EveningStar
05-23-2001, 08:12 PM
http://www.dmi.usma.edu/milresources/voices/duty_honor_country.htm
General MacArthur's Thayer Award Speech -- Duty, Honor, Country (1962)
The address by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to the cadets of the
U.S. Military Academy in accepting the Sylvanus Thayer Award on 12 May 1962
is a memorable tribute to the ideals that inspired that great American
soldier. For as long as other Americans serve their country as
courageously and honorably as he did, General MacArthur's words will live on.
General MacArthur's service to his country spanned the years from 1903,
when he was graduated from the Military Academy, to 5 April 1964, when he
died in Washington, D.C., at the age of 84. He was recognized early in his
career as a brilliant officer and was advanced to brigadier general in
1918. Twelve years later he was named Chief of Staff of the Army, and in
1937 he retired. Recalled to active duty during World War II, he was
commander of the Southwest Pacific Area during the greater part of the
war. His wartime triumphs were followed by service as supreme commander of
the Allied occupation forces in Japan. When the Korean conflict erupted,
he also commanded the United Nations forces in Korea. He completed his
active military service in 1951.
Before being laid to rest in Norfolk, Va., General MacArthur's body lay in
state in New York City and in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, while a
grateful Nation paid its tribute in sorrow.
Duty, Honor, Country
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this
[Thayer Award]. Coming from a profession I have served so long and a
people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot
express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality,
but to symbolize a great moral code--a code of conduct and chivalry of
those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. For all
hours and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American
soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal
arouses a sense of pride, and yet of humility, which will be with me always.
Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what
you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying
point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when
there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes
forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of
imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant
phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every
troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different
character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and
ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic
character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the
Nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak,
and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.
What the Words Teach
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and
gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the
path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and
challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on
those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to
have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet
never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the
past; to be serious, yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest
so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind
of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
They give you a temperate will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of
the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental
predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over
love of ease.
They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what
next, and joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an
officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they
reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American
man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many
years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him
now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest
military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.
His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his
youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can
give. He needs no eulogy from me; or from any other man. He has written
his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.
But when I think of his patience in adversity of his courage under fire and
of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I
cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the
greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the
instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and
freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his
achievements.
Witness to the Fortitude
In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand camp fires, I
have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and
that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of
his people.
From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of
courage. As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye
I could see those staggering columns of the first World War, bending under
soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn,
slogging ankle deep through the mire of shell-pocked roads to form grimly
for the attack, bule-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the
wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many to the
judgment seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their
death. They died, unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their
hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.
Always for them: Duty, honor, country. Always their blood, and sweat, and
tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth. And 20 years
after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes,
the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those
boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating
storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the
bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished, the
deadly pestilence of tropical disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.
Swift and Sure Attack
Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their
indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory - always through
the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt,
ghastly men, reverently following your password of duty, honor, country.
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral law and
will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the
things that are right and its restraints are from the things that are
wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the
greatest act of religious training--sacrifice. In battle, and in the face
of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker
gave when He created man in His own image. No physical courage and no
greater strength can take the place of the divine help which alone can
sustain him. However hard the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is
called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest
development of mankind.
You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space
of the satellite, spheres, and missiles marks a beginning of another epoch
in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the
scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more
billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more
abrupt or staggering evolution.
We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable
distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching
out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of
harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of
creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our
old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean
floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to
expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a
more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of
spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to
the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations;
of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of
some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life
the most exciting of all times.
And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains
fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in
your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All
other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs,
great or small, will find others for their accomplishment; but you are the
ones who are trained to fight.
The Profession of Arms
Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that
in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation
will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be
duty, honor, country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international,
which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the
Nation's war guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of
international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a
century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed
traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of
government: Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing
indulged in too long, by Federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power
groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown
too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by
extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as
thorough and complete as they should be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation
or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in
the night: Duty, honor, country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national
system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the
Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.
The long, gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million
ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from
their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, honor, country.
Prays for Peace
This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier
above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the
deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous
words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen
the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old
have vanished--tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams
of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by
tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly,
but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing
reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the
strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my
memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and
re-echoes: Duty, honor, country.
Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when
I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the corps, and the
corps, and the corps.
I bid you farewell.
The text of this speech is reproduced from Department of Defense Pamphlet
GEN-1A, US Government Printing Office, 1964.
General MacArthur's Thayer Award Speech -- Duty, Honor, Country (1962)
The address by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to the cadets of the
U.S. Military Academy in accepting the Sylvanus Thayer Award on 12 May 1962
is a memorable tribute to the ideals that inspired that great American
soldier. For as long as other Americans serve their country as
courageously and honorably as he did, General MacArthur's words will live on.
General MacArthur's service to his country spanned the years from 1903,
when he was graduated from the Military Academy, to 5 April 1964, when he
died in Washington, D.C., at the age of 84. He was recognized early in his
career as a brilliant officer and was advanced to brigadier general in
1918. Twelve years later he was named Chief of Staff of the Army, and in
1937 he retired. Recalled to active duty during World War II, he was
commander of the Southwest Pacific Area during the greater part of the
war. His wartime triumphs were followed by service as supreme commander of
the Allied occupation forces in Japan. When the Korean conflict erupted,
he also commanded the United Nations forces in Korea. He completed his
active military service in 1951.
Before being laid to rest in Norfolk, Va., General MacArthur's body lay in
state in New York City and in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, while a
grateful Nation paid its tribute in sorrow.
Duty, Honor, Country
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this
[Thayer Award]. Coming from a profession I have served so long and a
people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot
express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality,
but to symbolize a great moral code--a code of conduct and chivalry of
those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. For all
hours and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American
soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal
arouses a sense of pride, and yet of humility, which will be with me always.
Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what
you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying
point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when
there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes
forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of
imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant
phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every
troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different
character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and
ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic
character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the
Nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak,
and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.
What the Words Teach
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and
gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the
path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and
challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on
those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to
have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet
never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the
past; to be serious, yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest
so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind
of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
They give you a temperate will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of
the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental
predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over
love of ease.
They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what
next, and joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an
officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they
reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American
man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many
years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him
now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest
military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.
His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his
youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can
give. He needs no eulogy from me; or from any other man. He has written
his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.
But when I think of his patience in adversity of his courage under fire and
of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I
cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the
greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the
instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and
freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his
achievements.
Witness to the Fortitude
In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand camp fires, I
have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and
that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of
his people.
From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of
courage. As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye
I could see those staggering columns of the first World War, bending under
soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn,
slogging ankle deep through the mire of shell-pocked roads to form grimly
for the attack, bule-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the
wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many to the
judgment seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their
death. They died, unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their
hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.
Always for them: Duty, honor, country. Always their blood, and sweat, and
tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth. And 20 years
after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes,
the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those
boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating
storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the
bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished, the
deadly pestilence of tropical disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.
Swift and Sure Attack
Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their
indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory - always through
the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt,
ghastly men, reverently following your password of duty, honor, country.
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral law and
will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the
things that are right and its restraints are from the things that are
wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the
greatest act of religious training--sacrifice. In battle, and in the face
of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker
gave when He created man in His own image. No physical courage and no
greater strength can take the place of the divine help which alone can
sustain him. However hard the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is
called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest
development of mankind.
You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space
of the satellite, spheres, and missiles marks a beginning of another epoch
in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the
scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more
billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more
abrupt or staggering evolution.
We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable
distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching
out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of
harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of
creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our
old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean
floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to
expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a
more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of
spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to
the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations;
of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of
some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life
the most exciting of all times.
And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains
fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in
your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All
other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs,
great or small, will find others for their accomplishment; but you are the
ones who are trained to fight.
The Profession of Arms
Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that
in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation
will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be
duty, honor, country.
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international,
which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the
Nation's war guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of
international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a
century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed
traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of
government: Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing
indulged in too long, by Federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power
groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown
too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by
extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as
thorough and complete as they should be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation
or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in
the night: Duty, honor, country.
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national
system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the
Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.
The long, gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million
ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from
their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, honor, country.
Prays for Peace
This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier
above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the
deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous
words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen
the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old
have vanished--tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams
of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by
tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly,
but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing
reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the
strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my
memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and
re-echoes: Duty, honor, country.
Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when
I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the corps, and the
corps, and the corps.
I bid you farewell.
The text of this speech is reproduced from Department of Defense Pamphlet
GEN-1A, US Government Printing Office, 1964.