Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated February 10, 1956: Dismissal of Macarthur

General Douglas Macarthur has described his dismissal as America's Far Eastern Commander in 1951 by the then President, Mr. Harry Truman, as "savage and brutal" and linked it with the disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean of the British Foreign Office. Mr. Truman's memoirs are being serialised in Life magazine and, in this week's instalment, the former President said his dismissal of Gen. Macarthur was because "I could no longer tolerate his insubordination." The magazine invited Gen. Macarthur to read the instalment and published his reply in the same issue. Officials of the magazine said the General, now Chairman of the Remington Rand Corporation, sent his reply in his own hand and asked that it be published with no alterations. Gen. Macarthur denied that he had ever been guilty of insubordination and said "Mr. Truman's narrative does such violence to the truth that to remain silent would be a disservice to the nation." He called Mr. Truman's version of his dismissal "a labyrinth of fancy" and "fiction, distortion and misrepresentation." He said the real reason for his removal might well have been set off by a "recommendation made in January, shortly before my relief, that a treason trial be initiated to break up a spy ring responsible for the purloining of my top secret reports to Washington. It was not until the recent exposure of the British spies, Burgess and Maclean, that the true facts began to unfold."

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