General Douglas MacArthur gave one of the most brilliant and memorable speeches I’ve ever read.
His valedictory speech at West Point was about duty, honor, country:
“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.
These three words are the backbone of our US Military, and much, much more than mere words to the men who learned their true meaning during combat.
The speech has many remarkable insights that are especially relevant (still) today. Such as:
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.
This is a lesson that today’s Left has forgotten — if they have ever known or understood it at all. Today’s anti-military and anti-war Left roots for our defeat and surrender to our Islamic enemies, not truly understanding what comes with that defeat.
Another lesson that seems lost on the Left today:
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.”
General MacArthur was one of our nation’s greatest citizens and heroes, died just two short years after this final speech:
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.
