The President's News Conference

THE PRESIDENT. Please be seated.

If you have got a question, I will try to answer it.

[1.] Q. Mr. President, Senator Watkins has suggested that you invite both General Eisenhower and General MacArthur to the White House for a Korean strategy conference?

Q. Louder.

Q. Couldn't hear a thing.

THE PRESIDENT. Tony¹ told me that Senator Watkins of Utah had suggested a Korean conference between myself and General MacArthur and General Eisenhower.

¹Ernest B. Vaccaro of the Associated Press.

I can't see any good purpose to be served by that. They are welcome to talk to me any time they want to.

Q. Mr. President, do you intend to invite General MacArthur to come to Washington ?

THE PRESIDENT. I do not. General MacArthur is in the Army, and on active duty, and if he has anything that is of use to the Defense Department, he ought to tell them so they can make use of it.

Q. Mr. President, what do you think of the General Eisenhower statement, that he has no trick solution for the Korean--

THE PRESIDENT. He was quoting me. I made the statement quite some time ago in the campaign. He just quoted me. Not intentionally, however.

Q. Mr. President, you feel that it is any Army man's duty to come forward if he has--

THE PRESIDENT. Certainly it is. Certainly it' is. He is on active duty and will be the rest of his life. The law provides for that.

Q. Mr. President, General MacArthur said that nobody has listened to his counsels since he came back. It seems to me the MacArthur investigating committee² went over his war plans pretty thoroughly.

THE PRESIDENT. They went over them completely and thoroughly, and I read every word of the testimony up there. And the committee did not come up with any suggestions or any advice to me or to the Defense Department.

²The committee hearings on the dismissal of General MacArthur from his command in the Far East are printed in "Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, on the Military Situation in the Far East" (Government Printing Office, 1951, Parts 1-5, 3691 pp.).

Q. Mr. President, have you talked to General MacArthur since Wake Island?³

THE PRESIDENT. No.

³For the President's statement upon meeting with General MacArthur on Wake Island, see 1950 volume, this series, Item 268.

Q. Have you seen him since then?

THE PRESIDENT. I made a 14,400-mile trip to get a lot of misinformation. He didn't even do the courtesy, which he should have done, of reporting to the President when he came back here. I have never seen him, and I don't want to see him.

Q. You mean that would be the appropriate thing, that he should ask to see you?

THE PRESIDENT. He should have come to see me and reported, as soon as he got here. Any decent man would have done it.

Q. Mr. President, if General MacArthur does not respond to the invitation in the press, would it seem logical that the Joint Chiefs should request him to come to Washington to lay out his whole solution?

THE PRESIDENT. I think that the Joint Chiefs know all about what is in his mind. If they want to hear it again, why it's all fight with me.

Q. Mr. President, what misinformation did the General give you?

THE PRESIDENT. He said the Chinese would not come into Korea, that it would be possible to send a division of the regular Army to Germany for occupation purposes to relieve another division over there by the first of January.

And he also said that the war was over, he was sure.

Q. That was a little fast. I wonder if we could ask Mr. Romagna ⁴ to read that back?

THE PRESIDENT. Well--sure. Read it to them, Jack.

⁴Jack Romagna, White House Official Reporter.

Q. He said the Chinese

Mr. Romagna: He said the Chinese would not come into Korea, that it would be possible to send a division of the regular Army to Germany for occupation purposes, to relieve another division--

THE PRESIDENT. This division, you understand, was to come from Korea.

Mr. Romagna:--over there by the first of January. And he also said that the war was over, he was sure.

Q. Could we quote that, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT. Why it's in the report that was made when we got back here. I don't think I should say that you can quote me directly.

Q. All right.

THE PRESIDENT. Paraphrase it. Tony,⁵ did you have a question?

⁵ Anthony H. Leviero of the New York Times.

Q. Mr. President, the views that General MacArthur expressed before the investigating committee, on ways of handling the Korean war, were rejected by the administration, I believe, because it was felt that his plan would have enlarged the war.

THE PRESIDENT. Yes, it would have involved.--

Q. Now, are you--do you still reject--

THE PRESIDENT. It would have involved us in all-out war in the Far East, and we have been strenuously trying to avoid that all the time.

Q. In other words, you would look, then, for something new that could bring an honorable settlement without enlarging the

THE PRESIDENT. We have been making an endeavor to have that very thing take place. That's the reason we have been negotiating all this time to reach an armistice and an agreement for peace; and we haven't been able to reach it because the Communists want to murder the prisoners of war that do not want to go back. We are not going to let them do it, as long as I am President.

Q. Do you think it is possible, sir, that General MacArthur would have any plan for a solution of the war now, that he did not have at the time of the Senate hearings?

THE PRESIDENT. Expressing my private opinion, that is what I believe. That is what your question implied, that it was nothing new--didn't have anything new to offer. don't think he has.

Q. Well, if General Eisenhower has a plan, would you put it into effect immediately, so that we could shorten the war ?

THE PRESIDENT. Why, certainly. I would put it into effect right now. I want to stop wars just as badly as anybody in the country does. I have tried in every way possible to bring it to a successful conclusion.

I tried to do it without involving us in an all-out war in the Far East.

Q. Would it have been possible for General MacArthur to have called on you any time during this--

THE PRESIDENT. Yes, certainly. Of course it would. He did not want to see me.

Q. Well, Mr. President, I am a little bit confused about military protocol. When General Eisenhower came back this time, I asked him at his press conference if he had reported to Congress, and he rebuked me by saying that he couldn't unless he was invited to. Now that doesn't apply to you as Commander in Chief--

THE PRESIDENT. The first thing General Eisenhower did when he came back from Europe was to report to me. And that is exactly protocol.

Q. Without invitation? By his initiative?

THE PRESIDENT. That is his duty. That is his duty.

Q. Mr. President, if General Eisenhower has any new plans to solve the Korean war, he owes it to you and the country to report directly to you?

THE PRESIDENT. That's correct--that's correct.

Q. Mr. President, in this case, don't you think General MacArthur was inhibited because you dismissed him?

THE PRESIDENT. NO, not necessarily. That didn't keep him from following military etiquette. He missed an awful good chance for a headline by not coming in. [Laughter]

Q. Mr. President, if it is General MacArthur's duty to report any plan he may have to you, and if he does not fulfill his duty by reporting, what follows then, what steps do you take?

THE PRESIDENT. I wouldn't take any, now. It's a little late.

Q. Mr. President, I want to make it clear, you don't care to see General MacArthur now?

THE PRESIDENT. No, there's no reason for me to see him.

Q. If he asked to see you, would you see him?

THE PRESIDENT. I certainly would. Of course I would. I wouldn't be discourteous to anybody. I never have been. [Pause] Has the "well" run dry ?

Q. No, sir.

Q. Can't keep up.

Q. I think you have filled up the creek, sir. [Laughter]

THE PRESIDENT. Is that what's the matter?

[2.] Q. Mr. President, the Attorney General, I believe it is, of Massachusetts, says that you were urged during the political campaign to announce that you would go to Korea, and establish--let out the hint that the war would be over by Christmas--some such thing as that, and you rejected the idea? Was such an idea put up to you ?

THE PRESIDENT. It was suggested, and I decided that it wouldn't serve any good purpose, it would be just a piece of demagoguery; and that is what it turned out to be.

[3.] Q. Mr. President, do you plan to send a State of the Union Message and an Economic Report to Congress in January?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes.

[4.] Q. I want to get that straight-you said that you thought that it would serve no good purpose, would be just a piece of demagoguery, and that is what it turned out to be?

THE PRESIDENT. That's correct.

Q. What did you mean, the current trip that is on now is a piece of demagoguery?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes. The announcement of that trip was a piece of demagoguery, and then of course he had to take it after he had made the statement. What's the matter, Tony ?

[Here Roger Tubby spoke to the President.]

Well, Roger⁶ suggested that maybe some good might come out of the trip. If it does, I will be the happiest man in the world. I hope some good can come out of it.

⁶ Roger Tubby, Assistant Press Secretary.

Q. Well, Mr. President, do you think you could settle the Korean war without settling the whole Communist world-domination war against all the free nations ?

THE PRESIDENT. That is a very complicated question, and I can't answer it. I have been trying to settle the situation in Korea as hard as I can for the last year and a half.

Q. If they stop in Korea, they might step up in Indochina?

THE PRESIDENT. I am no prophet. I am not making any prophecies. You can draw your own conclusions. What you say is possible, of course.

[5.] Q. Mr. President, do you think economic controls should be extended beyond April 30th ?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes, I do.

Q. Mr. President, how are we going to hold the economic controls program together with Mr. Putnam stepping out this weekend, and no industry members on the Wage Board ?

THE PRESIDENT. We will have industry members on the Wage Board before the week is out, and we will have a successor to Mr. Putnam, whenever he decides to quit.⁷

Q. Is that Mr. DiSalle?

THE PRESIDENT. He is under consideration.

⁷Roger L. Putnam resigned as Administrator of the Economic Stabilization Agency on December 22, and Michael V. DiSalle was sworn in to that post on the same day (see Item 348). See also Item 346.

Q. Have the industry members before the week is out?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes. Had plenty of volunteers for those places. Good men, too.

Q. That about covers it, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT. As far as I am concerned.

Q. Thank you very much.