I did not see Julius Caesar's return to Rome, but I am sure that in comparison it looked like a deuce of spades. - William D. Leahy

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. We were the first to have this weapon in our possession, and the first to use it. There is a practical reality that potential enemies will have it in the future and that atomic bombs will sometime be used against us. That is why, as a professional military man with a half-century of service to his government, I come to the end of my war story with an apprehension about the future. These new concepts of "total war" are basically distasteful to the soldier and sailor of my generation. Employment of the atomic bomb in war will take us back in cruelty toward non-combatants to the days of Genghis Khan. It will be a war of pillage and rape of a society, done impersonally by one state against another, whereas in the Dark Ages it was a result of individual greed and terrorism. Thee new and terrible instruments of uncivilized warfare represent a modern type of barbarism not worthy of Christian man. One of the professors associated with the Manhattan Project told me that he had hoped the bomb wouldn't work. I wish that he had been right.

[MacArthur's "Old Soldiers Never Die" speech was of] such a superlative quality of excellence... that there is no other individual... capable of preparing and delivering a comparable address... The public enthusiasm for General MacArthur in San Francisco and in Washington was a triumph beyond anything that I have ever seen anywhere for anybody, which seems strange in view of his recent summary detachment by President Truman. If the general's popularity persists for a considerable time, it should actively effect a change in the country's domestic political policy, and it might have a radical effect on the complexion of domestic political development. From a purely military point of view it appears that General MacArthur's attitude will be fully accepted by all qualified military authorities.

Throughout the war, the four of us- Marshall, King, Arnold, and myself- worked in the closest possible harmony. In the postwar period, General Marshall and I disagreed sharply on some aspects of our foreign political policy. However, as a soldier, he was in my opinion one of the best, and his drive, courage, and imagination transformed America's citizen army into the most magnificent fighting force ever assembled. In number of men and logistical requirements, his army operations were by far the largest. This meant that more time of the Joint Chiefs were spent on his problems than on any others- and he invariably presented them with skill and clarity. King had an equally difficult task. His fleets had to hold Japan at bay while convoying millions of tons of supplies for the second front. He was an exceptionally able sea commander. He was also explosive and there were times when it was just as well that the deliberations of the Joint Chiefs were a well-kept secret. The President had a high opinion of King's ability but he was a very undiplomatic person, especially when the Admiral's low boiling point would be reached in some altercation with the British. King would have preferred to put more power into the Asiatic war earlier. He supported loyally the general strategy of beating Germany first, but this often required concessions of ships which he did not like to make. He could not spare much, since, until the last months of the war, he was working with a deficit of ships. America was fighting a two-ocean war for the first time in its history.