Truman(67)

Truman was therefore deeply apprehensive. He was also convinced that the invasion could not be allowed to succeed, and that the United States must be prepared to take whatever risks were necessary to prevent this. This conviction sprang at least as much from his view that Korea was a crucial test for the effectiveness of the United Nations as from his proper attachment to the prestige of the United States and to the balance of power in the Far East. The UN of those days, with its membership of less than 60 and its substantial ‘American’ majority (provided by South America, Western Europe and the old British Commonwealth countries) was regarded by its Western protagonists as an organization which could impartially enforce the international rule of law on great and small powers alike, and by the majesty of its authority redeem the weakness of the pre-war League of Nations. Truman was emphatically one such protagonist. He was prepared to fight for Lake Success and take the risks involved, which if anything he exaggerated rather than under-estimated. But he wanted to minimize these risks, both because he knew that this was necessary to get as many other members of the UN as possible to join with him (even if in little more than a token way) in fighting for international order,5 and because he had seen enough of World Wars I and II to be profoundly unanxious to be the President of World War III. This meant that he would have to fight in Korea, but that he must do so in a limited way, seeking only to restore the status quo ante, and suffering operational disadvantages in order to avoid giving even the smallest possible excuse for any widening of the conflict.

These assumptions and this strategy were inchoately in his mind when he got to Washington. He was met by Acheson, by Secretary of Defense Johnson, and the three Secretaries of the individual services. They already had the news that the Security Council had acted satisfactorily, as to both speed and outcome. A resolution condemning the attack, calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities and North Korean withdrawal to the 38th parallel, and also, and most significantly, urging all members to render every assistance to the UN for the execution of the resolution, had been carried by nine votes to nil, with one abstention. The absence of an adverse vote, and indeed of a veto, was due to the fact that the Soviet union   had pursued an ‘empty chair’ policy since January, in protest against the continued presence of a representative of Nationalist China. The one abstention came from Yugoslavia.7

The party proceeded to Blair House where they were joined by the Chiefs of Staff, and four of Acheson’s senior State Department officials. Snyder was also present. For some extraordinary reason particular importance was attached to the quality, and indeed the formality, of the dinner. It was almost as though the seriousness of the occasion called for some sacerdotal communal feast. The occasion echoes throughout almost every memoir of the evening. Truman wrote to his wife: ‘Had them all to dinner at eight, and the dinner was good and well served.’6 Acheson wrote about ‘an excellent dinner … gotten up by the staff on a Sunday afternoon at the shortest notice.’7 Margaret Truman wrote of the meal in a tone of still greater reverence: ‘From the air (the President) wired Charles Claunch, the White House usher, to warn him that a Very Important Dinner should be ready at Blair House by 8.30. Mr Acheson would give him the guest list. Claunch called Alonzo Fields, the head butler at the White House who recruited two cooks and made up a menu en route to Blair House in a taxi.’8 What miracles of gastronomy they concocted during this short journey is nowhere on record, but it was presumably a considerable improvement on the normal standard of American official meals.7 Nor was the quality of the meal allowed to be spoiled by sombre or contentious conversation. Discussion of the subject which was the purpose of the gathering was banned by Truman until the table was cleared and the servants had withdrawn. This was partly a put-down of Louis Johnson, who had attempted before dinner to pre-empt the discussion towards a mingling of the Korean and Formosan issues: Truman was determined that Acheson should lead, and also knew that the Chinese Nationalist cause was a lead balloon at the UN. But it was also partly due to a temporary obsession with secrecy over what was essentially a public issue, which had already led to the farce of Truman pretending to his brother that morning that nothing had happened.

These preliminaries over, however, Truman got down to a very crisp discussion. ‘My conference was a most successful one,’ he wrote to his wife,9 and that was the general view of the participants. They filled in some of the gaps in his knowledge and confirmed most of his instinctive judgments. He stiffened them with his resolution. North Korea was not to be allowed to get away with the aggression. The United States, with the moral backing, it was hoped, of United Nations authority and the material backing of as many other member states as possible, would resist. The crucial question that remained unanswered was whether this objective could be achieved by a combination of naval movements, air cover, and lavish supplies to Republic of Korea troops. Of the service chiefs present, the admiral and the Air Force general thought ‘yes’. Omar Bradley and the Army Chief of Staff, Lawton Collins, thought ‘no’. Truman desperately hoped that the former were right. He did not want to be responsible for the deployment of United States infantry, with the casualties and diplomatic risks that this would involve, and at least until midweek he thought that there was a good chance of avoiding it. When however it became clear, both from the inability of the South Korean troops to form and hold any defensive line and from MacArthur’s prognosis that this degree of detachment could not be sustained, he did not hesitate to authorize the shipment from Japan of three American divisions. MacArthur’s visit of inspection to Korea took place on Thursday, June 29th. On the following morning at an 8.30 meeting Truman agreed to the request.