The same town, different country
When he was in high public office in Washington, D.C., George C. Marshall – our boy “Flicker,” Uniontown’s own — used to hear from a childhood acquaintance by the name of Lida Niccols, who eventually married a Bavarian prince to become the Princess of Thurn and Taxis.
As an adult, Lida lived in places like Paris, France; she also spent time in a large, rambling house that used to adorn the Uniontown intersection of West Main Street and South Mount Vernon Avenue.
With lots of money to spend and an imperious nature to indulge, the former Miss Niccols would send Marshall recorded messages of “her views on political questions” of the day.
“I might say,” Marshall would later tell an interviewer, “that very frequently she didn’t agree with me.”
Marshall enjoyed hearing from his old friend, even if her messages were sometimes disagreeable. One imagines he was amused, rather than offended by Lida’s phonographic diatribes.
Marshall served his country in the cabinet of President Harry Truman as secretary of state and later at the Pentagon. He was secretary of defense for little more than a year at the start of the 1950s.
That’s the same job held today by another Uniontown native, by name, Mark Esper. A graduate of Laurel Highlands High School, Esper is currently the acting secretary. He will be upgraded to full secretary, if his nomination by President Trump is confirmed by the Senate.
A world of difference separates cabinet members Marshall and Esper, the least of which is that Esper has no hometown Lida Niccols to contend with. Or at least none that we know of.
As for other differences, these may be the most pertinent:
One. By the time he stepped into the cabinet, Marshall was world famous. As Army chief of staff, he was widely viewed as the architect of Allied victory in World War II. At the very least, he organized the victory. Privately, Truman called Marshall “the great one of the age.” The first of the Army’s five-star generals, his prestige was unparalleled.
Two. If his prestige was unparalleled, so was Marshall’s experience and background. Starting in September 1939, when he became head of the Army, Marshall had grappled for six full years at the highest levels with the problems of war and peace. He was an intimate of both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
Marshall was not cowed by either man. At a pre-war huddle with the president, as FDR blabbered on about the sufficiency of airpower to defeat America’s mortal enemies, everyone kept quiet except Marshall, who dared to disagree, not by subterfuge, but directly to the president.
Marshall would later tell an insistent Churchill (he was hardly anything but) that not one American life would ever be sacrificed for the “god-dam” Mediterranean island the British prime minister was then wanting to wrest from the Germans.
Three. Marshall took his position at the State Department at a time when U.S. power and influence were unsurpassed. The question was: how was that power and influence to be used? The dawn of the American Half-Century posed great challenges, and it was Marshall’s good fortune (as it was ours to have him) to be there as the elevators doors closed and America zoomed to the very top floor: no nation in all of history wielded the sort of power the United States did in the wake of the Second World War.
And what did Marshall do with the opportunities accorded America “at the summit of the world” (a Churchill turn of phrase)?
Along with colleagues in the Truman administration, including the president himself, he fashioned the principal tool for Europe’s economic rebirth – the Marshall Plan – for which he received the 1952 Nobel Prize for Peace.
The policy of Soviet containment emerged from the State Department during those years. Within the department itself, Marshall created the bureaucratic structure that permitted foreign policy pros like George Kennan to ponder the long term direction of American foreign policy.
One result: NATO, the North Atlantic military shield that stands watch even today.
In background and experience, the contrast between Marshall and Esper could not be greater.
Moreover, Esper takes office just as America’s influence and power have begun to wan under Trump, who is the opposite of Marshall’s chief Truman in nearly every respect.
Truman built NATO, Trump seems intent on weakening it. Truman opposed dictators, Trump cozies up to them. Truman acted in the long term interests of the United States. Trump acts impulsively and short term.
Marshall did not suffer fools or indulge actions that he thought were contrary to the best interests of the United States.
The defense chief might very well place a reminder on his Pentagon desk, asking “WWMD — What Would Marshall Do?”.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.