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Ordeal of a General. No one knew better than George Marshall what World War II had cost the nation; he still has the bill, in men and dollars, at the tip of his tongue. At the end of the war, he wrote in his last report to the Secretary of War: "We must, if we are to realize the hopes we may now dare have for lasting peace, enforce our will for peace with strength. We must make it clear to the potential gangsters of the world that if they dare break our peace, they will do so at their great peril. . . . We have tried since the birth of our nation to promote our love of peace by a display of weakness. This course has failed us utterly."
It was an old soldier's valedictory. He did not expect that he himself would be recalled to help implement that advice. He went to China and he came back as Secretary of State only because, in his soldier's view, he was at the command of the President. "What I wanted most," he observed, "was to go home and fix things up at Leesburg."
The Risk. The course which George Marshall had plotted as Secretary of State was one of calculated risk. It was based on the premise that Italy and France could maintain anti-Communist governments, and on the hope that Europe could start production in earnest. One of the big imponderable elements in the risk was the intention of the U.S. people. Were they ready to "enforce [the] will for peace with strength?" If they were not, then the Secretary of State would have to default on his commitments to the world.
How did the U.S. look in 1947? By the most extreme of understatements, it looked healthier than any other nation in the world. India was free, but the blood bath of partition and the uprooting of the population had left irremovable scars. Palestine was partitioned—by U.N. and with the sanction of the U.S.—but none believed that she would soon be free of strife. Western Europe was wracked by Communist violence. England's economy was still in the first stage of convalescence. One of the few bright spots in the year's news from across the Atlantic was the marriage in London of Philip and Elizabeth, when, for a brief moment, the world was reminded of the things it cherished most.
Yet the rich and powerful U.S., untouched by violence and unhurt by want, had had an uneasy year, full of vague fears and a lack of confidence. The U.S. people produced more than ever before and had more money to buy things than ever before, yet the country still did not have the happiness its boom seemed to offer. Ten years ago, many an American thought that if he ever earned the salary he actually received in 1947, he would be on easy street. Now 1947 was past, and the road was still full of potholes and sharp turns.
In the arts, only old, limp banners were unfurled. Uncertainty and lack of confidence came out in nostalgia. Beyond a small epic in frustration called A Streetcar Named Desire, the only important Broadway plays were revivals of Shakespeare and Shaw, a rewrite (Medea) of Euripides. Novelists had little or nothing to say; the most widely read fiction was escapist. The U.S. never had contributed much to music. In 1947, even Tin Pan Alley failed to produce a great hit. Many of the most popular airs were revivals.