World: MacArthur’s Legend

The men on Bataan kept watching for him. Once in a while he would come around. Everything about him-the angle of his heavily braided cap, the swing of his brown, curve-handled cane, the uptilt of his long black cigaret holder, the shine on his four stars and brown shoes-everything was always jaunty. The men watched for his smile: they usually got it.

Thus, day after dreary day, Douglas MacArthur cheered his tired men. He himself must have been sustained by the growing realization that he was a national hero. Cables and radio messages of congratulations continued to pour in last week-from the workers at the Picatinny Arsenal. Dover, N.J.; from veterans of his World War I Rainbow Division; from New York City’s Inner Circle, a political writers’ club. But General MacArthur could not know how great and how American his legend had grown.

All across the land citizens were paying their various tributes:

¶ V. R. Hood, proprietor of a cleaning establishment in San Antonio, Tex.: “All the people I know think God comes first and then MacArthur.”

¶Carl Johnson, railway clerk in Minneapolis: “MacArthur should be made head of the whole shebang-Army, Navy, Air Force.”

¶Emma Weickert, a telephone switchboard operator in Miami: “I even stopped taking milk from Senator Graham’s dairy and am taking it now from MacArthur’s.”

¶Charles Bray, an insurance man in Topeka, Kans.: “MacArthur is the greatest general since Sergeant York.”