ce, aroused consternation in Washington. More than that, the order was not in accordance with the instructions issued him on 29 June, warning him to stay well clear of the USSR and Manchurian borders in conducting his air operations. When three days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggested that MacArthur's mission in Korea might have to be changed in view of Chinese intervention, he hotly proclaimed his disagreement  and his mission was not changed. The 11th-hour suggestion by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prompted by the conviction of other nations participating in the Korean fighting that MacArthur should check his attack along a line short of the Yalu, was likewise roundly condemned by General MacArthur.  Yet at no time in this period did General MacArthur argue his case publicly, although he did deny that he had received any suggestion from "any authoritative source" that he should stop at any line short of the international boundary. 
With the intervention by Chinese Communist armies, however, General MacArthur's attitude toward public disclosures changed abruptly. Smarting from the defeat his forces had suffered, MacArthur spoke out sharply in his own defense, and in published statements in early December charged that the limitations upon his operations were an enormous handicap "without precedent in military history," and intimated that selfish interests in Europe were causing support to be withheld from his forces. 
These statements were widely assessed as a criticism of the United Nations policy of limited war in Korea and as an oblique criticism of the Truman administration in its conduct of the war. They were probably not so intended. General MacArthur pointed out quite rightly that at no time had he asked for authority to retaliate beyond the inviolate northern boundary of Korea. His statements, issued at a time when the administration was trying earnestly to reassure uneasy allies, were nonetheless of great concern to President Truman and his advisers. British fears that MacArthur might involve the west in a large-scale war with Communist China made his pronouncements especially regrettable. Too, his insistence on blaming operational restrictions for the situation in Korea was taken in Washington as a reflection on the judgment of the man who had decided to impose those restrictions. This inference was unfortunate, even if not intended as such, for the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that MacArthur was partly responsible for his own predicament. They had been persuaded to approve his plans for the No-
 Rad, C 68572, CINCFE to DA for JCS, 9 Nov. 50.
 Rad, C 69808, MacArthur to DA for JCS, 25 Nov. 50.
 (1) Statement, Gen. MacArthur (in reply to question from Arthur Krock), New York Times, December 1, 1950. (2) MacArthur Hearings, p. 3496.
 (1) Statements, Gen. MacArthur, 2 Dec. 50, in U.S. News and World Report, December 8, 195O, pp. 16-22, and in the New York Times, December 2, 1950. (2) MacArthur Hearings, pp. 3532-34.
vember advance by his great confidence that the Chinese either would not, or could not, intervene effectively. 
President Truman found MacArthur's statements at this time particularly objectionable. He was irked by MacArthur's publicizing the fact that because Washington had not let him do things his own way his 24 November attack had been defeated and the Chinese had intervened. President Truman charged that he should have relieved MacArthur at that point. He had not done so because he did not wish it to appear that he was being relieved because the offensive had failed. Truman had never gone back on people when luck was against them and he did not intend to do so in this case. 
Commenting later, President Truman stated that there was no excuse for the way in which MacArthur began to publicize his views following the failure of his offensive. Within four days, in four different ways, according to President Truman, MacArthur blamed his troubles publicly on Washington's order to limit the hostilities in Korea. He spoke of extraordinary inhibitions without precedent in military history and made it 