Congressional Record, Volume 96, Number 184, bring the matter further to a head. Senator William E. Jenner from Indiana holds the floor:
“I believe the time has come to expose this whole tragic conspiracy in which we are caught, to hew to the line of truth, and to let the chips fall where they may.... I can assure the Senate there is no pleasure, no pride of authorship, and no sense of personal satisfaction in taking this stand. There is only a growing sense of shame, of outraged decency, and of painful duty as I speak the dictates of my conscience. Even if I have to stand and speak alone, I am both unable and unwilling by my silence to be an accomplice in compounding crimes that have already been committed against my native land. Mr. President, this background is necessary because without it we cannot understand where the appointment of General George C. Marshall as Secretary of Defense fits into the picture. With it, we can help the disillusionment of the American people to run its course by exposing General Marshall as a living symbol of the swindle in which we are caught. The appointment of Marshall at this peculiar juncture in our destiny is a last desperate attempt of this administration to swallow up the treachery of the past in the new treachery they are planning for the future.... Everything he has been a party to during the past ten years has helped to betray his solemn trust and to set the stage for the staggering Soviet victory that is sweeping across the earth....”
Senator Jenner’s full and documented statements cover eighteen pages of the Record but interest here is centered upon those comments bearing on China, which confirm my own first-hand information and knowledge. He goes back to April 26, 1938, when Marshall was appointed a member of the liaison committee created by President Roosevelt for the coordination of policy of common concern to the Departments of State, War and Navy. From then on, Marshall remained one of the top-ranking policy makers in our Government. Truman was aware of the closeness between Marshall and Roosevelt, and of their consultations on matters of vital policy affecting our security and the defending of our interests around the world. Was this, perhaps, a reason for Truman’s wanting Marshall as Secretary of Defense, even as a possible stop-gap in a Democratic political crisis?
“Marshall knew of the deceit and the duplicity that was indulged in by President Roosevelt during the critical years of 1939, 1940 and 1941, by which we were secretly committed to go to war.... He went along with the most criminal and outrageous betrayals of American interests and principles in history that resulted from Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam,” says Jenner. To anyone’s comment: “He was a soldier. He was taking orders,” I feel urged to ask: “Does there not come a time in everyone’s life when he has to decide whether he is first a citizen of integrity? General of the Army Douglas MacArthur made that decision in April, 1951, and made it unflinchingly.
“At Yalta,” Jenner adds, “the President did the age-old thing with regard to Asia and General Marshall knew that at Potsdam, President Truman confirmed the sellout of half the world to the Soviet Union ... this meant that American GI’s were turned into political whipping boys, betrayed by their own Chief of Staff and used for advancing the cause of Communism across the earth.... Marshall lent all of his great prestige and power to the Jessup-Lattimore-Service-Acheson line calling for a cessation of the civil war, paralyzing the Nationalist Government and withholding aid from Chiang, while he knew that the Russians were not only taking over Manchuria and northern China, but were being rearmed with captured Japanese equipment and were preparing for the eventual conquest, not only of China, but of the whole Far East.”
Harold Lamb, historian and authority on Asiatic history, has commented: “Curiously enough, when I began to study the Mongols nearly thirty years ago, I found two studies of the methods of Genghis Khan made by young American Army officers. They were George C. Marshall and Douglas MacArthur.” How differently these two men have interpreted their research, in the light of their subsequent actions!
Let me quote a remark or two from the March, 1951, issue of The American Mercury. I have high regard for the journalistic integrity of Walter Trohan, Washington, D. C., Bureau Manager of The Chicago Tribune, and concur heartily with his comments in an article entitled: “The Tragedy of George Marshall”:
“On March 19, 1950, General Marshall announced that he would not write his memoirs for these remarkable reasons:
“‘To be of any historic importance they have got to be accurate; that is one mustn’t omit, and make it pleasant reading. Now, if you do put it all in, you do irreparable harm. You almost ruin a man, but if you don’t mention that, it is not history’.”