Word: yalta
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While most Congressmen were still wading through the 834 pages of the Yalta papers (TIME, March 28), Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson set the Democratic line last week for the long debate that was sure to come. Said Johnson: "The [Yalta] mistakes-if such they were-appear to have been based upon the estimates and miscalculations of the military leaders in Europe and the Far East ... I am very proud of the fact that no one on my side of the aisle has arisen to question the motives of those military men, whether they be General Eisenhower or General MacArthur...
...Entry. Johnson's shot at Mac-Arthur was based mostly on a Feb. 28, 1945 (three weeks after Yalta) entry in the diary of Navy Secretary James Forrestal. Wrote Forrestal, after a talk with MacArthur: "He felt that we should secure the commitment of the Russians to active and vigorous prosecution of a campaign against the Japanese." Douglas MacArthur was quick to reply to Johnson. Said he: "The imminent collapse of Japan was clearly apparent several months before Yalta ... I would most emphatically have recommended against bringing the Soviet into the Pacific war at that late date. To have...
...after Johnson's speech, newsmen at the President's press conference asked the President about Yalta. Did he record or did he remember a decision that he reached at that time as to the rightness or wrongness of Yalta? The President was brisk-and very positive. Said he: "No." Then he pointed out that he did not go to Yalta, but sent his chief of staff, Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith, to the pre-Yalta conference at Malta to report on the military situation as it then existed in Europe...
...remember FDR coming back home from his little gambol on the shores of the Black Sea to tell us what a magnificent job he had done dealing with Stalin? You might check his speech today. Of course, for many politicians Yalta remains a haunting memory, a kind of ubiquitous genie that just won't go back to fairyland... Do you remember how the Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Bull, was bypassed and ignored and how that very special group of experts on world problems and everything size decided they were the men to settle the fate of mankind...
...have all the Yalta-lovers telling us that it is they who were the champions of the Europeans all along and they feel very strongly that nothing should be done to hurt American prestige in Europe. Of course, we didn't hear them say that when our Government was forcibly repatriating hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Soviet paradise as late as 1948. Yes, 1948, when every "illegal border crosser" was arrested and turned over to the Soviet authorities within 48 hours.... But I believe the American people should recall what was the morality, intelligence and intellectual honesty...