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, 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 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.
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The text of this speech is reproduced from Department of Defense
Pamphlet GEN-1A, US Government Printing Office, 1964.