Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

General Douglas MacArthur's Farewell Speech: the long gray line has never failed us.
National Center for Public Policy Research - A Conservative Think Tank ^ | May 12, 1962 | General Douglas MacArthur

Posted on 01/31/2004 5:22:33 AM PST by risk

General Douglas MacArthur's Farewell Speech

Given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point

May 12, 1962

General Westmoreland, General Groves, 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, 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 for 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 meaning 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 want 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.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; 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 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 imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, 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 man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields 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 twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, 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 mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-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 they saw the way and the light.

And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic 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.

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 marked the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind - the chapter of the space age. 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 greater, 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; of purifying 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 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 purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; 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 war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators 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 firm 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 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 tints. 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 then, 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 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.

Historical Documents National Center Home Page


TOPICS: Australia/New Zealand; Canada; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government; Israel; Japan; Philosophy; US: Virginia; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: douglasmacarthur; dutyhonorcountry; freedom; macarthur; price; speech; thingrayline; transcript
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 last
To: risk
[What a price we pay for civilian control over the military. But in a democracy, there is no other alternative.]

You are correct, there is no other way. but this nation pays a dear price for the fools that it elects to the position of CIC. Well at least Bush for all his faults is a good CIC.

I very much dislike this idea that MacAuthor should be judged solely by his mistakes by not giving him credit for his achievements. I am going to go to my library and look up what Winston Churhhill had to say about MacAuthor. It was quite an accolade (sp) as I recall.

41 posted on 01/31/2004 3:35:56 PM PST by jpsb (Nominated 1994 "Worst writer on the net")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: risk; SAMWolf
Great speech, thanks for the ping risk.

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.

The FReeper Foxhole Profiles General Douglas MacArthur - June 14th, 2003



*******

Dugout Doug MacArthur lies ashakin' on the Rock Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan And his troops go starving on.

Dugout Doug, come out from hiding Dugout Doug, come out from hiding Send to Franklin the glad tidings That his troops go starving on! (Manchester, pp. 237-38)

And President Truman "privately called the General 'a common coward' for leaving Corregidor in 1942" (Manchester, p. 672).

But nothing said about Douglas MacArthur could possibly be further from the truth. During the First World War he won the Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Cross, and Seven Silver Stars. Perret reports the following meeting of Brigadier General MacArthur and Colonel George S. Patton, Jr. in France on 12 September 1918: "'I walked right along the line of one brigade,' Patton wrote to his wife some hours later: 'They were all in shell holes except the general, Douglas MacArthur, who was standing on a little hill. . . . I joined him and the creeping barrage came along toward us. . . . I think each one wanted to leave but each hated to say so, so we let it come over us.' When a shell exploded nearby, throwing dirt on them, Patton remained erect but flinched. 'Don't worry, Colonel,' said MacArthur wryly. 'You never hear the one that gets you.' MacArthur's combat performance this day brought him his fifth Silver Star and Patton's enduring respect. He told his family MacArthur was 'the bravest man I ever met'" (p. 102).

As far as "Dugout Doug" is concerned, it is true that the General visited his troops on Bataan only once during his three-and-one-half months on Corregidor. But the reason is clearly that when he did so that one time, he told them help was on the way, because he had been told by Washington and believed that help was on the way. He could not bear to tell them later that it wasn't true. And he left Corregidor (with his wife and son) only because President Roosevelt ordered him to do so.
42 posted on 01/31/2004 3:40:16 PM PST by snippy_about_it (Fall in --> The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: jpsb; Travis McGee
Nothing speaks more strongly of MacArthur's character than his willingness to resign on demand. Other generals in his position in history could have led a successful junta. After all, President Truman was demanding something much less than victory for the first time in our history.

If MacArthur had told his men that President Truman threatened the Republic's security, I doubt if many of them would have left his side.

But MacArthur had the courage of his convictions. He stepped down to prove that he had always been fighting for democracy. He alludes to the hissing, faithless, and spineless decades ahead in this speech, and yet he holds his head high. He has faith in the American spirit, in human strength. Free men, no matter how few they may be, will always triumph over the weaker, unprincipled ones.

We have more of those days when patriots must weigh their commitments to democracy and security ahead.

43 posted on 01/31/2004 3:43:20 PM PST by risk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: snippy_about_it
bttt
44 posted on 01/31/2004 3:47:35 PM PST by risk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: risk
Thank you !
45 posted on 01/31/2004 4:41:55 PM PST by Eric in the Ozarks
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: risk
Thanks Risk.
46 posted on 01/31/2004 5:38:29 PM PST by SAMWolf (We secretly replaced the dilithium crystals with Folgers crystals...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jpsb
"Seems to me, your entire argument is based on his leaving Bataan." Strawman fallacy.
47 posted on 02/01/2004 8:12:12 AM PST by RunningJoke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: jpsb
"That evening Hoover sent duplicate orders via two officers to MacArthur forbidding him to cross the Anacostia to clear the Bonus Army Marchers' camp, but MacArthur flatly ignored the President's orders, saying that he was 'too busy' and could not be 'bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders'."

The man twice ignored direct orders and led an army against WWI veterans which resulted in the deaths of two infants by tear gas. If this happened today, he would have been imprisoned. I wonder JPSB, according to your logic if he should have won the MOH for this, like his father.

You-all MacArthur supporters are either ignorant or under the sway of hero worship. This action by MacArthur has a close parallel with the Chinese army in Tiananmen Square. The difference here is that they were under direct orders and killed more.

I hope, I never see the day, when the government treats Veterans like this. Simply, disgusting.
48 posted on 02/01/2004 8:33:38 AM PST by RunningJoke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: risk
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." -- General Douglas MacArthur
49 posted on 02/01/2004 8:41:42 AM PST by hosepipe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: RunningJoke
yea, that is a stain on his record, but to be honest, the events of the day (re: orders) are still cloudy and hotly debated. Personally I think the General ignored the orders to halt his operation and Hoover covered his butt. Hoover, by the way, never stated that he ordered the operation stopped. So, there is good reason to believe Mac Author was in fact obeying his orders.

His military service spans what 50+ years? Most of that as a general officer, WW1, WW2, Korea. Who can go 50 years at a top leadership position in a life and death profession without making a mistake. Don't judge Mac Author by his mistakes, judge him by his entire career. He is almost unique in history, most great commanders shine brightly for a brief period of time and then fade. Mac Author achieved greatness thru out his entire career.

50 posted on 02/01/2004 9:01:58 AM PST by jpsb (Nominated 1994 "Worst writer on the net")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: RunningJoke
Hero???? The only heros are the ones that paid the full price. Anything other than that is open to question. There always has to be a general, MacArthur happened to be in charge.
51 posted on 02/01/2004 9:08:31 AM PST by cynicom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: cynicom
Okay?????
52 posted on 02/01/2004 9:47:37 AM PST by RunningJoke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: RunningJoke
As well versed as you appear to be about MacArthur, did you know he and FDR were related??? Also FDR and others did not want him in presidential politics. Also, Gen. Marshall and the others shared your disdain for MacArthur so much that when the 5th stars were handed out, they were petty enough to make his promotion after theirs, Ike and the rest, even tho MacArthur was the senior officer in the military. To his credit MacArthur said nothing.

I would like to view the wartime records of Ike, Marshall and most of the other "heros". Most have none.

53 posted on 02/01/2004 10:08:40 AM PST by cynicom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson