Talk:General of the Armies/Archive 1

message: Question has been raised regarding the image on this page.  The  Institute of Heraldry published this image and there are corresponding documents from 1945 that this was the suggested insignia if the rank had ever been reestablished.  Documents from the National Archives (of which I am an employed historian) support this claim.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Husnock (talk • contribs)  01:39, 24 May 2004
:Then you will presumably have no problem providing a cite to the relevant documents in the National Archives? -- The Anome 08:52, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: image

message: The General of the ArmiesSaid "I think that war is barmy"So he threw away his gunNow he's having lots more fun
Wasn't US Grant made a six star as General of the Armies during the Civil War? Tomtom 1509est  15 June 2004
: He was made General of the Army which was considered a title.  His actual rank was Lieutenant General -User:Husnock 15 Jul 2004
::And even that was controversial; Grant was the first lieutenant general since Washington. But the intent was the same: to make it official that he outranked everyone else in the Army. But
:::"By order of senority, it was decided that General Pershing (still living when the rank of General of the Army was created in 1944) would be senior to all the newly appointed General of the Army officers. Thus, Pershing has become considered a six-star general in that he was superior to all five-star generals."
::doesn't follow -- Pershing could have been considered a five-star and he'd still have had 25 years' seniority over all the WWII five-stars.
:::True, but being a rank higher would be more of a symbolic gesture.
::--wwoods 03:52, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: US Grant

message: "The appointment was not considered a promotion to six star general, but rather a symbolic promotion that made Washington the senior United States military officer. By Presidential Decree of President Gerald Ford, it was proclaimed that George Washington would always remain senior and could never be outranked by another officer of the U.S. military."
I have trouble understanding the above excerpt from the article.
If the promotion was merely "symbolic" then Washington's actual rank would be Lt General. Then the statement "could never be outranked by another officer of the U.S. military" would be false
because there have been many generals higher than Lt General.
Didn't President Ford have the authority to promote officers?
If so and if nobody has legally challenged the promotion, then woudn't it make Washington's promotion to "General of the Armies" legal( or official or at least de facto). Or did President Ford state that he intended the promotion to be merely "symbolic"?
:The Bill promoting Washington to General of the Armies was very lengthy and a part of the tremendous celebrations that were occurring in 1976 as part of the bicentennial.  Washington is regarded actually as three ranks.  1) Commander-in-Chief from the Revolutionary War, 2)Major General from his recall during the French-Quasi War, and 3)General of the Armies posthumously promoted in 1976.  So, if you get technical, his rank is General of the Armies since thats the last one he held, albeit after he was dead.  The thing about him being senior to every other officer was part of the bill promoting him, giving Washington the honor of beocming the senior most officer of the US military, past present and future. -Husnock 07:30, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Washington's Rank

message: Is the rank "General of the Armies" or is it "General of the Armies of the United States" ? -unsigned 30Oct05
:It is referred to in general usage as General of the Armies.  The full title of the rank is General of the Armies of the United States.  The article reflects this in the opening paragraph. -Husnock 07:11, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Proper Name

message: he is the more importnat of the 2 if you ask me. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.73.203.108 (talk • contribs) 10:23, April 1, 2006  (UTC)
:He may have been the more important, but did not achieve the rank until after Pershing, poshumosly in 1976 by President Ford --rogerd 16:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  why isnt washington first? 

message: Shouldn't the plural of "General of the Army" be "Generals of the Army"? All other titles containing multiple words (i.e. Secretary of Defense, Chief of Police) are plurilized this way (i.e. Secretaries of Defense, Chiefs of Police). "General of the Armies" would seem to be the appropriate pluralization if it reffered to a general of more than one army, wihch it does not.
*It does refer to more than one army in the grammatical sense, but we shouldn't get to technical about it all -in any event, it doesn't refer to more than one general - Washington was not a "Generals of the Army" as there was only one of him, but when refering to the seperate rank of General of the Army it would be proper to speak in the plural, like "MacArthur and Eisenhower were both Generals of the Army". - Matthew238 03:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Generals of the Army? 

message: :Since George Washington is considered to be the most senior army officer, permanently outranking all other army officers, it could be infered that his rank is that of a six star general since the rank of a five star general has already been established.
I removed this because this can't really be "inferred" from anything. Why would we infer six stars in particular? Why not a billion? Why not five gold stars instead of five silver stars? This statement is meaningless and adds little to the article. - furrykef (Talk at me) 03:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed text from article 

message: General of the Armies is not a rank, it is an honorary title. I served in the military -- in the US Army -- and have been reading military history for over 40 years, and never until I came across the Wikipedia, was this ever given an inkling of consideration, including during the Bicentennial. This is like a child's writing -- six star general! Give me a break. It's fun, but to put in that it is a "rank" is ludicrous. -unsigned anon user
:See below.  Its a well established rank and has been held by two people. -Husnock 05:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  General of the Armies Is Not A Rank 

message: There is no "Rank" or "Grade" of six star General of the Armies or Admiral of the Navy.  Try a hitch in the service: you will not find this information in any military publication. That is because there is nothing outside of the minds of Wikepedians that holds that there is such a rank or grade.
I've seen these discussions morph from some pleasant speculation about the possibility of there being a six-star rank to something akin to a papal bull: THERE IS A RANK HIGHER THAN FIVE-STAR GENERAL/ADMIRAL. Outside of the Wikipedia dogma, there is no such thing. These were honorary titles. It makes Wikipedia look, frankly, ridiculous.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.144.0.66 (talk • contribs) 15:53, September 25, 2006  (UTC)
:That rank does not currently exist, but did in the past.  See http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/triv4-5m.htm from an official Navy web site.  Also, the promotions of Pershing and Washington (posthumously) were acts of congress which can be verified via congressional web sites.  --rogerd 20:05, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "As to the question of Pershing being a six-star general, there can be no answer unless Congress creates the General of the Armies rank again and specifies the insignia. Pershing does rank ahead of the Five-star Generals, he comes right after Washington, but he chose his own insignia and he never wore more than four stars."
We should remove all references to "six stars" and just say that Washington, Pershing and Dewey rank ahead of everyone else and leave it at that. Richard75 20:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Re: "Six Stars" - I agree.  There has not now nor has there ever been a six-star insignia.  There has, however, been discussion in Washington of a six-star rank, so it's worth describing here. Rklawton 21:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. I have left in all of the discussion of six stars, but made it less dogmatic to conform with NPOV policy. Richard75 20:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice work! Rklawton 21:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: No Such Rank or Grade

message: When MacArthur was proposed for the rank in 1955, Eisenhower, who had been outranked by him during their time as serving five-star generals due to MacArthur's having been appointed to the rank two days earlier, was the sitting President. For constitutional reasons, he could not have been promoted to the rank, had Congress been willing.
What were these constitutional reasons? --VAcharon 08:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, it's in the legislation creating General of the Armies.  The legislation specifies that these ranks would never again be used.  Rklawton 21:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: MacArthur

message: There are actually three ranks (well, maybe 2½) being discussed here, and the main difference is whether or not the office has authority over the Navy. Search the .gov websites for accurate information and read the actual ranks used in official documents (not speeches).
*"General of the Army" has superior command over the United States Army only (ground based forces). Ulysses S. Grant's official title was "General of the Army", which he actively commanded. Grant did not officially command the Navy. This makes sense, because it was difficult for an officer to command the Navy from land because of the immense impracticality of communications. During the Civil War, the Navy was under the command of a succession of Rear Admirals, although when the Army and Navy engaged in a few joint operations, Grant did write the battle plans.
*"General of the Armies" has superior command over all land, sea, and air military forces. While this title was held by Pershing, it was awarded while he was inactive and as such was seen as symbolic.
*The superior "General of the Armies of the United States" is the official title granted both by law and by Executive Order to George Washington. Since he may never be outranked, it makes sense that he hold a unnique title. Washington had actively held the official title "General and Commander in Chief" . Both GOTAOTUS and GACIC are one-of-a-kind titles. Washington had no civilian Commander-in-Chief superior to him; although he was to take his orders from Congress, he was "hereby vested with full power and authority to act as you shall think for the good and welfare of the service", a flexibility that would be scary today. The solid reality is solidified in that the Continental Army and fledgling Navy would not respect command from Congress. Although the same impracticality of communications existed between the land and sea as later during the Civil War, both army and sailors considered Washington to be the supreme military commander regardless of anything that came out of Congress.
--Corwin8 22:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe something could be added about all that. There is already a separate page, General of the Army (United States), which this page is not technically talking about. - Matthew238 02:50, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A search of dot gov for "General of the Armies of the United States"  seems to indicate that Pershing held this title. What confuses me is Public Law 94-479 which says "the grade of General of the Armies of the United States is established, such grade to have rank and precedence over all other grades of the Army, past or present."  The implication there is that General of the Armies of the United States is a new title it it would only be held by George Washington so that "no officer of the United States Army should outrank Lieutenant General George Washington on the Army list."  So this is only about the U.S. Army and not all of the armed forces?  What's been written here about "General of the Army", "General of the Armies" and "General of the Armies of the United States" makes perfect sense but I'm having a hard time tracing this to the text of the law.  This page, http://www.army.mil/cmh/faq/FAQ-5star.htm, is interesting reading on the subject. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 04:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Three Ranks

message: Today the text "...congressional joint resolution s:Public Law 94-479 January 19, 1976, approved by President Gerald R. Ford on October 11, 1976, with an effective appointment date of July 4, 1976" was edited to change the effective appointment date to 1776.  The s:Public Law 94-479 made the appointment effective 1976. There may be a back dating to 1776 in that the Wikipedia used to cite Army Order 31-1 that apparently gives Washington a rank effective 1776. I e-mailed the Army last week about getting a copy of Order 31-1 as what was said in Wikipedia about this order conflicts with the desires of the U.S. Congress. Today I got this response back:
:From: CMH Answers at http://www.hqda.army.mil (Address mangled a little as a despam tactic)
:Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 12:38 PM
:To: 'Marc Kupper'
:Subject: RE: Army Order Number 31-3 (UNCLASSIFIED)
:Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED 
:Caveats: NONE
:Dear Mr. Kupper, 
:Thank you for your inquiry regarding an Army order.
:Unfortunately, this is not one of the orders we have online and do not know
:which Army organization published it.  We would also like to advise you that
:Wikipedia is not a credible source of information.  Anyone can put anything
:on this public website.  No one seems to monitor or update the specific
:entries.  We are familiar with President Gerald Ford signing a law that
:placed General Washington as the senior five-star general for the nation.
:Other than that, we are not sure what order was implemented to make this
:happen.
:Sincerely,
:Gary 
:Dr. Gary A. Trogdon
:Chief, Public Inquiries Section
:U.S. Army Center of Military History
:103 Third Ave, Collins Hall
:Fort McNair, D.C. 20319-5058
I still have an interest in tracking down Army Order 31-3 but in the mean time feel that the date of George Washington's appointment as General of the Armies of the United States should be 1976 as that date is citable. At present the only "official" reference to this order seems to be http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/cg&csa/Washington-G2.htm. The problem I have with this is that I suspect whoever did this web page copied the info from wikipdedia as I have been able to locate zero references to the order other than the wikipedia and it's mirrors. I have also not been able to track down that there is such an animal as an "Army Order" or "Army Special Order" much less that they get numbered with things like 31-1.
Another issue is that "General of the Armies of the Unites States" is supposed to be about all military services and I would assume a U.S. Army order would only apply to that branch of the military. Thus if a copy of Order 31-3 shows up I could see adding something to the main page that says "The U.S. Army recognizes...." Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 01:09, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Correction - From http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/cg&csa/Washington-G2.htm I clicked on "Table of Contents" and found http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/cg&csa/CG-TOC.htm - The web site apparently has a copy of a book written in 1983 meaning that the contents of the web page probably was not copied from wikipedia (unless the Army has a time warp device).  With that in mind I'll think about a revision to the main page that references Order 31-3 but would also include a note that this applies to the U.S. Army. For the most part I'd be copy/pasting text directly from the book (with attribution plus it's a U.S. Government publication meaning copyright should not be an issue) rather than trying to get creative on just what Order 31-3 means. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 01:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

text: "Promotion of George Washington: Secretary of the Army Clif- ford L. Alexander, Jr., signed Department of the Army Order Number 31-3 on 13 March 1978, ..."
JSTOR wants $12 for the text of the article, you'd think the Army would have had it.  Anyone have access to JSTOR who can lend a hand? — MrDolomite • Talk 06:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Thank you! I've put out a couple of requests at likely places where I could view the article. The one sentence synopsis was helpful in that it stated that it's "Department of the Army Order Number 31-3" and not a "Special Order" or some other name though it's a little disturbing that Google for "Department of the Army Order Number" returns four pages that are essentially this topic and one(!) other page, http://boards.law.af.mil/ARMY/BCMR/CY1998/11000-12999/9811319.rtf, that's looks like the results of a military hearing though the good news was the Order # was about an officer's promotion implying these are the things that are used as part of the promotion process.  The implication though is that the phrase wording is not quite correct. "Department of the Army Order No." returns two pages (both about the same thing). Shortening it to "Department of the Army Order" locates 143 pages.  It's not the thousands I was hoping for but presumably we are on the right track in terms of the wording. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 00:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Backdating George Washinton's appointment to 1776

message: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-3931(197812)42%3A4%3C202%3AAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E
:"Promotion of George Washington: Secretary of the Army Clif- ford L. Alexander, Jr., signed Department of the Army Order Number 31-3 on 13 March 1978, ..."
JSTOR wants $12 for the text of the article, you'd think the Army would have had it.  Anyone have access to JSTOR who can lend a hand? — MrDolomite • Talk 06:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you! I've put out a couple of requests at likely places where I could view the article. The one sentence synopsis was helpful in that it stated that it's "Department of the Army Order Number 31-3" and not a "Special Order" or some other name though it's a little disturbing that Google for "Department of the Army Order Number" returns four pages that are essentially this topic and one(!) other page, http://boards.law.af.mil/ARMY/BCMR/CY1998/11000-12999/9811319.rtf, that's looks like the results of a military hearing though the good news was the Order # was about an officer's promotion implying these are the things that are used as part of the promotion process.  The implication though is that the phrase wording is not quite correct. "Department of the Army Order No." returns two pages (both about the same thing). Shortening it to "Department of the Army Order" locates 143 pages.  It's not the thousands I was hoping for but presumably we are on the right track in terms of the wording. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 00:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible Clue for Army Order 31-3

message: I got curious about the recent anonymous edits by 213.65.194.57 - There are four edits that seemed reasonable (other than the person did not seem familiar with wiki protocol) that added some useful date about Pershing's title and promotion but the edits still bothered me a little.
* 21:55, 28 April 2007 213.65.194.57 - Added large chunk of text to the top of the talk page.  This turns out to be copy/pasted from http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/armyorank/blgoa.htm which is a commercial site I have deleted the first part as it's a copyright violation. I have copy/pasted the second part here as it'll need more research to see if it's valid and to source it.  It's supposed to be the text of Public Law 45 from 3 September 1919 about the title "General of the Armies of the United States" and presumably it's also about Pershing though he's not mentioned by name.
::"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the office of General of the Armies of the United States is hereby revived, and the President is hereby authorized, in his discretion and by and with the consent of the Senate to appoint to said office a general officer of the Army who, on foreign soil and during the recent war, has been especially distinguished in the higher command of military forces of the United States: and the officer appointed under the foregoing authorization shall have the pay prescribed by section 24 of the Act of Congress, approved July 15, 1870, and such allowances as the President shall deem appropriate; and any provisions of the existing law that would enable any other officer of the Army to take rank and precedence over said officer is hereby repealed: Provided, that no more than one appointment to office shall be made under the terms of this Act."
* 22:00, 28 April 2007 213.65.194.57 - Added source/attribution "(Arlington National Cemetery Website)" to the text added earlier to the talk page.  The source was about.com site. Arlington National Cemetery's website is www.arlingtoncemetery.org but it looks like there's only one page that's relevant to the General of the Armies issue. The page http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/historical_information/five_star_officers.html has the following text:
::Note: only two Americans were awarded a rank above five stars:
::# Gen. of the Armies John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, Arlington National Cemetery; and
::# Gen. of the Armies George Washington, Mount Vernon, Virginia (President Washington's was awarded retroactively). 
:It's unfortunate the page uses abbreviated titles and also does not use Washington's official title of "General of the Armies of the Unites States." I'll assume the author of this page does not know the full titles.
* 10:02, 29 April 2007 213.65.194.57 - Edit to main page to expand Pershing's title from "General of the Armies" to "General of the Armies of the United States".  This edit is fine with me for now as the title with "of the United States" does seem to exist though I see that the shorter title is still used lower down in the page and the page may need to be moved as it's using the shorter name.
* 10:07, 29 April 2007 213.65.194.57 - Edit to main page to source Pershing's promotion as ", Act of US Congress of 3 September 1919 (Public Law 45)."  That is pretty useful to know.  The date seems accurate. I'm bothered by "Public Law 45" as about.com seems to be the only source of that data and is the only site that has a copy of this law. Hopefully it can be dug up in the U.S. national archives.
Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 23:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Pershing's official title and promotion order

message: I removed the following comment made by User:IRelayer on April 3 to answer the question here.  
:"Don't all presidents "actively command with complete authority all branches of military forces of the United States" or am I missing something...unless National Guard is counted, then only if they are federalized...correct/incorrect?"
The US Constitution gives the President command of all military forces.  When George Washington was the commander in chief of the continental army the constitution wasn't written yet. -- Mufka (user) (talk) (contribs) 16:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Commander in chief

message: From time to time people add the conjectural design that's to the right of this talk-section to the main General of the Armies article.  I believe this image was conjecture on the part of a wikipedia editor and the image not based on an official image or it's description from the U.S. Government.
The article also has a section on the Insignia which says
: In 1945, the Institute of Heraldry prepared a conjectural insignia which would have incorporated a sixth star into the five-star design of General of the Army. As no proposal to appoint a new General of the Armies was ever firmly developed, the United States Army has never officially approved a six-star general insignia.
I've often wondered if this section is true.  The Institute of Heraldry web site only mentions General of the Armies once  where it says
: The title of General of the Armies was established after World War I. No special insignia was developed and General Pershing wore four stars. He was the only person appointed as General of the Armies.
The text that this page was based on must have been created before 1976 when Washington was appointed.  I'd imagine though that the original source text was done after 1945.  My point here is that there's nothing about six-stars, conjectural designs, etc.  The Institute of Heraldry is working through a large backlog  and it's possible there were six-star proposals. I'm undecided though if the best people to contact for a source/citation on if there ever were six-stars would be the Institute of Heraldry itself or the United States Army Center of Military History.  Another avenue is that I live near a large public library and will ask the reference librarian if there's a way to search newspaper and/or magazine articles from ~1944/1945 about six-star generals. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 03:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you OberRanks - I did a minor edit to what you added to use <ref> to flag the source reference you added.  Hopefully someone who lives in the Overland / St. St. Louis, Mo. area can drop by the The National Personnel Records Center as presumably MacArthur's record is a fat one and also available as an archival record. I'm also going to add this talk thread to the talk page for the image itself as the image is used by several pages on the Wikipedia. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Six-Star image 

message: The image is printed on a letter that it is in the service record of Douglas MacArthur.  I believe 314-801-0850 is the number to verify (Archival Records Branch at NPRC).  I was there about two years ago and saw the famous letter myself.  It is part of a very large package that was put together in 1945 when the War Department was talking about promoting MacArthur to 6 star.  An in-line citation would do nicely, but I haven't figured out how to write those on Wikipedia yet. -OberRanks 14:26, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you OberRanks - I did a minor edit to what you added to use <ref> to flag the source reference you added.  Hopefully someone who lives in the Overland / St. St. Louis, Mo. area can drop by the The National Personnel Records Center as presumably MacArthur's record is a fat one and also available as an archival record. I'm also going to add this talk thread to the talk page for the image itself as the image is used by several pages on the Wikipedia. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Source

message: I added the following two passages to this article:
"Some people have interpreted General Pershing's seniority to five-star generals to mean that General of the Armies is a six-star rank. However, it could alternatively be said that General of the Armies is a five-star rank, and Pershing's seniority is merely a result of the fact that he achieved his rank earlier than the other five-star generals."
"However, it has been speculated that if the United States ever created a six-star rank, it might be called General of the Armies."
I'm not an expert, but they seemed like an accurate reflection of some of the discussion I've seen elsewhere.  I think they help to clarify the issue.  But feel free to delete or correct my additions if they're wrong. - Shaheenjim 23:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is interesting to speculate, but not on wikipedia.  We shouldn't insert opinion or speculation.  If you have an Army or DOD publication or web page that says so, go ahead and include it.  If you don't, then it shouldn't be here.  See WP:NOR --rogerd 01:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Let me clarify what I did.  I didn't add speculation of my own.  My edit just clarified speculation that was already in the article.  Also, justification for some of the things in my edit are provided in the sentences that follow them in the article. - Shaheenjim 02:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Requesting review of my edit

message: I did have a problem that the other party removed the SecWar statment and readded several lines of "some people have said" and "it has been speculated".  Since we are discussing the sources of the article, statments about speculation should be removed.  And my initial edits were not in error, they were improving the article.  User:Shaheenjim for some reason reverted all of these edits.  I have added them back in.  As far as I know, no one gone above 3 reverts yet.  Lets all work to keep it that way. -OberRanks 19:26, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no reason why statements about the speculation should be removed.  The fact that we're discussing the sources doesn't mean that statements about the speculation should be removed.  I think your edits made the article worse. - Shaheenjim 21:23, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Really?  I added a factual statement from the Secretary of War and put in a picture from the promotion package of Macarthur...all of which you reverted for no reason.  And I say again: "Some people have said" and "it has been speculated" were the only things I removed since these are unsourced statements.  Who has said this?  What primary source has speculated this?  Please review Wikipedia:Ownership of articles before removing my legitimate edits again.  Lets not have an edit war.  Thank you. -OberRanks 21:50, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'll ibid to "let's not have an edit war." I'm tired and will take a look at the article later as a quick glance at the edits/revisions confused me. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:55, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Check out the "Stimson's quotation" section of this talk page. - Shaheenjim 13:54, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Speculation

message: The article used to say:
:"Henry L. Stimson was asked whether Pershing was a six-star general. Stimson stated that Pershing was superior to a five-star general but, as he was no longer active in the military and had never worn more than four General's stars, he should not be seen as holding six-star rank."
But it was recently changed to say:
:"Henry L. Stimson was asked whether Pershing was a six-star general. Stimson responded that:
::It appears the intent of the Army was to make the General of the Armies senior in grade to the General of the Army. I have advised Congress that the War Department concurs in such proposed action.
:By this statement, Pershing was declared superior to a five-star general but, but as he was no longer active in the military and had never worn more than four General's stars, he was never viewed as holding six-star rank."
Now, it may be true that Stimson said that.  But is the new quotation all he said?  The prior version of the article seems to imply that Stimson also specifically addressed whether it was a six star rank or a five star rank.  The new version of the article doesn't have that in his quotation.  It just leaps to the conclusion that it's a five star rank based on additional reasoning that is not attributed to a source.  If we have the rest of Stimson's quotation, then we should add it.  And if we don't have the rest of the quotation, then we should revert to the previous version or something like it, since it attributed the reasoning to a source. - Shaheenjim 01:52, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nevermind.  I fixed it. - Shaheenjim 19:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Stimson's quotation

message: The MacArthur promotion image looks pretty interesting and I believe it would be worthwhile to add a section dedicated to MacArthur.  A section order that seems to make sense is
* John Pershing
* Insignia
* MacArthur
* Six-Star Rank  (let's get rid of the question mark)
* George Washington
This would allow the MacArthur to focus on facts directly related to MacArthur's promotion. OberRanks certainly seems to have the material available.  This would then provide a segue into the six-star issue. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:24, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's fine with me if you want to make the MacArthur stuff a separate section.  But I propose that it should be after the Six Star Rank section.  The article could stay essentially as it is now, except the first half of the current Six Star Rank section would be the new Six Star Rank section, and the second half of the current Six Star Rank section would be the MacArthur section. - Shaheenjim 13:55, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there were no objections, I added it. - Shaheenjim 19:23, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  That looks very nice.  Once minor bit of confusion, and I'm not sure if it's an error or something I misunderstood, is the third paragraph which starts out with "The matter of MacArthur's sixth star was not finished with this first proposal for the promotion."  Is  this about the second proposal for promotion or did the events in 1945 not proceed far enough to be considered a "proposal?" Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't the one who wrote it, but it looks to me like it's referring to a subsequent proposal.  I wouldn't call it an error, but it's a little unclear.  I changed that sentence to, "But some people continued to push for MacArthur to get promoted."  Also note, it looks like there were three things that might be considered proposals, not just two.  The first was in 1945.  The second was in 1955.  And the third were the letters from 1962-1964. - Shaheenjim 14:09, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  MacArthur section 

message: IN the writing it states that no person outranks the George Washingtion! So why does isn't he a 7-star?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizub4 (talk • contribs) 01:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No one outranks him, but there are other people who are still the same rank as him. - Shaheenjim 04:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

text: It does not matter what I think. If you want George Washington to have 7 stars then write to your congressperson.  If legislation approving a 7-star insignia is passed then this will get documented in the Wikipedia article. Actually, you might as well cover all bases and ask that he be made a 13-star general, one for each of the original colonies. In the mean time, get a dollar bill, flip it over, and see that GW has his eye on 13 stars. :-) Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 23:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting! Maybe they should give him 13 stars! Can't picture how they would fit 13 on his arm though.Bizub4 02:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't.  There are dozens of great figures in the history of the US.  If we give each one an honor that the last one didn't have, it would get excessive.  We'd end up with like a 30 star general, and it'd be ridiculous. - Shaheenjim 04:01, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No general outranks GW?