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Victory, Not Indecision. As he spoke, MacArthur kept his hands firmly anchored to each end of the lectern, except to turn pages. Only once, when he reached for a glass of water, did he show the slight hand tremor he has had since the middle of World War II. To his critics who charged him with wanting to start a world war MacArthur retorted emphatically: "I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting . . . But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory."
Attempts to appease Red China are useless, said MacArthur. "They are blind to history's clear lesson . . . Like blackmail, [appeasement] lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative. Why, my soldiers asked of me, surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field?"
He paused dramatically, then said: "I could not answer.
"Some may say to avoid spread of the conflict into an all-out war with China. Others, to avoid Soviet intervention. Neither explanation seems valid, for China is already engaging with the maximum power it can commit, and the Soviet will not necessarily mesh its actions with our moves.
"Like a cobra, any new enemy will more likely strike whenever it feels that the relativity in military or other potential is in its favor on a worldwide basis."
Douglas MacArthur had hurled his challenge, and was ready to make his farewells. "I have just left your fighting sons in Korea," he told his hushed audience, "and I can report to you without reservation that they are splendid in every way . . . Those gallant men will remain often in my thoughts and in my prayers always."
He dropped his voice a little, and went on. "When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams . . . The hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
"And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye."
It was a spine-tingling and theatrical climax, audaciously beyond the outer limits of ordinary present-day oratory. In the wild crash of applause, many a legislative eye was wet. So were many other eyes across the land as the nation turned from radios and television screens back to office duties and neglected chores. Douglas Mac-Arthur handed his manuscript to the clerk, waved to his wife in the visitors' gallery, then strode through the cheering rows of Congressmen. History would remember this day and this man, and mark him large.