George Marshall

(Editor's Note: Following are excerpts from an article published in TIME magazine on March 10, 1947)

On a quiet afternoon last week, 171 years after the American Colonies broke away from the Crown, the terrible responsibilities (and the equally awesome opportunities) of the British Empire were delivered to Washington, addressed to the American people, c/o George C. Marshall.

Secretary of State for only five weeks, Marshall had been cramming for the Moscow Conference on the German peace when the British note arrived and he learned that after March 31 Britain would be unable to continue help to Greece and Turkey. Marshall understood that that meant a great deal more than it said. If Britain could no longer hold (at a relatively small cost) the key position in both the European and Middle Eastern conflict with Russia, then Britain could hold no key positions. If Greece and Turkey went, Italy and France, India and Indonesia might all be lost in a chain reaction.

One Senator who heard the news at the White House said: "It's the biggest thing since the declaration of war." Like the attack on Pearl Harbor, the British note only made concrete and inescapable a situation long apparent to those who looked hard enough. Like Pearl Harbor, it imposed upon the U.S. Government the duty of leading the nation and the world forward toward safety.

The British note of Feb. 27, 1947 (a day that may live in history as the beginning of a new and more vigorous U.S. policy) did not find Marshall wholly unprepared. From the first he had regarded his mission to Moscow not merely as a diplomatic negotiation over Germany, but as part of a worldwide struggle in which the U.S. led the forces attempting to contain the aggressive drive of the Soviet Union.

"He Wants to Operate Them"

George Catlett Marshall is clearly a bigger man than his predecessor, Jimmy Byrnes. But is Marshall big enough for the gigantic task ahead of him?

He has many of the earmarks of real greatness. People who talk about "the small-bore military mind" are not talking about Marshall. He knows enough about war to know that it issues from and is conditioned by economics, politics and philosophy. His interest is as broad as the farthest ramifications of his job; his mind is restless, cautiously but persistently building hypotheses capable of bearing the weight of action.

He understands leadership, not as "follow me, boys" histrionics, but as the art of permeating large groups of men with a sense of mutual effort carefully directed toward specific goals. A military associate watching him feel his way around the administrative intricacies of the State Department reported: "The General seems delighted with the high quality of the personnel as individuals. But I think he feels that the various units lack sufficient experience in intensive joint maneuvers. He wants to operate them."

He handles the English language superbly with a more or less unconscious flexibility, relapsing into a drawl when telling anecdotes, snapping back into crisp, rich expression to drive home a point.

He is humble. He has a good administrator's horror of drying up his subordinates' ideas by overbearing expression of his own views. He has a keen sense of hierarchy (i.e., what decisions should be made at what levels), but is dazzled by no rank, including his own. A classmate at Virginia Military Institute treasures a picture of Marshall as a cadet, ostentatiously displaying his corporal's chevrons. The classmate says Marshall "was prouder of his rank as corporal than of any honor he has won since."

At 66 Marshall still has the V.M.I. corporal's broad, convex, stubborn upper lip, the vigor, the resiliency, the ability to learn. His step is quick, almost pantherish, his shoulders unmilitarily stooped. Both his appearance and his talk have an academic flavor, as if he had followed one of his heroes, Robert E. Lee, into semi retirement as head of a college. Instead, George Marshall has to teach the world that the U.S. democracy can be relied upon for decent and decisive leadership.