AmericanRhetoric.com

Douglas MacArthur: Thayer Award Address

delivered
12
May
1962,
West
Point,
NY

AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED:
Text
version below
transcribed
directly
from
audio

General
Westmoreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!

As
I was leaving the hotel
this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for,
General?" And when
I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever
been there before?"

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 the
code of conduct and chivalry of those
who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this
medallion. For all eyes 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 points: 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. 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.

Transcription by
Michael
E. Eidenmuller. Property
of AmericanRhetoric.com. . Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
Page
1

AmericanRhetoric.com

They give you a temper of the 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 the 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
manatarms.
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 under 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. In
20
campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I
have witnessed that enduring fortitude,
that patriotic selfabnegation,
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 ankledeep
through the mire of shellshocked
roads,
to form grimly for the attack, bluelipped,
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. their resolute and
determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and
decisive victory always
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.

Transcription by
Michael
E. Eidenmuller. Property
of AmericanRhetoric.com. . Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
Page
2

AmericanRhetoric.com

The code which
those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral
laws and will
stand the
test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements
are 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 brute instinct
can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain
him.

However horrible 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 mark the 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 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 hundreds of years. of controlling the
weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine. of space ships 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
time.

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. 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 warguardian,
as its lifeguard from
the raging tides of international
conflict, as its gladiator in
the arena of battle.

Transcription by
Michael
E. Eidenmuller. Property
of AmericanRhetoric.com. . Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
Page
3

AmericanRhetoric.com

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 tenfold
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.

This does not
mean that you are war mongers.

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 ears, 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 reechoes:
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.

Transcription by
Michael
E. Eidenmuller. Property
of AmericanRhetoric.com. . Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
Page
4