As the fierce battle around Manila neared climax, an old army friend of General Douglas MacArthur remarked, "Doug may have to swim for it, and he can still do it. But he'll have to leave his medals behind

At sixty-two MacArthur is stronger than most men at fifty, but his array of medals, the visible tokens of a long, brilliant career, would sink him. They include the D. S. C., the D. S. M., the Purple Heart (all with oak-leaf cluster), the Silver Star with six oak-leaf clusters, Grand Officer Legion of Honor, Croix de Guerre with three palms, and so on down the line. Total estimated weight, sixteen pounds, thirteen ounces.

Those who know Douglas MacArthur are not surprised at his brilliant performance in the Philippines today. His whole life is one long glitter of brilliance.

He was even born brilliantly. His father was General Arthur MacArthur, who at the age of seventeen enlisted in the Union Army, became "the boy colonel of the West," who led his troops in a dashing charge up Missionary Ridge. In his later years the father again achieved fame for cleaning up the Philippines.

But if his father gave MacArthur a brilliant name, it was his mother who saw to it that he made the most of it.

She lived in an atmosphere of polite but nonetheless sizzling rivalry between the two outstanding military families of the country — the MacArthurs and the U. S. Grants. Each family had a boy, one year apart in age. Both boys embarked on military careers in the footsteps of their illustrious fathers. They entered West Point in the same year, and simultaneously Mrs. MacArthur, realizing the competition her boy would have from the grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, moved to the Academy. Also, not passing up any bets — or taking any chances — Mrs. Frederick D. Grant, daughter-in-law of the Civil War hero and wife of a major general, also moved to West Point to look out for the interests of her boy, Ulysses III.

Pearson and Allen are on the air every Sunday night at 6.30 E.W.T. over the Blue Network. General MacArthur in 1933, when as chief of staff of the United States Army he reported that with only 87,000 enlisted men instead of the authorized 165,000, and with tanks built in World War time and motor vehicles obsolete and almost worn out, the Army was "below the danger line."

For four years the two ladies stayed there, mingling with the officers and spurring their boys on against each other.

The ever brilliant Douglas early took the lead in the race. As a yearling he won the rank of first corporal. As a second classman he became ranking first sergeant. As a first classman he became first captain, and when Douglas MacArthur and Ulysses Grant III graduated in 1903, Douglas stood first in his class, his rival a close second. MacArthur's West Point record was the highest in twenty-five years. Mary MacArthur's entry had won the derby.

From then on the gap between the two men widened, until MacArthur became Chief of Staff of the Army in 1930 with the rank of full general, while Grant was a lieutenant colonel in charge of public buildings and parks of the District of Columbia.

Reason for the gap between the two rivals is the reason why MacArthur is the hero of his country today. He has dash, swagger, dramatic flair, plus great courage, brains, and a tremendous capacity for hard work. Also, MacArthur, after first entering the Engineers, was soon yanked out by his potent father, who made him his personal aide. Grant entered the Engineers and remained there.

Today the world is writing on the record of Grant's rival: "Hero of two World Wars."

To his brilliant birth, record at West Point, and in World War I, MacArthur also added a brilliant marriage. He married a daughter of the Philadelphia Stotesburys.

It was while MacArthur was serving his tour of duty as Commander of the Philippine Department that news of his divorce reached Manila. A group of Filipino newspapermen came out to the General's headquarters and asked whether he would object to publication of the story. They would suppress it if he desired.

MacArthur, a captain, on the Mexican border.

In 1935, when he retired as chief of staff.

"No," replied MacArthur; "put it on the front page if you want to."

This increased his popularity with the Filipinos, already at a high pitch. Throughout the governorship of Henry L. Stimson, the Filipinos ran to MacArthur with their troubles, until, when Dwight F. Davis came over as governor general, they had come to look upon MacArthur as the real ruler of the islands. Davis was deliberate, taking days to come to a decision. MacArthur became more and more disgusted with him, and after a while was saying, more or less publicly, that he didn't like Davis and didn't care if Davis knew it.

MacArthur's great popularity with the Filipinos was to serve him in good stead when, in 1936, he returned as Field Marshal of the Philippine Army.

MacArthur has never lacked dramatic color at any turn of the road. In World War I the Rainbow Division was his idea, a division made up of men from every state in the Union. He served as a brigade commander in, and later as commander of, that heroic division. His personal record in action was as brilliant as the rest of his career. He was wounded twice, gassed once, and was decorated by a dozen foreign governments.

Carrying nothing but a swagger stick and always wearing an officer's cap with the stiffening wire pulled out, MacArthur was continually in the front-line trenches. His appearance made him readily distinguishable from the enemy lines, and his carelessness in exposing himself unquestionably detracted from his usefulness as a general officer. But it had inspiring effect on his troops.

MacArthur's bravery was foolhardy but colorful. On one occasion, when he wanted some information about the enemy which no one had supplied, he went over the top himself, took a German dugout by surprise, and came back with a couple of prisoners.

MacArthur had advanced from a major to brigadier general during the war, and he was the only brigadier below the permanent rank of colonel to keep his temporary rank afterward. Later Congress passed a law requiring that future promotions to brigadier general be made only from the rolls of colonels. But it was significant that this was done after MacArthur got his star. Since then MacArthur has twice been a full general — once as Chief of Staff (at the age of fifty; the youngest man ever to reach that post, which he also held longer than any other incumbent); and now again by special act of the President last December. Today MacArthur wears the four stars as Commander of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East.

MacArthur as a West Pointer and, at right, his father, Major Genera Arthur MacArthur.

Returned from the battlefields of World War I, MacArthur kept right on brilliant-careering. He became superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy, in peacetime a prize army post. This was only sixteen years after his own graduation and he was the youngest superintendent in West Point history. When he became Chief of Staff at fifty, his mother, who had played such a big role in his life, considered her job finished. She had taken good care of her son, and now he, turn about, took good care of her. He brought her to his home at Fort Myer, Virginia, just across the river from Washington, where the army furnishes its Chief of Staff with a handsome red brick house with wide verandas and a stable of riding horses.

Mary MacArthur lived there and enjoyed what might have appeared to be not only the sunset years for herself but also for her brilliant son. She was not aware of what lay ahead of him, and she did not live to see the next glorious chapter in the life of her adored Douglas. She went with him to Manila in 1935, and there, at the age of eighty-two, she died, after medicine had been sent by plane from the States in a futile effort to save her life.

The many scrapbooks that she left have not been tended since then, but they bulge with clippings about her son. Dynamic and dramatic, MacArthur has made good press copy wherever he has gone.

Despite his long brilliant career and the millions of favorable words printed about him, MacArthur still sees red when critical reference is made to his part in the Bonus Army eviction during the Hoover regime.

There was no doubt, however, that in this instance MacArthur was an unfortunate scapegoat. He has been too good a friend to the rank and file of the army to have taken any pleasure in staging a drive on the bedraggled veterans. But the orders from a frightened President in the White House were to "clean out" Anacostia flats, and MacArthur, rather than pass this thankless job to some other officer, took it himself.

Time after time MacArthur, either because he didn't know or didn't care, exposed himself to ridicule. In 1933, when he was laboring under the derisive title, "Hero of the Bonus Army," he devised a new decoration for those serving on the General Staff of which he was chief.

It consisted of the coat of arms of the United States superimposed on a black-enameled star. His then numerous critics hooted at the language MacArthur used to describe the decoration, declaring it was an expression of his own personal vanity: "In each re-entrant angle of the star, three transparent green-enameled laurel leaves; the shield and glory to be in the enameled colors, stripes of white and red, chief of blue, and the sky of glory blue."

There are few in the country today who would not be willing to give MacArthur a decoration of any dimension he might name as an award of honor for his heroic defense of the Philippines. But a few years back it was different.

As Chief of Staff, MacArthur was a hero to the Regular Army because of his determined battle against the senseless economies of the Hoover regime. The present Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, says with a wry smile, "We used to have all the time and none of the money; now we have plenty of money and no time." When MacArthur was Chief of Staff he knew what those words meant: He had time but no money. The big struggle throughout his term as Chief of Staff was against economy cuts.

Roosevelt succeeded Hoover and the Budget Bureau proposed a cut in the War Department appropriation in the spring of 1933. MacArthur waged a one-man crusade against any reductions. Summoned by Lewis Douglas. Budget Director and wielder of the President's pruning knife, MacArthur stalled the cut by saying he needed time to study the matter.

Several weeks passed. MacArthur returned and flatly refused to make the requested reductions. A few days later he was summoned to the White House. There the President personally directed his Chief of Staff to comply with the necessary economies. MacArthur again asked for time to make another "study."

His defiance was so serious that rumors began to circulate that he would be replaced by a Chief of Staff more sympathetic with the administration's viewpoint. But, though MacArthur lost that particular fight, he remained in office throughout his term and longer; and all during the time he, more than the late Secretary of War Dern, fought against cuts in the army appropriation.

When MacArthur took over the job of building up the defenses of the Philippines in 1935, with the title of Field Marshal and a salary of $18,000 a year, not counting his luxurious air-conditioned penthouse apartment atop a Manila hotel, he was again confronted with the battle of getting money for men and guns. President Quezon was lavish one day, frugal the next. Few people in the United States cared whether or not MacArthur succeeded. He had been kicked upstairs, they thought, to a romantic job in the South Seas with a fat salary and a high-sounding title. It was all that any man could expect — and better than most retired officers ever got.

There were sarcastic smiles in Washington over the new title, Field Marshal. At the annual Carabao dinner in 1937, Field Marshal MacArthur was present and was subjected to a sizzling ribbing by acid-tongued George Moses, ex-senator from New Hampshire.

In '33 General MacArthur was decorated by Pershing, his former commander in chief.

"I see," said Moses, "that we have the Field Marshal with us. It reminds me of a captain in the United States Marines who went to help train a small foreign army. There he became a brigadier general and was very proud of his uniform.

"One day, while visiting in Washington, he was invited out to dinner with various American army and navy officers. He consulted a colonel of the marines as to whether he should come in his uniform as brigadier general or as a captain of the marines.

"'In Washington,' replied the colonel, 'a brigadier general of an army like yours eats in the kitchen."'

Except for an occasional derisive thrust, MacArthur and his Philippines were rapidly forgotten. The fact is, he had little at that time to command much attention. He was not commander of the American forces in the Philippines, as he is today. He was merely a hired officer in charge of a band of ill-trained Filipinos. The American soldiers in the Philippines were under the command of United States officers.

Furthermore, for all his high-sounding title, MacArthur was the object of every conceivable opposition to his defense program. He had been promised a military budget of $8,000,000 a year, but by the time the Filipino politicians got through lobbying for pork-barrel projects and the Japanese fifth columnists got through doing their slick dirty work, MacArthur's budget was cut to the bone.

Despite these heartbreaking obstacles, MacArthur doggedly persisted on the unswerving thesis that the Philippines could be defended. For years military experts had contended this could not be done. MacArthur flatly asserted it could, and made all his plans and preparations accordingly.

Today he has a new title, but his thesis is the same. On July 26, 1941, President Roosevelt made MacArthur Commanding General of the United States Armed Forces in the Far East, thereby making him C. O. not only of the Philippine army of 125,000 soldiers, but also of the United States armed forces in the Philippines. The President's action was far from merely a personal tribute to Douglas MacArthur. It was an official declaration to the world that the United States government regarded the Philippines as something more than a sugar colony preparing for independence. The strategic islands became a military outpost which this government intends to fight for to the last ditch.

Thus by one stroke the full might of the United States was placed behind the thesis which for six years had been advocated with few listeners by Douglas MacArthur.

With this long delayed official recognition of his theory came, also overdue, a loosening of purse strings. Men and materials in great quantities were rushed to the Philippines. But by the end of 1941 it was not only United States soldiers and munitions that were moving into the islands. The Japs, too, were pouring in.

Luzon, Corregidor, Mindanao — strange names flashed into the headlines. The attack began the same day as Pearl Harbor, and every day since then the name MacArthur has appeared on the front page of every paper in the land. Mary MacArthur would have been very happy had she lived to see it. Her son had risen to the stature of a national hero for whom thousands nightly pray on bended knee.

But Douglas MacArthur could not hear the kudos. He was too busy defending his thesis that the Philippines could be defended.

Publication Date: March 7, 1942