Evening star., 1951-05-07
Macarthur on Wor-ond Peace

However debatabe may be the stern mill
tary course advocated by General Macarthur to-
drive the Chinese Communists from Korea, his
views on war itself are plainly the views OF
man of peace More than that, as set forth in
his congressional testimony, they constitute an
eloquent appeal to the reason and sanity OF
governments everywhere-an appeal that ought
certainly to be pondered long and hard by the
responsible authorities in all the capitals OF the
world, particularly in Moscow.
To begin with, General Macarthur has en-
phatcally dissociated himself from that bleak
and potentially dangerous school OF thought ut
exists in many lands) that is resigned to the
''inevitabty" of a titanic, world-engultlng
armed struggle revolving around Russia and the
United States as the prime antagonists. He re-
jects such notion as defeatism of the worst
kinda despairing acceptance of the pernicious
fallacy that peoples and governments are help
less before the so-called wave of the future,
instead of being themselves endowed with the
means and power to make and shape history
according to their own free will. In his judg-
ment another global war is very definitely not
inevitable Indeed, he seems almost optimistic
in suggesting that the realities OF our age prom
ise to compel mankind to move-no matter how
haltingly or argumentatively-toward the es-
tablishment of permanent peace.
General MacArthurs optimism-if it may be
called that's based chiefly on the sound bellet
that the great masses of the world including
the Russian masses "are invincibly against
war" They are against it because, as he says,
it has been developed to point where 1t places
every man, woman and child in the front line
of battle exposing them to horrors beyond the
limits of human endurance. Science has reVo-
lutionzed the meaning OF space and time. 1t has
zaN;Y nf 1nY1H
distances and ocean barriers. 1t has compressed
the whole earth into relatively small neighbor-
hood, and the various peoples living in that
neighborhood, being we'll aware of the change
are as one in their desire for peace. In that re-
spect, according to General Macarthur, they are
far ahead of their leaders, and their "massed
opposition" to war "offers the greatest possible
hope that there shall be no war"
Moreover, wholly apart from the way the
masses feel in all countries, General Macarthur
has drawn some encouragement from this fact:
That every government-even the Soviet dicta-
torship-must be profoundly sobered by the
realization that atomic weapons and similar
scientific developments are so appalling IN their
potentialities that there is good reason to believe
that war "is inherently a failure now" as an
instrument for the settlement of international
disputes 1t ought therefore to be done away
with entirely No power really can profit from it.
On the contrary, another global conflict (Which
would be much worse than the last one) would
very probably result in catastrophe for VlctorS
and vanquished alike-the suicide of modern
civilization" In sum, General Macarthur has
put it, there would be such an abomination OF
destruction and annihilation, such a desolate
aftermath of woe and upheaval, such sorrow and
revulsion everywhere. that the only happy peo-
,oJa bo
Accordingly assuming that the men of the
Kremlin are sane, assuming that the leaders OF
other nations are sane, and assuming also that
no government anywhere can ignore mass
public opinion that is fervently anxious for peace,
General Macarthur has taken the affirmative
view that it is still possible, and perhaps even
probable that the world can establish the
mechanics to carry out the will of the common
people that war shall be non-eXstent" from
here on out, permanently.
So speaks the soldier and great commander
who has been maligned on both sides of the
Iron Curtain as "warmonger." His chief mes
sage to the Nation and the world is that peace,
not war should be inevitable. Moscow papers
please copy. General MacArthur'S views on this
point reflect the most urgent hopes of all hu-
manity-a humanity that realizes, along with
him. that time is running out on civilizations S
last chance to avert cataclySm that only
madmen can welcome