President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur purposes is [just temporarily] allied with Soviet Russia." If MacArthur's thesis was accepted, then it followed that expanding the war with China would not provoke a conflict with the Soviet Union. The Joint Chiefs emphatically disagreed, although this contradicted their position that it was Europe and not Asia that was the prime concern of the Soviet Union. Even among Republicans, there was little support for MacArthur's position. On 5 April, Martin read the text of a letter he had received from MacArthur, dated 20 March, criticizing the Truman administration's priorities on the floor of the House. In it, MacArthur had
President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur support for the "Europe first" strategy was apt to cause annoyance in Washington when the chain of command was bypassed by MacArthur through the Prime Minister of Australia, John Curtin. General Marshall expressed this conflict in his testimony before the Senate: In "The Federalist Papers", Alexander Hamilton argued that: But on 26 June 1950, Truman sent the armed forces into Korea without any such Congressional mandate. The subsequent United Nations Security Council resolution authorized military assistance to South Korea, but the United Nations Participation Act laid down that: The Congressional inquiry triggered by MacArthur's relief ruled that Truman's actions violated