MacArthur a ‘rebel’ on Army tradition
New United Nations Commander in Southwest Pacific pranced all over dignity of old-line officers as a ‘soldier’s soldier’
By Frank I. Weller
Editor’s note:
How Douglas MacArthur defied Army tradition and still proved himself “a soldier’s soldier” is told by Frank I. Weller in the second of four Wide World articles on the new Supreme Commander of the United Nations forces in the Southwest Pacific.
…
The Pittsburgh Press (March 19, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
LOS ANGELES – Pershing Square in Los Angeles is one of the funniest places I’ve ever seen.
It is a nice block-square park in the center of downtown Los Angeles. And for some reason it has grown into a place where people congregate and argue in public. It is the Hyde Park of America, except that it’s much better than London’s Hyde Park.
In Pershing Square people don’t get up on soapboxes and make wild speeches. It’s more personal than that. They stand in little knots and argue man to man.
I don’t know how each individual argument gets started, but I suppose a potential arguer simply walks along, sees some other guy who looks like an arguer, walks up to him and says, “Do you think all inventions are accidents?”
The guy says yes, or possibly no, and they’re off. Rapidly a little crowd gathers around. Pretty soon an onlooker will shove in his two cents’ worth. And the argument in that one group will flow back and forth among various contestants for hours.
If you walk through Pershing Square you’ll find the place dotted these little belligerent groups. It’s a circus. I’ve listened to dozens of them, and as far as I can figure out, nobody knows what he’s talking about. In no other place in the world will you hear so many four-dollar words so thoroughly misused as in Pershing Square.
For instance, the other day one group, of which I was a member, was arguing on the age of the Chinese people. One well-dressed college fellow said the Chinese were thousands of years old before the Bible was written.
They never discuss the war
Whereupon a middle-aged man, an Englishman with a broad provincial accent, shook his fist and yelled, “Naow, sir! The Chinese frustrated that lie. If you don’t believe it go to the library and read the historicals.”
The thing that has amazed me most about the Pershing Square thinkers is that the war hasn’t changed their arguments at all. One afternoon I stopped past a dozen different groups. Not a one was discussing the war. They were still arguing the same old subjects they’ve been screaming at each other about for years – Socialism and God.
People tell me that the attitude of the public toward Filipinos has changed radically. Heretofore Filipinos in Southern California have been treated worse than Negroes. But now they’re being treated with respect.
I have a very dear friend here who is a Filipino. He is a steward on a crack Southern Pacific train between here and San Francisco. So I asked him about this change.
He says it is true. The public is bending over backward to be nice to Filipinos. It’s easy now for a Filipino to get a job. And he says the travelers whom he serves are practically gushy. They give him long speeches of praise as though he personally were back from Bataan after wiping out a few hundred Japs. So goes the world.
If I ever get in the Army, it is my ambition to receive a directive to proceed to an unannounced destination and set up a military installation.
Jap girls become Eleanors
A friend of mine who teaches in a grade school and has a lot of Japanese pupils tells of a funny incident.
Previously all her students had thoroughly unpronounceable Japanese names. But the morning after Pearl Harbor all the little Japanese girls showed up with American first names, such as Mary, Carol and Virginia. But the most popular name of all, that morning after Pearl Harbor, was Eleanor.
You know that story about the tramp hitchhiker predicting the war would be over in July. Well, he is apparently a ubiquitous tramp. He is everywhere.
Letters have rolled in from every corner of the country, saying the same tramp with the same name had been through there. Sometimes it was two gypsies instead, but otherwise the story was always the same. The earliest report of it seems to have been hard about three months ago.
A friend has suggested that I try to trace the yarn down to its beginning, but I imagine the entire FBI could never run down its source. Many people say the story circulated during the last war, both here and in Europe.
Most letter-writers seem to feel that it’s a form of fifth-column propaganda, planted by the enemy to lessen our war efforts. I’m so dumb it never occurred to me there was anything insidious as about it. But I guess no harm was done in repeating it. Everybody in America apparently had heard it before I did anyway.
Around Laguna Beach there is a movement to organize deer hunters into a band of guerrillas to fight the Japanese when and if they try to invade California.
The story was published in the papers, and mail has been coming in from all over Southern California. One enthusiastic hunter wrote, “I’m not a crack shot, but I always get the meat.” Apparently he just slips up and strangles his deer – and his Japs.