The subsequent mea culpa of the advisers (or at any rate some of them) has naturally been eagerly used by defenders of the President. His daughter seized upon Acheson to write: ‘During these fateful weeks my father did not receive the kind of support and advice he deserved …’15 No doubt he did deserve to be better served, but there must also be responsibility upon him for not better serving himself. He could not shelter behind the Secretary of State or the Chiefs of Staff when it came to sacking MacArthur and there is no reason why he should shelter behind them for not sacking him earlier. It was not as though he had himself proposed such a course and been dissuaded from it by the weight of professional and Cabinet advice. At the Wake Island meeting he had assumed a certain symbiotic relationship with the General.
He had even been impressed. He talked about ‘the ideas of two intellectually honest men when they meet …’16 This mood was only gradually worn away during November. As late as the 30th of that month he wrote for his diary more in sorrow than in anger, but certainly giving no impression that he was being restrained with difficulty from demanding the General’s head on a charger:
‘This has been a hectic month. General Mac as usual has been shooting off his mouth. He made a pre-election statement that cost us votes and he made a post-election statement that has him in hot water in Europe and at home. I must defend him and save his face even if he has on various and numerous occasions tried to cut mine off. I must stand by my subordinates …’17
On that same day he himself had in fact rivalled MacArthur not in insubordination, for that is a sin which by-definition a President and Commander-in-Chief cannot commit, but in creating confusion around the world. He had held a press conference in difficult circumstances. Rattled by MacArthur’s alternations between bombast and panic, his military advisers were undecided as to whether it would be possible to hold on in Korea at all or whether it would be necessary to seek a cease-fire and/or contemplate evacuation. He had to bluff his way over this weakness, which he did successfully. In the course of doing so, however, he let fall some ill-considered remarks about the possible use of the atomic bomb. After saying that the United States would take whatever steps were necessary to meet the military situation, he was asked: ‘Will that include the atomic bomb?’ ‘That includes every weapon we have,’ he said. Then he was asked: ‘Does that mean there is active consideration of the use of the atomic bomb?’ ‘There has always been consideration of its use,’11 he replied. Then, later, he was pressed on whether the weapon might be used against military or civilian targets. He said: ‘It’s a matter the military people will have to decide. I’m not a military authority that passes on these things.’ The next question was whether United Nations authority would be required for the use of the atomic bomb. ‘No,’ said Truman, ‘it doesn’t mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of weapons, as he always has.’18
It was a devastatingly foolish series of answers, and the President could hardly complain that it was interpreted around the world as meaning that MacArthur had been given discretion as to when to use a nuclear weapon and would probably do so very soon. Within an hour the White House issued a retraction which rather engagingly began by stating that ‘The President wants to make it certain that there is no misinterpretation of his answers to questions at his press conference today …’It then pointed out, accurately but eliptically, that what he had said must be nonsense for, by law, only the President could authorize the use of the atomic bomb, and that no such authority had been given. But the alarm bells around the world could not quickly be stopped ringing.
One of them rang in London at a particularly sensitive time. The House of Commons was holding a major foreign affairs debate when news of the President’s press conference came through in the late afternoon. The attendance in and around the chamber was augmented by the tense parliamentary situation of that short Parliament of 1950—1, with a government majority of only six. The news from America, however, united rather than divided the House. It did so in rather an ignoble way, with members crowding and clucking around the main tape machine like animals around a meal trough. A mood of near panic set in. I had certainly never seen anything like it. That was not altogether surprising, as I had then been a member for less than three years. What is more surprising is that I have never seen anything like it in the subsequent 35 years.