In using whatever means necessary to stem the attack against South Korea, the government of Harry Truman unquestionably acted in the best interests of the United States and of the world.
But characteristically, that government took action in a manner that could only make later trouble. As with every major policy decision that Administration had made, it was announced to the public only after the decision was irrevocable. With the orders already speeding to Tokyo, Truman called in the balance of the Cabinet, the Vice- President, congressional leaders of both parties, and told them what he had done.
In effect, Truman had engaged the nation in war by executive action.
Some of the leaders were understandably shaken.
In the afternoon, President Truman issued a terse statement to the press, terming the Korean venture a 'police action.'
At about the same time, Warren Austin addressed the Security Council in New York, and told the world that the action taken by the United States in Korea was strictly in conformity with the resolutions passed on 25 and 27 June.
Something new had happened. The United States had gone to war, not under enemy attack, nor to protect the lives or property of American citizens. Nor was the action taken in crusading spirit, as in World Wars I and II, to save the world. The American people had entered a war, not by the roaring demand of Congress—which alone could constitutionally declare a state of war—or the public, but by executive action, at the urging of an American proconsul across the sea, to maintain the balance of power across the sea.
Many Americans, who had never adjusted to their country's changed position in the world, would never understand.
Harry Truman had ordered troops into action on the far frontier. This was the kind of order Disraeli might have given, sending Her Majesty's regiments against the disturbers of Her Majesty's peace. Or the emperor in Rome might have given such a command to the legions when his governor in Britain sent word the Picts were over the border.
This was the kind of war that had bleached the bones of countless legionnaires on the marches of the empire, and had dug the graves of numberless Britons, wherever the sun shone.
In 1950 there was only one power and one people in the world who could prevent chaos and a new, barbarian tyranny from sweeping the earth. The United States had become a vast world power, like it or not. And liking it or not, Americans would find that if a nation desires to remain a great and moral power there is a game it must play, and some of its people must pay the price.
Truman, sending the divisions into Korea, was trying to emulate the Roman legions and Her Majesty's regiments—for whether the American people have accepted it or not, there have always been tigers in the world, which can be contained only by force.
But Truman and the American Republic had no legions.
The President and the American people had ten Army divisions, the European Constabulary, and nine separate regimental combat teams, all of which, except the one in Europe, were at 70 percent strength. Each regiment had, instead of its normal three battalions, only two, and each artillery battalion had not its proper three firing batteries, but two.
No division had its proper wartime quota of weapons and equipment, and each had only light M-24 tanks. What equipment each division had was World War II worn, and old.
But the greatest weakness of the American Army was not in its numbers or its weapons, pitiful as they were.
The United States Army, since 1945, had, at the demand of the public, been civilianized. The men in the ranks were enlistees, but these were the new breed of American regular, who, when they took up the soldier, had not even tried to put aside the citizen.
They were normal American youth, no better, no worse than the norm, who though they wore the uniform were mentally, morally, and physically unfit for combat, for orders to go out and die.
They wore the uniform, but they were still civilians at heart.
The ancient legions, and the proud old British regiments, had been filled with taverns' scum, starvelings, and poor farm boys seeking change. They had been inducted, knocked about, ruled with a rod of iron, made into men of iron, with iron discipline. They were officered by men wholly professional, to whom dying was only a part of their way of life. To these men the service was home, and war—any war—their profession.
These legions of old, like the sword itself, were neither moral nor immoral. Morality depended upon the use to which their government put them. But when put to use, they did not question, did not fail. They marched.
In 1950 America, imperfectly understanding her position in this new world, had no legions. She had even no men in ''dirty-shirt blue,' such as had policed the Indian frontier. She had an army of sorts of citizens, who were as conscious of their rights and privileges as of their duties. And she had only a reserve of more citizens to fall back upon.
Citizens fly to defend the homeland, or to crusade. But a frontier cannot be held by citizens, because citizens, in a republic, have better things to do.
In 1950, as later, President Truman and his Cabinet might have sounded the clarion call, aroused the nation to frenzy, ushered in World War III. But they saw no profit in holocaust, nor was there any.
The balance of power can be maintained short of holocaust, but only if the trumpet is not sounded. The world of 1914 learned that lesson much too well.
The foreign policy of the Administration had never been that of destroying Communism, which could not be done without Armageddon, but to contain it until the natural balance of world power was restored and there was no void imperialist Communism could fill.
By attacking the Republic of Korea, the Communist world was not proclaiming jihad; it had not sounded its own trumpet of war to the death. It was probing. It was playing the game of limited war and power politics as the kings and tyrannies of old had played them.
The American Government would have preferred not to play. But the game was thrust upon them. There was no alternative to playing, other than surrender or holocaust.
The single greatest weakness of a free people is always their moral doubts. Fortunately for the world, in 1950 the men in the United States Government overcame theirs.
Harry Truman, President, ordered the legions to the frontier. He prepared to back them up with the civilian might of the nation. He sent them not to destroy the unholy, but merely to hold the line.
But Harry Truman, President, had not true legions. He had a citizen army, backed by civilians who neither understood nor approved the dangerous game. Few of them preferred surrender; but most thought of war only in terms of holocaust. They were not prepared.
Citizens, unless they hear the clarion call, or the angel's trumpet, are apt to be a rabble in arms.
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Part II
Battle
7
Task Force Smith
— Major General William Frishe Dean, CG, 24th Infantry Division.
AT A LITTLE PAST eight on the morning of 1 July 1950, Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith, commanding 1st
