A parallel action of this nature in which Marshall had a direct hand was the midnight dismissal of General MacArthur, who learned of the order when an aide heard it on a radio news broadcast and relayed it to Mrs. MacArthur. Again, with reference to Marshall’s so-called ignorance of the China policy situation, Jonathan Daniels, in his authorized biography of Truman, quotes Admiral William D. Leahy as saying: “I was present when Marshall was going to China. He said he was going to tell Chiang that he had to get along with the Communists, or get no help from us.” Before the removal, by Truman, of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur from all of his commands in the Far East—one of the greatest acts of perfidy to go down in American history—few people realized that Marshall was not a West Pointer. This, of course, is in no way to be held against Marshall, but, during World War I, as General Pershing’s aide-de-camp, when Pershing was Chief of Staff, a promotion of Marshall to a Generalship was requested of MacArthur by Pershing. MacArthur was willing enough, provided his military record merited it. From Walter Trohan’s documented personal files comes information that Marshall’s record lacked sufficient time served with troops. “MacArthur proposed to remedy this,” says Trohan, “by giving him command of the Eighth Regiment at Fort Screven, Ga., one of the finest regiments in the Army.” Marshall was moved up from lieutenant-colonel to colonel, but his way to a general’s stars appeared to be blocked forever when the Inspector General reported that under one year of Marshall’s command the Eighth Regiment had dropped from “one of the best to one of the worst.” It was mandatory, therefore, that MacArthur decline the promotion. Is it any wonder, today, that Truman’s action in removing MacArthur from the military scene should be most pleasing to the Secretary of Defense? Of course, this is not the whole story, for Pershing was a persevering soldier and had no intention of giving up his determination to see Marshall become a general. In 1936, he bypassed the Army entirely, and went directly to the White House where he succeeded in persuading President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to “appoint” Marshall a general. Later, Marshall had proved himself so “acceptable” to Roosevelt that, over the heads of “twenty senior major generals and fourteen senior brigadier generals, Roosevelt made him Chief of Staff.”