Splendid Isolation (Part Three)

CCLXXVI

The national tide of misery began to ebb, but too slowly. People didn’t feel that things were improving. 

And then Hoover doomed his Administration. 

In June 1932, 43,000 Americans --- World War I veterans, their relatives, and friends and allies --- gathered on the National Mall to demand an early cash payout of their Service Certificates (a government bond given to Great War veterans for honorable service, made payable in 1945). They erected a Hooverville, and every day went to Congress demanding that in light of the Great Depression, their “Bonuses” be paid as soon as possible. 

They called themselves the "Bonus Expeditionary Force" in honor of the American Expeditionary Force they had been in 1917. The Press called them the Bonus Army.

Despite its size the Bonus Army was peaceful and well-organized along the lines of a true military unit. What they all wanted was an early one-time payout of a bonus owed to them for bravery in the trenches of World War I. What they got was tear gas and bullets and tanks from the very army in which they had so proudly served

This “Cinderella Stamp” was issued in support of the Bonus Army

Congress voted them down. The leaders of the Bonus Army organized peaceful protests and invited noted speakers to address the American public, asking their fellow citizens to sway Congress to a re-vote. 

Although this was a thoroughly peaceful exercise of their First Amendment rights, Hoover asked his Army Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur*, to clear out the embarrassing Hooverville.

 

General Douglas MacArthur exceeded his orders and his authority in burning out the Bonus Army. President Hoover, like men before him and men after him, chose to cover for the General rather than upbraid him for his vicious lack of competence  

MacArthur went at the head of armed troops (supported by tanks commanded by George Patton) into the area to disperse the Bonus Army. Tear gas was used and shots were fired. Several people, including veterans, were killed. Angry onlookers, screaming that the Army was firing on American citizens, invaded the White House demanding to see President Hoover, who immediately ordered MacArthur to withdraw. MacArthur did not, claiming later that a Communist revolution was under way. He burned the Bonus Army’s shanties to the ground. No evidence of a Communist plot ever came to light.

In 1933, a second Bonus Army descended on Washington D.C. They were met by the indefatiguable Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of one President and niece of another. She asked to learn their marching songs, visited the hastily-assembled marchers’ camp, distributed food, and promised them she’d see what she could do. A few months later Congress agreed to an early payout of the Bonus. One marcher who had been there in 1932 explained the marchers’ success: “Hoover sent us his General. Roosevelt sent us his wife.”

Hoover stupidly covered for his overwrought General, an act of institutional cowardice that most historians agree cost him the 1932 election. He lost the Electoral College 472 – 59, and garnered only 39% of the popular vote.

MacArthur’s treatment of the Bonus Army was symptomatic of a greater and deeper illness infecting the American body politic. Even as the Army of the United States shot at men wearing the uniform of the Great War, the United States began withdrawing from the international commitments it had made to maintain the peace it had fought so hard to achieve.

Europe in 1936

*General Douglas MacArthur (1880 – 1964) was the son of General Arthur MacArthur Jr. MacArthur pere was made a Colonel after conspicuous gallantry at the Battle of Chattanooga and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Being only 18 at the time, he was called “The Boy Colonel.” He is responsible for the title of the State Song of Wisconsin, having shouted “On, Wisconsin!” to rally his troops to charge. The elder MacArthur was finally promoted to General during the Spanish-American War in 1898. He was named Military Governor of The Philippines after the war. The younger MacArthur grew up there and became an important figure in Philippine history. 

MacArthur fils followed closely in his father’s footsteps. During World War I he served with distinction on the Western Front. He returned to the United States, was made Superintendent of West Point Military Academy, and became a Major General at age 45. He was the youngest General in the Army at the time. He was named Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in 1929. He resigned his commission in 1935 to become Generalissimo of the Philippine Army; effectively, he was the Military Governor of that U.S. Commonwealth. Ultimately, he commanded all U.S. ground forces in the Pacific Theater during World War II, and was in command of U.N. forces at the outset of the Korean War. He won the Medal of Honor (he and his father are the only father and son to have both won the award).

Despite what seems to be a stellar career, MacArthur was addicted to vainglory and self-aggrandizement. Most of his most vaunted accomplishments were puffed-up products hyped by his own public relations staff. Otherwise, he showed himself to be an egotistical, thoughtless, and unsubtle martinet. He was unremittingly relentless in pursuing the Court Martial of General William “Billy” Mitchell, the Army’s chief advocate of air power, and he was unnecessarily brutal toward the Bonus Army marchers of 1932.  During his tenure as Generalissimo of the Philippine Army he ignored the President and Congress of this self-governing U.S. Commonwealth and lived in imperial isolation in the penthouse of the Manila Hotel, issuing orders and browbeating subordinates; he rarely visited the thousands of troops, American and Filipino both, who were under his command. On the whole, his Command in the Philippines was poorly equipped, but he felt an arrogant confidence that his men could defeat the Japanese if it came to it. He had a low opinion of East Asians generally. 

Thus, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941 (Manila time) MacArthur did nothing despite having eight precious hours with which to prepare. He spent part of his time immersed in his Bible. When the Japanese arrived they walked over the American / Philippine forces with ease. MacArthur fled to the redoubt of Corregidor while his army found itself penned on the Bataan Peninsula. By rights, he should have been cashiered for incompetence, but his innate swagger, aviator sunglasses, and corncob pipe made him invaluable for morale purposes at home. He left the Philippines in 1942, announcing, “I shall return!” The 25,000 men on Bataan had no place to go. They were captured, tortured, killed, death-marched and starved. He had only gone to Bataan once before it fell. The men derisively called him “Dugout Doug.” 

Despite his sorry showing in combat, MacArthur rose to be a Five Star General, accepted the surrender of the Japanese in Tokyo Bay in 1945, and was made Military Governor of Japan. He was put in charge of U.N. forces in Korea in 1950, but when he announced his own plan to invade Communist China, Harry S Truman fired him. Truman was blunt about it: “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President . . . I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.” MacArthur served under a succession of Presidents. At least four (Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, and Hoover) had occasion to call him a "dumb sonofabitch" at some point in time. He very likely was a dumb sonofabitch

MacArthur in his iconic pose