Memoirs and Decency

In the preface to Education of a General, a biography of General George Marshall, the author, Forrest Pogue, explains that Marshall would not write his own memoirs.

His refusal to write his memoirs threatened to leave a serious gap in our knowledge of one of the great leaders of World War II. Pressed repeatedly during the war by friends to keep some record, he declined, saying that a diarist ran the risk of doing only those things which would look good in the journal or of putting down only those actions which would make him look good. A journal which he kept in World War I was later destroyed on the grounds that he may have been unfair to some of the men discussed therein.

Despite pressure from publishers and friends to write his autobiography, he refused to listen to lavish offers of money and declined all inducements to write articles or sketches or to use the services of a ghost writer. Only when the George C. Marshall Research Foundation was organized did he finally agree to cooperate with a trained historian in a series of interviews. Even here, he drew back from pronouncing harsh judgments on his contemporaries, constantly reminding his biographers the he didn't want readers turning through the book to see who had been insulted on page nine.

What are the chances of someone in government today having the same, high moral standard? People like Alan Greenspan can't wait for their $8 million advance to say how stupid the people were with whom they worked.

Great Generals

As the war in Iraq goes from bad to worse, we miss the great generals of the past. One of the greatest of the 20th century, probably the greatest, was General George Marshall, whom Winston Churchill described as the "organizer of victory." While Marshall did not command troops in the field during World War II, he was the general in charge of the entire war. He commanded the generals.

A biography of General Marshall by Forrest Pogue begins with a foreword by General of the Army Omar Bradley. General Bradley says that during the interviews for this biography, "Fresh in [General Marshall's] mind after fifty years were the impressions he gained from visiting the sites of the French and Indian War battles fought within a few miles of his birthplace in Pennsylvania, and the impact made by the examples of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson."

It's interesting that he cites the Southern generals Lee and Jackson, rather than the victorious Grant and Sherman. Of course, part of the reason is that Marshall attended VMI, but also, Lee and Jackson were men of great moral character, unlike Grant and many of the Yankee generals. The Southerners were no doubt models for the high moral character that Marshall embodied, which stood the United States well during the trying times of World War II.

Would that we had a general of similar character to lead us in Iraq today!