Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  The Eisenhowers moved temporarily into Ike’s suite in the Manila Hotel, and Ike laid on a full complement of servants. Nevertheless, their reunion lacked the warmth of earlier years. Deep down, Eisenhower resented Mamie’s failure to accompany him to Manila originally; Mamie resented being there at all. Ike was angry about the vibrant social life Mamie had led in Washington; Mamie seethed at Ike’s bridge games and golf outings with Marian Huff. “It didn’t seem to occur to her,” wrote Susan Eisenhower, “that she had been escorted around Washington by a number of male friends during her year alone. But jealousy knows no logic nor does it respect reciprocity.”56

  Soon the Eisenhowers moved into larger, more elegant quarters in the air-conditioned wing of the Manila Hotel, and their adjustment became easier. Never again would they enjoy the happy intimacy of Paris or the Washington years at the Wyoming, but they were soon caught up in the tempo of Manila’s throbbing social life. Mamie’s letters home tell of an intense schedule of afternoon card parties and evening soirees. MacArthur’s young wife, Jean Faircloth, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Marjorie Clay, the wealthy wife of Captain Lucius Clay, became regular shopping and luncheon companions. “We’ve been financially on easy street for the first time in our married life,” Mamie wrote her parents in early 1938. “We’re having pretty near anything we wish.”57

  While Mamie shopped and socialized, Eisenhower was spending more and more time at the Malacañan Palace with President Quezon. And as Ike became more involved in Philippine affairs, his early assessments moderated. “Although I’ve been here for a year and a half,” he wrote General George Moseley, “I am not one of those who attempt to ascribe to the Filipino any racial defect which would make it impossible for him ever to become a good officer. Genghis Khan produced one of the finest military machines the World has ever seen, and the only material he had was nomadic tribesmen in Central Asia.”58 Writing to John Doud he challenged the conventional wisdom about Philippine independence.

  A certain group of Americans and Europeans habitually sneer at the Filipino—challenging his sincerity, integrity and ability—and claiming this whole situation [that is, the desire for independence] is the result of the crooked scheming of politicians to get more personal power. But possibly a lot of other reforms have grown out of the same source. In any event, they’ve started something, and it is most interesting to be here watching the early stages of a development that is certain to have far reaching effects in the coming years.59

  MacArthur’s insistence on a thirty-division Army was a continuing source of friction. According to the figures prepared by Ike and Ord, it would exceed Philippine budget projections by $25 million. They recommended the plan be scaled back, but MacArthur refused. “We urged a budgetary basis for all planning, and he grew furious, accusing us of ‘arguing technicalities’ to defeat the conceptions of high command,” Ike recorded on October 8, 1937.

  President Quezon eventually learned of the cost overrun and asked MacArthur for an explanation. At that point MacArthur backed down. The plan was not his, he told Quezon, but had been prepared by Eisenhower and Ord without his approval. Ike could scarcely believe it. “Every scrap of evidence furnishes ample proof that he is again executing one of his amazing ‘about faces,’ ” wrote Eisenhower. “I’ve got to decide soon whether I can go much further with a person who, either consciously or unconsciously, deceives his boss, his subordinates, and himself (probably) so incessantly as he does. I wonder whether egotism, exclusive devotion to one’s own interests (in this case, a $33,000 salary, plus penthouse and expenses) can completely eliminate a person’s perception of honest, straight-forwardness and responsibility.

  “When irritated at the Pres., I’ve heard him curse that worthy as a ‘conceited little monkey,’ and I’ve heard him, in turn use even worse language with respect to every prominent officer in the U.S. Army, and officials in Washington,” Ike continued.

  But sometimes I think that, in his mind, there is nothing ridiculous, absurd, or even unusual in his attitude. He was raised in the conception of Douglas MacArthur superiority. Actually he has become only pathetic.… He gets frantic in the face of difficulty, even if the difficulty is only an imaginary one and displays an exaggeration of glee when he believes things are shaping up to glorify his name, or increase his income.

  I shall never forget the time in Washington when receipt of instructions to report to the President [Herbert Hoover] led him to conclude, in the greatest seriousness, that he was to be invited to be the President’s running mate in the succeeding [1932] election.

  Ike had remained in Manila despite MacArthur’s capriciousness. “But now I am at a cross road. If the Marshal is to persist in his arbitrary methods, and is going to make things unpleasant, if not impossible, then I’m for home. Right now I’m disgusted and in something of a temper, a bad state of mind in which to make any decisions.”

  Eisenhower stayed on the job. But MacArthur’s assignment in the Philippines was coming to a close. The standard overseas tour for a general officer in the 1930s was two years. As MacArthur approached the end of his second year in Manila, he received a letter from Chief of Staff Malin Craig advising him that upon completion of his two years abroad he would be ordered home. “There will be made available to you, if practicable, any command for which you may express a preference.”60 Craig’s letter was a bolt out of the blue. For the second time MacArthur felt he had been double-crossed by the War Department, FDR, and anyone else in Washington who might have had a hand in it. “The last week has been one of the most trying ones I’ve had in the Philippines,” wrote Eisenhower in his diary on August 25, 1937. “There have been an unusually large number of difficult administrative problems to handle with the [Philippine] Army staff.… But the cause for special perturbation was the receipt by the Gen. of a letter from the Chief of Staff informing him that he would be relieved and ordered home on the October transport!”

  From the start T.J. [Davis] and I counseled moderation—and at least initial dependence on Mr. Quezon’s efforts to have the order revoked. He [Quezon] agreed to send any radio [message] proposed by the Gen. to accomplish such revocation, and we got up one worded as strongly as it could possibly be. But we had no sooner submitted the draft of that radio to the Pres. when a hundred other schemes were proposed.… We wrote drafts (under instructions) of radios requesting retirement, of others protesting the “unjust and arbitrary” procedures of the War Department while listening for hours on end to hypotheses and deductions as to what had occasioned the order. Gradually it percolated into the Gen.’s head that the theory lending the greatest hopes for a successful outcome was one that held the C of S solely and exclusively responsible for the action.

  As MacArthur saw it, Craig’s motivation involved “jealousy; fear of the growing stature of Gen. MacA. as a world figure; egotism; revenge by the ‘Chaumont crowd’;i and the hopes of pleasing the ‘pacifist, subversive element that surrounds the President.’ ”

  The defense that T.J. and I put up was simply that we should give credit to the C of S for being an honorable person.… We emphasized that we’d done what we could when we prepared the telegram for Mr. Quezon’s signature. We insisted on waiting for an answer before making another move, since his wire was addressed to the President of the U.S. Finally, the old habit of accusing every assistant who did not concur without reservation to hysterical theories and arguments with being a blockhead, an ingrate, a stupid dolt and so on manifested itself, so T.J. and I perforce stopped arguing.61

  Impatient with waiting for a reply to Quezon’s message, MacArthur fired off a protest to the War Department. “Your letter has amazed me,” he wired Craig. “The action suggested would constitute my summary relief.… Considering rank and position it can only be interpreted as constituting disciplinary action.”62 General Craig was unmoved. The action was ordered by the president, he told MacArthur. “In view of world conditions, the President has decided that a soldier of your stature should be in the United States
.” But he agreed to delay MacArthur’s reassignment until February.63

  Eisenhower seemed relieved. “I hope the subject will now cease to be a topic of conversation. I’m worn out. Every time one of these ‘tempests in a teapot’ sweeps the office I find myself, sooner or later, bearing the brunt of the General’s displeasure, which always manifests itself against anyone who fails to agree en tote with his theories and hypotheses, no matter how astounding they may be.”64

  MacArthur thought about Craig’s reply until mid-September, and then requested retirement. “I find the thought repugnant of resuming to a subordinate command after having been military head of the Army.… It would be as though President Roosevelt were required to go back to his functions as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. It would not only be unsatisfactory to me but the reaction would be such to make me an unsatisfactory subordinate commander.”65 MacArthur’s request to retire was approved, effective December 31, 1937. The War Department announced that he would retire with the rank of full general—an exceptional accolade. President Roosevelt wrote MacArthur that he had approved the retirement “with great reluctance and regret.”66

  MacArthur remained in Manila as field marshal of the Philippine Army, freed from the shackles of the War Department chain of command. He continued to enjoy his penthouse in the Manila Hotel, his stipend, and his expense allowance. His retirement pension as a full general differed little from his major general’s salary. Eisenhower remained as chief of staff and became the ranking U.S. Army officer on active duty with the mission.

  On December 31, 1937, MacArthur wrote Eisenhower’s final efficiency report. This would be the last efficiency report MacArthur would prepare on an American officer until he was recalled to active duty by President Roosevelt in June 1941. Despite their occasional differences, he considered Eisenhower indispensable. He rated Ike “superior” in all categories. “A brilliant officer,” said MacArthur. “[He] is performing duties which in scope and responsibility are comparable to those of a general officer of the War Department General Staff.… In time of war this officer should be promoted to General rank immediately. His general value to the service is ‘Superior.’ ”67

  Eisenhower, for his part, accepted MacArthur’s peculiarities as part of the job. “From the beginning Jim [Ord] and I have been practically isolated in thought, attitude, and intention,” he wrote at the end of 1937.

  We did not want to come to the Philippines but were willing to do so because we thought we’d have a wonderful professional opportunity. Once on the job we’ve concerned ourselves with trying to develop for this government and country the best possible army with the means at hand. We have been beset on all sides by difficulties arising from personal ambition, personal glorification, personal selfishness of the hot shot ($33,000 a year and a penthouse) etc. etc. When we have objected strenuously to measures which we believe unwise such as the Field Marshal–ship … we’ve been told to shut up. In spite of it all, I believe we’ve done fairly well under the conditions.68

  As friction with MacArthur continued, Ike’s digestive problems resurfaced. In January 1938 he was hospitalized with what his doctors described as “a dangerous stoppage of the bowel”—a forerunner of the intestinal ailment he suffered in the White House. Just as he was about to be anesthetized for surgery, the blockage passed and the operation was canceled. But the pain had been excruciating. Later Ike recalled the ordeal as “the tortures of the damned.”69

  While Eisenhower was recovering in the hospital, he received word that James Ord had been killed in a freak airplane accident. Ord had flown to Baguio, in central Luzon—the site of the new Philippine military academy—for a conference with the commandant. Before landing, he decided to drop a note in the garden of a friend to notify him of his arrival. As the pilot reduced speed and swooped low over the house, Ord leaned out of the open cockpit. The engine failed, and the plane crashed into a nearby hillside. Had Ord not been leaning out of the aircraft to drop the message, he would likely have survived.70 Ord’s death deprived Eisenhower of his closest friend and most intimate associate. “I’ve lost my right hand,” he wrote in his diary shortly afterward. “He was my partner on a tough job, who furnished most of the inspiration needed to keep me plugging away. With him gone much of the zest has departed from a job that we always tackled as a team, never as two individuals.”71

  Despite his occasional differences with MacArthur, Eisenhower relished his work with the Philippine Army as well as the lifestyle he and Mamie were enjoying. Normally, his three-year tour of duty in Manila would have expired in October 1938. But at the request of both President Quezon and MacArthur, he asked for a one-year extension.j MacArthur, who was becoming increasingly remote, recognized that Ike would be difficult to replace, and Quezon considered him essential.

  “President Quezon seemed to ask for my advice more and more,” said Eisenhower. “He invited me to his office frequently. Because I was the senior active duty officer, my friendship with the President became closer. Our conversations became broader and deeper. They were no longer confined to defense problems. Taxes, education, honesty in government, and other subjects entered the discussions and he seemed to enjoy them. I certainly did.”72

  This time Mamie did not object to the extension. “You know I’m pretty level-headed about what I know is right,” she wrote her parents. “I made a terrible mistake in not coming out here with Ike. It’s up to me to rectify lots of things.” Mamie said she realized John and Elivera would be disappointed, “but what can I do? You know Ike. I told him the other day that it has taken me 22 years to find out that the only way I can get along with him is to give him his own way constantly. Luckily John is very happy in his school.”73

  Mamie now saw herself as a full-fledged participant in Ike’s career. “Unlike the picture of a bedridden wife painted by virtually every Eisenhower biographer,” wrote Susan Eisenhower, “Mamie stayed remarkably active. She entertained and fulfilled the social obligations beneficial for her husband; it was a question not only of physical strength but also of mental fortitude. Mamie looked after herself by taking siestas and resting when she could, but at the back of her mind was always her concern about ‘keeping up’ with her husband.”74

  Eisenhower’s extension was coupled with approval for him and Mamie to return to the United States for three months, almost two of which would be consumed by travel. Mamie required gynecological surgery, which would be performed by the Doud family doctor in Denver, and Ike would attend to the needs of the Philippine Army with the War Department. But Eisenhower’s first order of business before leaving for the States was to replace James Ord, and he turned to another old friend, Major Richard K. Sutherland, then with the 15th Infantry in Tientsin. Ike and Mamie knew the Sutherlands from the Wyoming when Sutherland had been with the operations (G-3) section of the War Department. “He is an excellent officer,” Ike wrote in his diary in April 14, 1938, “and I expect him to take a huge burden off my shoulders.”

  The choice was less than felicitous. Sutherland was undoubtedly capable. But he was ruthlessly ambitious and immediately set about to undermine Eisenhower with MacArthur. The son of West Virginia senator Howard Sutherland, he graduated from Yale in 1916, served in the Connecticut National Guard, and was commissioned a captain in the Regular Army after World War I. Unlike the genial Ord, Sutherland was brusque, abrasive, and humorless. “A brittle, hard man,” said Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s wartime intelligence officer.75 George Kenney, who commanded Allied air forces in the southwest Pacific during World War II, described Sutherland as someone “who always rubbed people the wrong way.”76 Philippine newspaper editor and Pulitzer Prize–winning correspondent (1942) Carlos Romulo called him “a martinet.”77 Like many authoritarian personalities, Sutherland displayed a streak of obsequiousness when dealing with high command. Eisenhower and Ord had often challenged MacArthur; Sutherland stroked his ego.78

  The Eisenhowers sailed from Manila on June 26, 1938. Ike left on a high note. “The Ge
neral has been extraordinarily sympathetic,” he wrote just before leaving.

  At one time it seemed almost impossible to discuss with him any point in which there was the slightest difference of opinion, but for the past few months this has not been so. It is difficult to believe that Jimmy’s [Ord] loss should have occasioned this change, but the fact is, that ever since then he has grown progressively more mellow.… The atmosphere has cleared to such an extent that this job, at long last, has become personally agreeable as well as professionally interesting.79

  Eisenhower threw himself into his task in Washington with enthusiasm. “I wanted to ask the War Department for more help. At first they were unsympathetic. As long as the Philippines insisted on being independent, the War Department’s attitude was that they could jolly well look out for their own defenses.” To overcome the general staff’s resistance, Ike went directly to General Craig.

  I told him my story, adding that General MacArthur’s view was that a friendly Philippines was vital to U.S. interests. General Craig agreed and in short order the word seeped down to the staff. Doors that had been tightly closed began to open and we secured much assistance. The War Department put us in touch with manufacturers who were ready to do business, and the Army provided obsolete but useful equipment.