MR. TRUMAN'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY
Holmas, John Haynes
Mr. Truman's Great Opportunity By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES IN a public address spoken in England in 1877, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant said: "Though I have followed a military life for the better part of my...
...So long as the Japanese people do not know the consequences of surrender, they will not surrender...
...There is no reason why this policy should now be continued...
...Truman has shown on more than one occasion his ability to think his own thoughts and to work out his own ways...
...If the conquest of this little island, a third the size of Long Island, exacted such a toll of blood and agony, what will the conquest of the home islands of Japan exact...
...No quarter given or received...
...but there never was a time during my command when I would not gladly have chosen some settlement by reason rather than by the sword...
...He was willing to pay for peace the high price of "any terms that were honorable...
...Reinhold Neibuhr and a group of ardent war-advocates, "the Japanese delay an ultimately inevitable decision through fear of unnamed consequences...
...Looking back over his career, and down into his heart, this victorious commander discovered that there was never a time when he did not want to bring war to an end at the earliest possible moment...
...AND the tragedy of it is that peace could be had tomorrow if we were willing, in the spirit of Gen...
...Truman to impose a new and greater statesmanship upon the United Nations...
...We have returned to the "unconditional surrender" days...
...And to his credit, and to the glory of this nation, and to the comfort of the world, the war would end...
...It has been my misfortune to be engaged in more battles than any other general on the other side of the Atlantic...
...But today it's different...
...JUST here, it seems to me, is a chance for Mr...
...President Roosevelt's "unconditional surrender" policy was one of those ill-considered impulses which were all too numerous in his Administrations...
...Grant, t\e greatest warrior of his time, who said, "Let us have peace...
...There is good evidence that Mr...
...Churchill did not like it, and only reluctantly accepted it...
...Ulysses S. Grant said: "Though I have followed a military life for the better part of my years, there was never a day in my life when I was not in favor of peace on any terms that were honorable...
...They will keep right on taking the last life and the last dollar that their despair and utter eourage can exact from us...
...If she still fights desperately, and to the bitter end, it is because, to quote a statement recently issued by Dr...
...Japan must be liquidated, her empire dissolved, her far-flung eon-quests snatched from her control...
...It would also stabilize the East, and bring promise of that "one world" in which all nations are members one of another...
...Let us agree that the military power of...
...These terms may be as severe as you please...
...The knock-out blow, no matter what it costs us...
...Grant, to "choose some settlement by reason rather than the sword...
...Let him formalize his statement, give it official authority, and therewith transform a personal opinion into a program of government...
...The suicide bomber is only a single dramatic illustration of the lengths to which our enemy is determined to go in a last ditch fight...
...We tried the business of destroying Germany, and succeeded—and now find that we have reduced a whole continent to despair and death...
...That the cost will be dreadful is abundantly indicated by the progress of the fighting in the Pacific area...
...Our highest duty at this hour is to conceive and announce the terms under which Japan may survive and regain her place in the family of nations...
...But the nation itself must live...
...This is a war to the death...
...Though not too severe...
...Is not this a propitious time to remember that it was Gen...
...What economic freedom she would be allowed," says the Neibuhr group, "and how she could be related to the life of Asia...
...It is well understood in Washington that, while she has not sued for peace, or submitted terms, she has yet sent out feelers so-called, and therewith made plain the conditions under which she would be glad to cease fighting...
...This is the mature judgment of a soldier who, in his early salad days, attained his first fame as an officer who demanded on the field of battle "unconditional surrender" of the enemy...
...Okinawa is a tale to chill the blood...
...He believed that, even in the fiercest fighting, there was a place for reason as a substitute for the sword...
...We have no use for reason, least of all compassion, and thus choose to rely utterly upon the sword...
...That Japan can win this war is of course impossible...
...What is it that keeps Japan going...
...We are interested not in ending the war, but in destroying the enemy...
...Is it to our advantage, or the world's advantage, to wipe out Japan,, annihilate her enormous producing capacity, consign her millions to starvation, and therewith duplicate in Asia the chaos which has been achieved in Europe...
...And the ability of these fighters to hold out to this last gasp makes the Nazis look like toy-soldiers on parade...
...And these conditions are the humiliating concessions of a defeated nation doomed to surrender her empire, her military and naval power, her national greatness, for the boon of mere survival...
...But it lies easily within her power to prolong it and to impose a price for victory so terrible as to shock even our shock-proof world...
...She knows that she is beaten...
...Such a statement, issued under official authority, would end the war and bring home the boys...
...The need of this present hour, first to shorten the war, and secondly to save the world, is a statement by our Government of the precise terms—military, political, economic—under which the surrender of Japan would be accepted...
...In this one statement on Japan he went far in the direction of the Grant policy of ehoosing settlement "by reason rather than by the sword...
...Let him now go farther...
...We deal as little in honorable as in dishonorable terms of peace...
...For it is not our purpose, nor would it be to our profit, to destroy Japan, as President Truman has himself clearly stated...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 31
