The Daily Record

These Days
By Sokolsky
THE ROLE OF LOUIS JOHNSON
On all sides, it is admitted that Louis Johnson was the best and most constructive witness before the Russell committee. General Albert Wedemeyer had, in many respects, cleared the record of the confusions that Dean Acheson had created by long and intricate amblings into matters for which few of the Senators were prepared.
For instance, when Dean Acheson said that there were no Communists in the State Department, the Senators let it pass because in the present tense Alger Hiss is in prison. However, they had a grand opening for a discussion of the Communist penetration into the far eastern division of the State Department. This, they missed—perhaps deliberately as Dean Acheson's skill as an artful dodger already had them down.
The testimony of General Wedemeyer and Louis Johnson was therefore refreshing because here were men who hid nothing, acknowledged error and presented the case without the inhibitions which had marked all the officers of government, except Admiral Sherman.
Yet, for some reason, the Senators overlooked an amazingly important fact-one which stared them in the face all through the Wedemeyer and Johnson testimony.
General Albert Wedemeyer was deputy chief of staff in charge of plans and combat operations from November 1948 to September 1949.
Louis Johnson was Secretary of Defense from March 1949 to September 1950.
Part of General Wedemeyer's duty was to plan-for prospective wars. This is supposed to go on all the time in the armed services, so that this country is not caught off base. As Japan is our bastion in Asia and as the possession of Korea by a foe imperils Japan, General Wedemeyer, in charge of planning, must have had a plan for the defense of Korea.
I know that there was such a plan and that it had been regarded as settled policy was abandoned on June 30, 1950. Louis Johnson testified that Dean Acheson put this country into the Korean war with ground forces. But what became of the Wedemeyer plan or shall be call it the joint chiefs' of staff plan? If, as Johnson testified Acheson is responsible for putting ground troops into Korea, what kind of an organization does our government have if the State Department can set aside an accepted military plan? Since when is the State Department technically provisioned to engage in military planning? Or has diplomacy disposed of military expertness?
Here was an opening for the senators that would have shed light upon the Korean war. The original plan should have been produced for the record. It would have shown that it called for an air-Navy operation with no ground troops whatsoever. For our problem was not to occupy Korea but to prevent Soviet Russia from occupying Korea.
Had this broad avenue been traversed, we should have been forced into a discussion of the use of ground troops in all the fighting in which we are planning to engage in so many parts of the world. Can a nation of 153,000,000 afford to produce ground troops to hold an entire world? What will such a program do to our economy? What will it do to our standard of living? What must it ultimately do to our liberties?
Such men as Senator Kerr of Oklahoma attack General MacArthur as though he were the issue before us, continuing a narrowly partisan and meaningless feud.
The Russell Committee performed a significant service to the nation in shifting the basis of the investigation from the dismissal-of General MacArthur to the broad survey of policy and purpose. It could not, without more intense preparation, go further than it has.
Yet, what we need most is a clear grasp of our historic role in relation to our social and economic system. This takes more intellectual stamina than most of our public men are willing and capable of giving to it. For instance, we need to analyze the relationship of war to the Welfare State and the prospect of so deep a depreciation of our productive plant and equipment, including housing, that we win or lose, we have damaged our own civilization. This has happened before in history, for instance, when Alexander the Great ruined the Hellenic civilization by conquering the world. It need not happen to the United States if we seek the truth diligently.