Word: smithing
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Impatient with the State Department's attitude (definable as doing nothing and trying to be proud of it), New Jersey's conscientious Senator H. Alexander Smith, one of the strongest Republican supporters of the bipartisan foreign policy, had boarded a troop ship last September and sailed for Yokohama. He conferred with Douglas MacArthur and spent three weeks (at his own expense) in eastern Asia. Last week he made public his recommendations, which had at least the merit of being a positive attempt to deal with a tragic situation while it could still be dealt with...
...Pointing Both Ways. Senator Smith would 1) turn over to a committee of generals and admirals the $75 million appropriated to oppose Communism's spread in China, 2) lend strong support to a Free China movement, 3) never recognize the Communist government of Mao Tse-tung. But chiefly he tried to fix U.S. attention on the island of Formosa, which the Nationalist government regards as its last redoubt...
...Smith proposed in effect that the U.S. send troops to occupy the prosperous 235-mile-long island. Strategically the most important piece of real estate still outside Western democracy's Pacific Ocean frontier, Formosa lies on the line between three potential sea-air bastions: Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines (see map). In the hands of an Asia-based enemy it would menace U.S. communication lines. But it is a gun which can point both ways. The U.S. could point it at Communist China...
General Douglas MacArthur reportedly favored some kind of U.S. action to support Formosa, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed convinced that the move was neither an acceptable risk nor practically possible. In fact, if Senator Smith was to get anywhere with his suggestion for action, his first and most difficult task would be to convince the military, which seemed as ready as the diplomats to go on waiting for the dust to settle, no matter what was buried under...
...Right Note. The planeloads of guests for the opening would include Actress Alexis Smith, oldtime Star Gloria Swanson, Eastern Air Lines President Eddie Rickenbacker, R. H. Macy's Beardsley Ruml, David Rockefeller and Julius ("Cap") Krug. But none of the party-goers would enjoy the round of banquets, swimming parties and tennis tournaments as much as their party-loving, party-giving host, Conrad Nicholson Hilton, the world's No. 1 hotelman, who this week was getting his first excited look at his newest hotel...