Evening star., 1951-12-30

1t is rash to predict who will
be remembered by history, who
forgotten. And yet it seems
safe to say that when the period
of World War II and it's chaotic
aftermath is assayed in the
future, no name outside of Pres
ident Roosevelt's will be men
toned more frequently than
that of George c. Marshall.
Long after certain irresponsible
attacks on his character have
been forgotten, his positive con-
tributionS to his country will be
recounted, whatever human
shortcomings and errors of
judgment historians may write
up against his discharge of un-
precedented responsibilities.
OF all this Mr.. Payne is SEN
sitively aware. He is a novelist
of artistry and a factual writer
of rare perception. He is, Incl
dentally, an Englishman, though
you'd never guess it from this
book, so intimately does he
grasp the American scene. AS
he explains, his book is more
concerned with probing the
mind Of Gen. Marshall, with
trying to discover what sort of
man he s underneath all his
powers and titles. than with
writing a conventional biog-
raphy. In the strict sense. Mr..
Payne comedies, it is mot a
biography at ALL" though 1.-THE
Marshall Story" outlines much
Of what the general did and a
great deal of what he seemed to
feel from childhood to his re-
tirement on the estate near
Lsesburg. Va.
Legend From Fact.N
Mr.. Payne is sympathetic to
George Marshall and has made
. prodigious effort to separate
legend from fact-a difficult
process In his case. the biogra-
pher admits-but the book is no
prolonged eulogy. 1t is q criti-
cal study, and Mr.. Payne does
not hesitate to explain fully the
mistakes he thinks his subject
made, some of them grave. And
yet. the person who hopes to
discover here some support for
the wild charge that Gen. Mar
shall helped an enemy power
will find, as Mr.. Payne says, mo
comfort in the chapters which
explore his errors" This book,
the author adds, "is the study of
a gallant, gentle and tormented
man who worked wonderfully to
revive the ancient American vir-
tues of fortitude and mercy at a
time when those virtues were
more than ever necessary"
There has been no more beauti-
fully written or better balanced
biographical essay In recent
years.
In his final summing up, Mr..
Payne concludes that because
Gen. Marshall was a man of
single minded genius, he failed
in the subjects he had never
mastered. He was not a deep or
an original military thinker: He
added nothing new to strategy"
The writer adds:
"A failure as Ambassador to
China and an unimpressive Sec
retary Of State except in the role
of harbinger of the Marshall
Plan, he was magnificent as Sec
retary Of Defense and the great
est Chief Of STAFF the country
has ever possessed"
Pearl Harbor Incident.
Mr.. Payne feels that Gen.
Marshall's two gravest errors
centered around Pearl Harbor
and his mission to China In 1945.
In 1941 the Chief Of Staff failed
to appreciate any of the portents
which pointed to q sneak attack
on Pearl Harbor, especially the
Martin -Bellinger report fore
casting such a raid, and on the
December morning the bombs
fell was on q long horseback ride
in Virginia and could not be
reached in time to warn the
Army commander in Hawaii of
the famous intercepted Japanese
memorandum.
The biographer does not think
the general failed to avert the
debacle Of Chang Kai-shek in
China because Of Communist
influence, inside or outside the
State Department. Mr.. Payne
is aware that an original direc-
tive to the envoy favorable to
the Communists was supposed
to have been rewritten before it
reached Marshall, but Mr.. Payne
feels that this was irrelevant in
any event. The generals great
est mistake, as he sees it, was to
leave China for six weeks, to
report to Washington, at time
when he had brought about a
truce and it looked as If there
was a real chance to avert civil
war. ut was as though, as on
the morning of Pearl Harbor,
Marshall were illustrating his
own fatal tendency to be absent
at those critical times when he
alone could decide the course Of
events"
There has been bao feeling
between Gems. Marshall and