Pericles Extols the Glory That Is Greece at the Funeral of Its Fallen Sons
"Those… have the greatest souls, who, most acutely sensible of the miseries of war and the sweets of peace, are not hence in the least deterred from facing danger."
Pericles was a cautious general, a stern imperialist, an ardent patron of the arts, and a radical politician. Although he was born an aristocrat around the turn of the fifth century B.C., his "graces of persuasion," in Cicero's phrase, did much to curb the power of the aristocracy and extend democracy to the citizens of the city-state of Athens. For example, he pressed successfully for the payment of fees to jurors and, later, to public officials—which made it possible for a poor man to hold public office.
Fewer than forty thousand males made up the polity of Athens, and all were members of the Assembly. It chose by lot the Council of Five Hundred, fifty from each tribe, to manage its affairs, and elected juries of a hundred to a thousand men to decide cases. This was before lawyers came on the scene; each man was his own pleader, and a citizen required a mastery of the art of oratory to gain or defeat justice. Pericles was reputed to be one of the most eloquent at these meetings of the democratic legislature, exceeded only by fourth-century Greek orator Demosthenes.
"Reputed" is a necessary qualifier because we have no text of these Greek speeches. The reputation of Pericles rests on the writings of historian Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War. "With reference to the speeches in this history," the chronicler wrote candidly, "…some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make my speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to what they really said."
Fortunately, Thucydides was a friend of Pericles and was probably present at the delivery of this oration. Here, then, are portions of a translation of one historian's recollection of what the orator Pericles said at the funeral of soldiers killed in the first year of the war. Athens was soon to be destroyed; the purpose of this speech (like that of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address over two millennia later) was to use the occasion of a eulogy for the fallen to examine the cause for which they fell.
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MANY OF THOSE who have spoken before me on these occasions have commended the author of that law which we now are obeying for having instituted an oration to the honor of those who sacrifice their lives in fighting for their country. For my part, I think it sufficient for men who have proved their virtue in action, by action to be honored for it—by such as you see the public gratitude now performing about this funeral; and that the virtues of many ought not to be endangered by the management of any one person when their credit must precariously depend on his oration, which may be good and may be bad….
We are happy in a form of government which cannot envy the laws of our neighbors—for it hath served as a model to others, but is original at Athens. And this our form, as committed not to the few but to the whole body of the people, is called a democracy. How different soever in a private capacity, we all enjoy the same general equality our laws are fitted to preserve; and superior honors just as we excel. The public administration is not confined to a particular family but is attainable only by merit. Poverty is not a hindrance, since whoever is able to serve his country meets with no obstacle to preferment from his first obscurity. The offices of the state we go through without obstructions from one another, and live together in the mutual endearments of private life without suspicions, not angry with a neighbor for following the bent of his own humor, nor putting on that countenance of discontent which pains though it cannot punish—so that in private life we converse without diffidence or damage, while we dare not on any account offend against the public, through the reverence we bear to the magistrates and the laws, chiefly to those enacted for redress of the injured, and to those unwritten. a breach of which is thought a disgrace.
Our laws have further provided for the mind most frequent intermissions of care by the appointment of public recreations and sacrifices throughout the year, elegantly performed with a peculiar pomp, the daily delight of which is a charm that puts melancholy to flight. The grandeur of this our Athens causeth the produce of the whole earth to be imported here, by which we reap a familiar enjoyment, not more of the delicacies of our own growth than of those of other nations.
In the affairs of war we excel those of our enemies, who adhere to methods opposite to our own. For we lay open Athens to general resort, nor ever drive any stranger from us whom either improvement or curiosity hath brought amongst us, lest any enemy should hurt us by seeing what is never concealed. We place not so great a confidence in the preparatives and artifices of war as in the native warmth of our souls impelling us to action. In point of education the youth of some peoples are inured, by a course of laborious exercise, to support toil and exercise like men, but we, notwithstanding our easy and elegant way of life, face all the dangers of war as intrepidly as they….
In our manner of living we show an elegance tempered with frugality, and we cultivate philosophy without enervating the mind. We display our wealth in the season of beneficence, and not in the vanity of discourse. A confession of poverty is disgrace to no man; no effort to avoid it is disgrace indeed. There is visible in the same persons an attention to their own private concerns and those of the public; and in others engaged in the labors of life there is a competent skill in the affairs of government. For we are the only people who think him that does not meddle in state affairs not indolent but good for nothing. And yet we pass the soundest judgments and are quick at catching the right apprehensions of things, not thinking that words are prejudicial to actions, but rather the not being duly prepared by previous debate before we are obliged to proceed to execution. Herein consists our distinguishing excellence, that in the hour of action we show the greatest courage, and yet debate beforehand the expediency of our measures. The courage of others is the result of ignorance; deliberation makes them cowards. And those undoubtedly must be owned to have the greatest souls, who, most acutely sensible of the miseries of war and the sweets of peace, are not hence in the least deterred from facing danger.
In acts of beneficence, further, we differ from the many. We preserve friends not by receiving, but by conferring, obligations. For he who does a kindness hath the advantage over him who, by the law of gratitude, becomes a debtor to his benefactor. The person obliged is compelled to act the more insipid part, conscious that a return of kindness is merely a payment and not an obligation. And we alone are splendidly beneficent to others, not so much from interested motives as for the credit of pure liberality. I shall sum up what yet remains by only adding that our Athens in general is the school of Greece, and that every single Athenian amongst us is excellently formed, by his personal qualification, for all the various scenes of active life, acting with a most graceful demeanor and a most ready habit of dispatch.
That I have not on this occasion made use of a pomp of words, but the truth of facts, that height to which by such a conduct this state hath risen, is an undeniable proof. For we are now the only people of the world who are found by experience to be greater than in report….
In the just defense of such a state, these victims of their own valor, scorning the ruin threatened to it, have valiantly fought and bravely died. And every one of those who survive is ready, I am persuaded, to sacrifice life in such a cause. And for this reason have I enlarged so much on national points, to give the clearest proof that in the present war we have more at stake than men whose public advantages are not so valuable, and to illustrate, by actual evidence, how great a commendation is due to them who are now my subject, and the greatest part of which they have already received. For the encomiums with which I have celebrated the state have been earned for it by the bravery of these and of men like these. And such compliments might be thought too high and exaggerated if passed on any Greeks but them alone.
The fatal period to which these gallant souls are now reduced is the surest evidence of their merit—an evidence begun in their lives and completed in their deaths. For it is a debt of justice to pay superior honors to men who have devoted their lives in fighting for their country, though inferior to others in every virtue but that of valor. Their last service effaceth all former demerits—it extends to the public; their private demeanors reached only to a few. Yet not one of these was at all induced to shrink from danger, through fondness of those delights which the peaceful affluent life bestows—not one was the less lavish of his life, through that flattering hope attendance upon want, that poverty at length might be exchanged for affluence. One passion there was in their minds much stronger than these—the desire of vengeance on their enemies. Regarding this as the most honorable prize of dangers, they boldly rushed towards the mark to glut revenge and then to satisfy those secondary passions. The uncertain event they had already secured in hope; what their eyes showed plainly must be done they trusted their own valor to accomplish, thinking it more glorious to defend themselves and die in the attempt than to yield and live. From the reproach of cowardice, indeed, they fled, but presented their bodies to the shock of battle; when, insensible of fear, but triumphing in hope, in the doubtful charge they instantly dropped—and thus discharged the duty which brave men owed to their country.
As for you, who now survive them, it is your business to pray for a better fate, but to think it your duty also to preserve the same spirit and warmth of courage against your enemies; not judging of the expediency of this from a mere harangue—where any man indulging a flow of words may tell you what you yourselves know as well as he, how many advantages there are in fighting valiantly against your enemies—but, rather, making the daily-increasing grandeur of this community the object of your thoughts and growing quite enamored of it. And when it really appears great to your apprehensions, think again that this grandeur was acquired by brave and valiant men, by men who knew their duty, and in the moments of action were sensible of shame—who, whenever their attempts were unsuccessful, thought it no dishonor for their country to stand in need of anything their valor could do for it, and so made it the most glorious present. Bestowing thus their lives on the public, they have every one received a praise that will never decay, a sepulcher that will always be most illustrious—not that in which their bones lie moldering, but that in which their fame is preserved, to be on every occasion, when honor is the employ of either word or act, eternally remembered.
For the whole earth is the sepulcher of illustrious men; nor is it the inscription on the columns in their native land alone that shows their merit, but the memorial of them, better than all inscriptions in every foreign nation, reposited more durably in universal remembrance than on their own tombs. From this very moment, emulating these noble patterns, placing your happiness in liberty, and liberty in valor, be prepared to encounter all the dangers of war. For to be lavish of life is not so noble in those whom misfortunes have reduced to misery and despair, as in men who hazard the loss of a comfortable subsistence and the enjoyment of all the blessings this world affords by an unsuccessful enterprise. Adversity, after a series of ease and affluence, sinks deeper into the heart of a man of spirit than the stroke of death insensibly received in the vigor of life and public hope.
For this reason, the parents of those who are now gone, whoever of them may be attending here, I do not bewail—I shall rather comfort…. I know it in truth a difficult task to fix comfort in those breasts which will have frequent remembrances, in seeing the happiness of others, of what they once themselves enjoyed. And sorrow flows not from the absence of those good things we have never yet experienced but from the loss of those to which we have been accustomed…. But you, whose age is already far advanced, compute the greater share of happiness your longer time hath afforded for so much gain, persuaded in yourselves the remainder will be but short, and enlighten that space by the glory gained by these. It is greatness of soul alone that never grows old, nor is it wealth that delights in the latter stage of life, as some give out, so much as honor.
To you, the sons and brothers of the deceased, whatever number of you are here, a field of hardy contention is opened. For him who no longer is, everyone is ready to commend, so that to whatever height you push your deserts, you will scarce ever be thought to equal, but to be somewhat inferior to these. Envy will exert itself against a competitor while life remains; but when death stops the competition, affection will applaud without restraint.
If after this it be expected from me to say anything to you who are now reduced to a state of widowhood, about female virtue, I shall express it all in one short admonition: it is your greatest glory not to be deficient in the virtue peculiar to your sex, and to give men as little handle as possible to talk of your behavior, whether well or ill.
I have now discharged the province allotted me by the laws, and said what I thought most pertinent to this assembly. Our departed friends have by facts been already honored. Their children from this day till they arrive at manhood shall be educated at the public expense of the state which hath appointed so beneficial a meed for these and all future relics of the public contests. For wherever the greatest rewards are proposed for virtue, there the best of patriots are ever to be found. Now let everyone respectively indulge in becoming grief for his departed friends, and then retire.
Roman Empress Theodora Refuses to Flee
"The royal purple is the noblest shroud."
Byzantine or Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian, on January 18 of the year 532, was certain he was about to be overthrown by rebel leader Hypatius and killed. A fast galley waited at the palace's private harbor to take him and Empress Theodora to safety in Thrace. His timorous advisers persuaded him that the rebellion could not be stopped and that the way out for the imperial couple was flight. As the panicky leader made for the door, the indomitable empress rose from her throne and delivered a brief speech that kept her husband from taking flight and led to the slaughter of the rebels.
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MY LORDS, THE present occasion is too serious to allow me to follow the convention that a woman should not speak in a man's council. Those whose interests are threatened by extreme danger should think only of the wisest course of action, not of conventions.
In my opinion, flight is not the right course, even if it should bring us to safety. It is impossible for a person, having been born into this world, not to die; but for one who has reigned it is intolerable to be a fugitive. May I never be deprived of this purple robe, and may I never see the day when those who meet me do not call me empress.
If you wish to save yourself, my lord, there is no difficulty. We are rich; over there is the sea, and yonder are the ships. Yet reflect for a moment whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you would not gladly exchange such safety for death. As for me, I agree with the adage that the royal purple is the noblest shroud.
Founding Father Gouverneur Morris Defines National Greatness
"It is in the national spirit… I anticipate the day when to command respect in the remotest regions it will be sufficient to say, 'I am an American.'"
Gouverneur (that was his first name; he was a New York congressman, never a governor) Morris was among the most conservative of the nation's founders, at first opposing separation from England. Once the Revolution was under way, however, he responded to Lord North's appeal for reconciliation by making independence a prerequisite for peace. This strong stand, along with his advocacy of religious tolerance and the abolition of slavery, cost Morris political support in New York; rejected by the voters, he moved to Pennsylvania and aligned himself with financier Robert Morris (no kin) and a group of men around George Washington who later became Federalists—supporters, with Alexander Hamilton, of a central bank and strong central government, opposed by the Jeffersonians. He is the father of dollars and cents: his ideas on decimal coinage became the basis of U.S. currency.
Although the proceedings were secret, what we know of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 suggests that Gouverneur Morris had more to say than anybody else, speaking against slavery and for life tenure for the president. Chosen to be a member of the committee on style and management, he was primarily responsible for the literary form of the U.S. Constitution. However, "We, the people" was not his philosophy; his antidemocratic mind-set troubled the French radicals when he represented America in Paris, and they asked for his recall. By 1800, when he made this speech about greatness in a nation, he was serving in the U.S. Senate, a stanch Federalist standing against the incoming tide of Jeffersonian democracy.
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HAD IT BEEN permitted to consult my wishes on this day, I should have selected a theme more suited to my talents or rather have shrouded their weakness in the veil of silence. For I feel but too well that in venturing to discuss the subject of national greatness I must fall short of the ideas in your minds and disappoint your expectations. Instead of irradiating with the light of genius, I must take the more humble course of investigation and begin by inquiring what is national greatness.
Does it consist in numbers, wealth, or extent of territory? Certainly not. Swollen with the pride inspired by such circumstances, the Persians addressed their master as the Great King, but Darius felt in repeated discomfiture the superiority of a great nation led by Alexander. We see in our day a prince who may boast that the sun never sets on his domain, yet his authority superseded in his ports and insulted in his capital, it would seem as if his territory were extended around the globe only to display before all the world his ignominious condition. Such is the state of that proud monarchy which once menaced the liberties of Europe. But who trembles now at the name of Spain? There is none so abject. Nay, should there exist a government in which fear is the incurable disease, no paroxysm would be excited by the menace of Spain. To the wise a word is sufficient, and therefore it will be needless before this audience to prove that a nation small like Greece may rise to the heights of national greatness while littleness shall mark every public act of a numerous people. And equally needless must it be to express what you cannot but feel: that in proportion to the high esteem, respect, and admiration with which we view the splendor of Greece in the day of her glory is our profound contempt for those who presiding over a powerful people shall tamely submit to the multiplied repetition of indignities from all who through interest or for sport may plunder and insult them. These are feelings so natural that to disguise them would be vain, to suppress them impossible. I could indeed, were I to indulge a licentious imagination, suppose a number of men who without national spirit or sentiment shall presume to call themselves a nation—I can suppose a herd of piddling huckstering individuals base and insensible….
Let us pause. Perhaps there never was a society of men so completely void of virtue. But between them and the brave band at Thermopylae gradations are infinite.
Perhaps it may be asked if genius and excellence in the arts constitute national greatness. To this question the answer must be given with caution and not without some modification. The ages of Pericles, of Augustus, and of Louis XIV were indeed ages of splendor. They were unquestionably the evidence, but I must venture to believe they were the result, not the cause of national greatness. A nation truly great cannot but excel in arts as well as in arms. And as a great mind stamps with its own impression the most common arts, so national greatness will show itself alike in the councils of policy, in the works of genius, in monuments of magnificence and deeds of glory. All these are the fruits, but they are not the tree.
Here I anticipate the general and the generous question: Does it not consist in liberty? That liberty is a kind and fostering nurse of greatness will be cheerfully and cordially admitted, but as we have seen national greatness where there was no freedom, so we have seen free nations where baseness rather than greatness constituted the national character. The intrepidity of the Swiss troops is generally known and acknowledged. In a contest for freedom with the duke of Burgundy the nation was great and covered itself with glory, but, alas, how changed, how fallen when distributing stipendiary aid to hostile hosts. Their valor was arrayed against itself, and brothers fell by the swords of brothers. They became at length the proverbial examples of mercenary disposition. And then neither liberty no[r] discipline nor courage rescued Helvetian fame from the charge of baseness.
Thus, then, we have seen that a people may be numerous, powerful, wealthy, free, brave, and inured to war without being great, and by reflecting on the reason why a combination of those qualities and circumstances will not alone suffice. We are close to the true source and principle of national greatness.
It is in the national spirit. It is in that high, haughty, generous, and noble spirit which prizes glory more than wealth and holds honor dearer than life. It is that spirit, the inspiring soul of heroes, which raises men above the level of humanity. It is present with us when we read the story of ancient Rome. It [s] wells our bosoms at the view of her gigantic deeds and makes us feel that we must ever be irresistible while human nature shall remain unchanged. I have called it a high, haughty, generous, and noble spirit. It is high—elevated above all low and vulgar considerations. It is haughty—despising whatever is little and mean, whether in character, council, or conduct. It is generous—granting freely to the weak and to the indigent protection and support. It is noble—dreading shame and dishonor as the greatest evil, esteeming fame and glory beyond all things human.
When this spirit prevails, the government, whatever its form, will be wise and energetic because such government alone will be borne by such men. And such a government, seeking the true interest of those over whom they preside, will find it in the establishment of a national character becoming the spirit by which the nation is inspired. Foreign powers will then know that to withhold a due respect and deference is dangerous, that wrongs may be forgiven but that insults will be avenged. As a necessary result every member of the society bears with him everywhere full protection, and when he appears his firm and manly port mark him of a superior order in the race of man. The dignity of sentiment which he has inhaled with his native air gives to his manner an ease superior to the politeness of courts and a grace unrivaled by the majesty of kings.
These are blessings which march in the train of national greatness and come on the pinions of youthful hope. I anticipate the day when to command respect in the remotest regions it will be sufficient to say, "I am an American." Our flag shall then wave in glory over the ocean and our commerce feel no restraint but what our own government may impose. Happy, thrice happy day. Thank God, to reach this envied state we need only to will. Yes, my countrymen, our destiny depends on our will. But if we would stand high on the record of time, that will must be inflexible.
Daniel Webster Speaks at the Dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument
"Let our age be the age of improvement."
As a lawyer practicing before John Marshall's Supreme Court, Daniel Webster earned the sobriquet Expounder of the Constitution. From the Webster brief in McCulloch v. Maryland, Marshall selected "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy"; he edited the phrase to "the power to tax is the power to destroy" in his decision to deny states the right to tax the new federal bank. This ruling effectively established the supremacy of national over state power.
Webster was unafraid to use the same word twice in a single sentence: the double use of "power" in that famous apothegm is similar to the repetition of "age" in the key line of his seminal Bunker Hill Monument address.
On June 17, 1825, while a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, Webster spoke at the laying of the cornerstone of that monument, at Charlestown, near Boston. In four years, the ardent nationalist would be elected to the Senate, where his eloquence placed him in the senatorial firmament along with Henry Clay and John Calhoun; Webster's reply to Senator Hayne (see p. 283) made the case for union and against a state's claim to the power of nullifying national laws.
At Bunker Hill, where the British forces had won a Pyrrhic victory, Webster's theme was the meaning to the world of the American Revolution. In a message later taken up by Lincoln, the representative from Massachusetts held that the American experiment in popular government was crucial to the hopes for freedom around the world and that "the last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us." The tone of the speech is thoughtful and historical; the exhortation in the peroration, with its six sentences beginning with "let," is neither grandiloquent nor shrill. In saying at the start, "We see before us a probable train of great events," Webster set the stage for a speech in plain words that offered Americans one of their earliest glimpses of a worldview and an understanding of the new nation's global significance. It is curious that the rising nationalist should have made the most famous internationalist speech of his day.
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…WE ARE AMONG the sepulchers of our fathers. We are on ground distinguished by their valor, their constancy, and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not to fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor to draw into notice an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble purpose had never been conceived, if we ourselves had never been born, the seventeenth of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subsequent history would have poured its light, and the eminence where we stand, a point of attraction to the eyes of successive generations. But we are Americans. We live in what may be called the early age of this great continent; and we know that our posterity, through all time, are here to suffer and enjoy the allotments of humanity. We see before us a probable train of great events; we know that our own fortunes have been happily cast; and it is natural, therefore, that we should be moved by the contemplation of occurrences which have guided our destiny before many of us were born, and settled the condition in which we should pass that portion of our existence which God allows to men on earth….
The great event, in the history of the continent, which we are now met here to commemorate—that prodigy of modern times, at once the wonder and the blessing of the world—is the American Revolution. In a day of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, of high national honor, distinction, and power, we are brought together, in this place, by our love of country, by our admiration of exalted character, by our gratitude for signal services and patriotic devotion…
The great wheel of political revolution began to move in America. Here its rotation was guarded, regular, and safe. Transferred to the other continent, from unfortunate but natural causes, it received an irregular and violent impulse; it whirled along with a fearful celerity, till at length, like the chariot wheels in the races of antiquity, it took fire from the rapidity of its own motion and blazed onward, spreading conflagration and terror around….
When Louis XIV said, "I am the state," he expressed the essence of the doctrine of unlimited power. By the rules of that system, the people are disconnected from the state; they are its subjects; it is their lord. These ideas, founded in the love of power, and long supported by the excess and the abuse of it, are yielding in our age to other opinions; and the civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community….
We may hope that the growing influence of enlightened sentiments will promote the permanent peace of the world. Wars, to maintain family alliances, to uphold or to cast down dynasties, to regulate successions to thrones, which have occupied so much room in the history of modern times, if not less likely to happen at all, will be less likely to become general and involve many nations, as the great principle shall be more and more established, that the interest of the world is peace, and its first great statute, that every nation possesses the power of establishing a government for itself. But public opinion has attained also an influence over governments which do not admit the popular principle into their organization. A necessary respect for the judgment of the world operates, in some measure, as a control over the most unlimited forms of authority…. Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet, and when the sternest authority does not venture to encounter the scorching power of public reproach….
When the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought, the existence of South America was scarcely felt in the civilized world. The thirteen little colonies of North America habitually called themselves the "continent." Borne down by colonial subjugation, monopoly, and bigotry, these vast regions of the South were hardly visible above the horizon. But in our day there hath been, as it were, a new creation. The Southern Hemisphere emerges from the sea. Its lofty mountains begin to lift themselves into the light of heaven; its broad and fertile plains stretch out in beauty to the eye of civilized man, and at the mighty being of the voice of political liberty the waters of darkness retire.
And now let us indulge an honest exultation in the conviction of the benefit which the example of our country has produced and is likely to produce on human freedom and human happiness. And let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude and to feel in all its importance the part assigned to us in the great drama of human affairs. We are placed at the head of the system of representative and popular governments. Thus far our example shows that such governments are compatible, not only with respectability and power, but with repose, with peace, with security of personal rights, with good laws and a just administration.
We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are preferred, either as being thought better in themselves or as better suited to existing conditions, we leave the preference to be enjoyed. Our history hitherto proves, however, that the popular form is practicable and that, with wisdom and knowledge, men may govern themselves; and the duty incumbent on us is to preserve the consistency of this cheering example and take care that nothing may weaken its authority with the world. If in our case the representative system ultimately fail, popular governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it should be proclaimed that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.
These are incitements to duty; but they are not suggestions of doubt. Our history and our condition, all that is gone before us and all that surrounds us, authorize the belief that popular governments, though subject to occasional variations, perhaps not always for the better in form, may yet in their general character be as durable and permanent as other systems. We know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible. The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it—immovable as its mountains.
And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation and on us sink deep into our hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us who established our liberty and our government. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation; and there is opened to us also a noble pursuit to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us.
Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and a habitual feeling that these twenty-four states are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever.
Lecturer Frances Wright Speaks on Independence Day
"Patriotism, in the exclusive meaning, is surely not made for America."
Scottish-born Frances Wright was the first woman to gain fame giving public lectures in America, and more than once she was nearly mobbed for this audacity.
After her first visit to the United States, Frances Wright produced Views of Society and Manners in America, an 1821 book in favor of American life. She returned to America in 1824 and this time stayed for good—the good being social reform, including the founding of Nashoba, a colony for free blacks in Tennessee. Although that venture failed, she continued writing and lecturing to promote abolition as well as universal education and equal rights for women.
She lived for a time in New Harmony, Indiana, the cooperative colony founded by Robert Owen, the Welsh social reformer. At New Harmony, she delivered her Independence Day address on July 4, 1828. Her definitions of "patriotism" and America as "the favored scene of human improvement" emphasize the liberal views that permeated her lectures on marriage and religion as well as on social reform.
With parallel structure that begins with "It is for Americans," Frances Wright forcefully uses anaphora, the repetition of a phrase, in six consecutive sentences to tell Americans what "it is for them" to do to celebrate and extend their independence.
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…OUR HEARTS SHOULD expand on this day, which calls to memory the conquest achieved by knowledge over ignorance, willing cooperation over blind obedience, opinion over prejudice, new ways over old ways—when, fifty-two years ago, America declared her national independence, and associated it with her republic federation. Reasonable is it to rejoice on this day, and useful to reflect thereon; so that we rejoice for the real, and not any imaginary, good; and reflect on the positive advantages obtained, and on those which it is ours farther to acquire.
Dating, as we justly may, a new era in the history of man from the Fourth of July, 1776, it would be well—that is, it would be useful—if on each anniversary we examined the progress made by our species in just knowledge and just practice. Each Fourth of July would then stand as a tidemark in the flood of time by which to ascertain the advance of the human intellect, by which to note the rise and fall of each successive error, the discovery of each important truth, the gradual melioration in our public institutions, social arrangements, and, above all, in our moral feelings and mental views….
In continental Europe, of late years, the words "patriotism" and "patriot" have been used in a more enlarged sense than it is usual here to attribute to them, or than is attached to them in Great Britain. Since the political struggles of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, the word "patriotism" has been employed, throughout continental Europe, to express a love of the public good; a preference for the interests of the many to those of the few; a desire for the emancipation of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and civil: in short, "patriotism" there is used rather to express the interest felt in the human race in general than that felt for any country, or inhabitants of a country, in particular. And "patriot," in like manner, is employed to signify a lover of human liberty and human improvement rather than a mere lover of the country in which he lives, or the tribe to which he belongs.
Used in this sense, patriotism is a virtue, and a patriot a virtuous man. With such an interpretation, a patriot is a useful member of society, capable of enlarging all minds and bettering all hearts with which he comes in contact; a useful member of the human family, capable of establishing fundamental principles and of merging his own interests, those of his associates, and those of his nation in the interests of the human race. Laurels and statues are vain things, and mischievous as they are childish; but could we imagine them of use, on such a patriot alone could they be with any reason bestowed….
If such a patriotism as we have last considered should seem likely to obtain in any country, it should be certainly in this. In this which is truly the home of all nations and in the veins of whose citizens flows the blood of every people on the globe. Patriotism, in the exclusive meaning, is surely not made for America. Mischievous everywhere, it were here both mischievous and absurd. The very origin of the people is opposed to it. The institutions, in their principle, militate against it. The day we are celebrating protests against it.
It is for Americans, more especially, to nourish a nobler sentiment, one more consistent with their origin, and more conducive to their future improvement. It is for them more especially to know why they love their country; and to feel that they love it, not because it is their country, but because it is the palladium of human liberty—the favored scene of human improvement. It is for them, more especially, to examine their institutions; and to feel that they honor them because they are based on just principles. It is for them, more especially, to examine their institutions, because they have the means of improving them; to examine their laws, because at will they can alter them. It is for them to lay aside luxury whose wealth is in industry; idle parade whose strength is in knowledge; ambitious distinctions whose principle is equality. It is for them not to rest, satisfied with words, who can seize upon things; and to remember that equality means, not the mere equality of political rights, however valuable, but equality of instruction and equality in virtue; and that liberty means, not the mere voting at elections, but the free and fearless exercise of the mental faculties and that self-possession which springs out of well-reasoned opinions and consistent practice. It is for them to honor principles rather than men—to commemorate events rather than days; when they rejoice, to know for what they rejoice, and to rejoice only for what has brought and what brings peace and happiness to men.
The event we commemorate this day has procured much of both, and shall procure in the onward course of human improvement more than we can now conceive of. For this—for the good obtained and yet in store for our race—let us rejoice! But let us rejoice as men, not as children—as human beings rather than as Americans—as reasoning beings, not as ignorants. So shall we rejoice to good purpose and in good feeling; so shall we improve the victory once on this day achieved, until all mankind hold with us the Jubilee of Independence.
Lincoln Rededicates the Union at Gettysburg
"…A new birth of freedom…"
"I shall be glad," wrote orator Edward Everett to the president a day after the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, "if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." Lincoln replied, "In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one…."
The back-of-the-envelope legend is strictly a legend; this carefully composed speech was not written on the way to the event. Noah Brooks, Lincoln's favorite reporter, stated that some days before the November 19, 1863, dedication, he saw Lincoln in Washington and that the president told him his Gettysburg remarks were "written, 'but not finished.'"
In an early draft, according to historian J. G. Randall, "It is for us, the living, to stand here" was changed to "…to be dedicated here." After the speech was delivered, Lincoln made further revisions in the copy to be distributed to the Associated Press; it included "under God," which he had added on the podium; perhaps he recalled Treasury Secretary Chase's admonition to add a reference to the Deity to the Emancipation Proclamation, issued at the start of 1863.
The 266-word address opens with "Four score and seven," adding a note of biblical solemnity to the number 87. It concludes with a succession of parallel phrases that may have been inspired by abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker, who in 1850 wrote, "This [American] idea, demands… a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people…."
The speech can be read as a poem based on the metaphor of birth, death, and rebirth—with its subtle evocation of the resurrection of Christ—and focused on the theme of the nation's rededication to the principle of freedom.
Four images of birth are embedded in its opening sentence: the nation was "conceived in liberty"; "brought forth," or born, "by our fathers"; with all men "created equal." This birth is followed by images of death—"final resting place," "who gave their lives," "brave men, living and dead," "these honored dead"—and by verbs of religious purification—"consecrate… hallow."
After the nation's symbolic birth and death comes resurrection: out of the scene of death, "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom" and thus "not perish," but be immortal.
The central word, as Lincoln's emendation of his early draft illustrates, is "dedicate"—used five times in the short speech, its meaning rooted in consecration, making the secular sacred by pledging it to God. The first two dedications are to the Declaration of Independence's ideal—"that all men are created equal." The third dedication centers on the purpose of the occasion at Gettysburg's bloody battleground, "to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place." The fourth and fifth are rededications to the ideals of the reborn nation: "to the unfinished work" and "to the great task remaining before us."
Birth of a nation and its ideal; its symbolic death and purification in civil war; its rebirth in freedom with "increased devotion to that cause"—a profound and timeless idea, poetically presented in metaphor and a reverent tone, rolling toward its conclusion of immortality with a succession of four "that" clauses that lend themselves to rhythmic delivery—no wonder this is recognized so widely as the best short speech since the Sermon on the Mount.
***
FOUR SCORE AND seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Mark Twain Celebrates the Fourth of July
"The… Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every year…."
American humorist Mark Twain was in London on July 4, 1899, and was asked to deliver one of the speeches at the Fourth of July dinner given there by the American society. After a series of speakers that included Joseph Hodges Choate, America's new ambassador to Great Britain, Twain delivered his address, "The Day We Celebrate."
Typical of Twain's anecdotal style, this speech veered dangerously far afield from the stated topic of Independence Day. Differences in etiquette and language began his address, as he raised the usage question of "an historical" that has continued to be linguistically controversial throughout the twentieth century. With little pretense of transitions, Twain moved from his story of the clergyman's hat to an assessment of the financial and physical dangers of the Fourth of July, a day that sparks "the old war spirit."
Eight years later on July 4, when Twain addressed the same society, he embellished his assessment with a tall tale. On Independence Day, he said, one of his uncles had "opened his mouth to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat…. It blew up and scattered him all over the forty-five states, and—really, now, this is true—I know about it myself—twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons, recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard."
***
I NOTICED IN Ambassador Choate's speech that he said, "You may be Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time." You responded by applause.
Consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the ambassador rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a senator, and I come third. What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when you place rank above respectability!
I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it upon me. I understand it quite well. I am here to see that between them they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must do it myself. But I notice they have considered this day merely from one side—its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another side. It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. It has a historical side.
I do not say "an" historical side, because I am speaking the American language. I do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an" hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. It seems to me the Congress of Women, now in session, should look to it. I think "an" is having a little too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for many things.
Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party. At the end of the party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now, that was an innocent act on his part. He went out first and, of course, had the choice of hats. As a rule, I try to get out first myself. But I hold that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that condition of mind he will take anybody's hat. The result was that the whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it.
It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted me exactly; my hat fitted him exactly. So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the church somehow or other, but I do not know what he was born for. That is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here when they say "an" hospital, "an" European, "an" historical.
The business aspect of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance offices—and they are working it for all it is worth.
I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. This coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all through me and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement three horses shot under me. The next ones went over my head, the next hit me in the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement.
I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was.
President Calvin Coolidge Affirms His Faith in Massachusetts
"Have faith in Massachusetts."
"It appeared to me in January, 1914," wrote Coolidge in his 1929 autobiography, "that a spirit of radicalism prevailed which unless checked was likely to prove very destructive…. What was needed was a restoration of confidence in our own institutions and in each other, on which economic progress might rest."
In taking the chair of the Massachusetts senate, the Vermonter who would become the thirtieth president made what he described as "a short address, which [he] had carefully prepared, appealing to the conservative spirit of the people." The speech was widely remarked in Republican circles; it was circulated at the party's national convention in Chicago in 1920, and helped get him on the Harding ticket.
"Keep Cool with Coolidge" was the slogan he ran on in 1924, having succeeded Harding; the reputation for taciturnity was a source of both admiration and scorn. Dorothy Parker declared him "weaned on a pickle," and although President Reagan hung the Coolidge portrait in the Cabinet Room, his reputation today is that of an inarticulate sourpuss. Few of those who put him down, however, could write the sort of direct, powerful prose in the address that launched his national career, and which is printed here in its entirety.
The sentences are short and declarative. The argument marches steadily to its conclusion. The paragraph that begins, "Do the day's work…," is as punchy and sensible as any delivered by a U.S. politician. French philosopher Buffon wrote, "The style is the man himself," meaning that the expression reveals the person, and nowhere is that more true than in this exposition of limited government by a man who limited what he had to say to what he thought strictly necessary.
***
I THANK YOU—with gratitude for the high honor given, with appreciation for the solemn obligations assumed—I thank you.
This commonwealth is one. We are all members of one body. The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. Industry cannot flourish if labor languish. Transportation cannot prosper if manufactures decline. The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all. The suspension of one man's dividends is the suspension of another man's pay envelope.
Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of laws. The latest, most modern, and nearest perfect system that statesmanship has devised is representative government. Its weakness is the weakness of us imperfect human beings who administer it. Its strength is that even such administration secures to the people more blessings than any other system ever produced. No nation has discarded it and retained liberty. Representative government must be preserved.
Courts are established, not to determine the popularity of a cause, but to adjudicate and enforce rights. No litigant should be required to submit his case to the hazard and expense of a political campaign. No judge should be required to seek or receive political rewards. The courts of Massachusetts are known and honored wherever men love justice. Let their glory suffer no diminution at our hands. The electorate and judiciary cannot combine. A hearing means a hearing. When the trial of causes goes outside the courtroom, Anglo-Saxon constitutional government ends.
The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal just care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.
Man is born into the universe with a personality that is his own. He has a right that is founded upon the constitution of the universe to have property that is his own. Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated. Each man is entitled to his rights and the rewards of his service, be they never so large or never so small.
History reveals no civilized people among whom there were not a highly educated class, and large aggregations of wealth, represented usually by the clergy and the nobility. Inspiration has always come from above. Diffusion of learning has come down from the university to the common school—the kindergarten is last. No one would now expect to aid the common school by abolishing higher education.
It may be that the diffusion of wealth works in an analogous way. As the little red schoolhouse is builded in the college, it may be that the fostering and protection of large aggregations of wealth are the only foundation on which to build the prosperity of the whole people. Large profits mean large payrolls. But profits must be the result of service performed. In no land are there so many and such large aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do they perform larger service; in no land will the work of a day bring so large a reward in material and spiritual welfare.
Have faith in Massachusetts. In some unimportant detail some other states may surpass her, but in the general results, there is no place on earth where the people secure, in a larger measure, the blessings of organized government, and nowhere can those functions more properly be termed self-government.
Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a standpatter, but don't be a standpatter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.
We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people—a faith that men desire to do right, that the commonwealth is founded upon a righteousness which will endure, a reconstructed faith that the final approval of the people is given not to demagogues, slavishly pandering to their selfishness, merchandising with the clamor of the hour, but to statesmen, ministering to their welfare, representing their deep, silent, abiding convictions.
Statutes must appeal to more than material welfare. Wages won't satisfy, be they never so large. Nor houses; nor lands; nor coupons, though they fall thick as the leaves of autumn. Man has a spiritual nature. Touch it, and it must respond as the magnet responds to the pole. To that, not to selfishness, let the laws of the commonwealth appeal. Recognize the immortal worth and dignity of man. Let the laws of Massachusetts proclaim to her humblest citizen, performing the most menial task, the recognition of his manhood, the recognition that all men are peers, the humblest with the most exalted, the recognition that all work is glorified. Such is the path to equality before the law. Such is the foundation of liberty under the law. Such is the sublime revelation of man's relation to man—democracy.
Interior Secretary Harold Ickes Lashes Isolationists and Defeatists
"Destroy a whole generation of those who have known how to walk with heads erect in God's free air, and the next generation will rise against the oppressors and restore freedom."
Harold Ickes was a Chicago lawyer and newspaper reporter with a flair for plain speaking and an instinct for the killing phrase. He styled himself a "curmudgeon"; when he resigned from Harry Truman's cabinet over the selection of a Truman friend to be undersecretary of the navy, he entered political phrasemaking immortality with "I am against government by crony."
As Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of the interior, the outspoken Ickes was point man attacking the New Deal's detractors. As World War II began, he took on Senator Burton K. Wheeler and members of the America First Committee, getting out in front of FDR in castigating the isolationists. In 1940, poet Anne Morrow Lindbergh, like her husband, Charles, impressed by Germany's power, wrote a long essay titled "The Wave of the Future," which many readers took as an apologia for fascism. In his May 18, 1941, "I Am an American Day" speech on the Central Park Mall in New York City, Ickes made the case for intervention and chose as his villain "the wavers of the future." The sentences are short, declarative, punchy, answering simple self-directed questions: "Do you know why? Because we cannot live in the world alone…." The accusations admit no pussyfooting: "I tell you that this is a cold-blooded lie." It is a classic of rock-'em, sock-'em political oratory with an undercurrent of idealism.
***
I WANT TO ask a few simple questions. And then I shall answer them. What has happened to our vaunted idealism? Why have some of us been behaving like scared chickens? Where is the million-throated, democratic voice of America?
For years it has been dinned into us that we are a weak nation; that we are an inefficient people; that we are simple-minded. For years we have been told that we are beaten, decayed, and that no part of the world belongs to us any longer.
Some amongst us have fallen for this carefully pickled tripe. Some amongst us have fallen for this calculated poison. Some amongst us have begun to preach that the "wave of the future" has passed over us and left us a wet, dead fish.
They shout—from public platforms, in printed pages, through the microphones—that it is futile to oppose the "wave of the future." They cry that we Americans, we free Americans nourished on Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, hold moth-eaten ideas. They exclaim that there is no room for free men in the world any more and that only the slaves will inherit the earth. America—the America of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln and Walt Whitman—they say, is waiting for the undertaker and all the hopes and aspirations that have gone into the making of America are dead too.
However, my fellow citizens, this is not the real point of the story. The real point—the shameful point—is that many of us are listening to them and some of us almost believe them.
I say that it is time for the great American people to raise its voice and cry out in mighty triumph what it is to be an American. And why it is that only Americans, with the aid of our brave allies—yes, let's call them "allies"—the British, can and will build the only future worth having. I mean a future, not of concentration camps, not of physical torture and mental straitjackets, not of sawdust bread or of sawdust Caesars—I mean a future when free men will live free lives in dignity and in security.
This tide of the future, the democratic future, is ours. It is ours if we show ourselves worthy of our culture and of our heritage.
But make no mistake about it; the tide of the democratic future is not like the ocean tide—regular, relentless, and inevitable. Nothing in human affairs is mechanical or inevitable. Nor are Americans mechanical. They are very human indeed.
What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes in the dignity of man. An American is one who will fight for his freedom and that of his neighbor. An American is one who will sacrifice property, ease, and security in order that he and his children may retain the rights of free men. An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
Americans have always known how to fight for their rights and their way of life. Americans are not afraid to fight. They fight joyously in a just cause.
We Americans know that freedom, like peace, is indivisible. We cannot retain our liberty if three-fourths of the world is enslaved. Brutality, injustice, and slavery, if practiced as dictators would have them, universally and systematically, in the long run would destroy us as surely as a fire raging in our nearby neighbor's house would burn ours if we didn't help to put out his.
If we are to retain our own freedom, we must do everything within our power to aid Britain. We must also do everything to restore to the conquered peoples their freedom. This means the Germans too.
Such a program, if you stop to think, is selfishness on our part. It is the sort of enlightened selfishness that makes the wheels of history go around. It is the sort of enlightened selfishness that wins victories.
Do you know why? Because we cannot live in the world alone, without friends and without allies. If Britain should be defeated, then the totalitarian undertaker will prepare to hang crepe on the door of our own independence.
Perhaps you wonder how this could come about? Perhaps you have heard "them"—the wavers of the future—cry, with calculated malice, that even if Britain were defeated we could live alone and defend ourselves single-handed, even against the whole world.
I tell you that this is a cold-blooded lie.
We would be alone in the world, facing an unscrupulous military-economic bloc that would dominate all of Europe, all of Africa, most of Asia, and perhaps even Russia and South America. Even to do that, we would have to spend most of our national income on tanks and guns and planes and ships. Nor would this be all. We would have to live perpetually as an armed camp, maintaining a huge standing army, a gigantic air force, two vast navies. And we could not do this without endangering our freedom, our democracy, our way of life….
We should be clear on this point. What is convulsing the world today is not merely another old-fashioned war. It is a counterrevolution against our ideas and ideals, against our sense of justice and our human values.
Three systems today compete for world domination. Communism, fascism, and democracy are struggling for social-economic-political world control. As the conflict sharpens, it becomes clear that the other two, fascism and communism, are merging into one. They have one common enemy, democracy. They have one common goal, the destruction of democracy.
This is why this war is not an ordinary war. It is not a conflict for markets or territories. It is a desperate struggle for the possession of the souls of men….
No, liberty never dies. The Genghis Khans come and go. The Attilas come and go. The Hitlers flash and sputter out. But freedom endures.
Destroy a whole generation of those who have known how to walk with heads erect in God's free air, and the next generation will rise against the oppressors and restore freedom. Today in Europe, the Nazi Attila may gloat that he has destroyed democracy. He is wrong. In small farmhouses all over Central Europe, in the shops of Germany and Italy, on the docks of Holland and Belgium, freedom still lives in the hearts of men. It will endure like a hardy tree gone into the wintertime, awaiting the spring.
And, like spring, spreading from the South into Scandinavia, the democratic revolution will come. And men with democratic hearts will experience comradeship across artificial boundaries.
These men and women, hundreds of millions of them, now in bondage or threatened with slavery, are our comrades and our allies. They are only waiting for our leadership and our encouragement, for the spark that we can supply.
These hundreds of millions of liberty-loving people, now oppressed, constitute the greatest sixth column in history. They have the will to destroy the Nazi gangsters….
We will help brave England drive back the hordes from hell who besiege her, and then we will join for the destruction of savage and bloodthirsty dictators everywhere. But we must be firm and decisive. We must know our will and make it felt. And we must hurry.
Judge Learned Hand Evokes the Spirit of Liberty
"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right…."
The influential jurist with the unlikely but appropriate name Learned Hand served as presiding judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals from 1939 to 1951, and as senior judge for a decade after. Though never appointed to the Supreme Court, he was able, through his two thousand decisions, to uphold the liberty of the individual and to show that the written and the spoken word did not need the most august forum to have an impact on the law.
Toward the end of World War II, Judge Hand spoke at an "I Am an American Day" ceremony in New York City's Central Park. Instead of a rousing, patriotic address, he delivered a thoughtful credo that profoundly moved the audience; when his "Spirit of Liberty" speech was widely reprinted, the judge took care to add a footnote crediting historian H. G. Wells for a thought on which he bottomed the line about how Jesus "taught mankind a lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten"; the Wells phrasing was "whose pitiless and difficult doctrine of self-abandonment and self-forgetfulness we can neither disregard nor yet bring ourselves to obey." Such scrupulous attribution of an idea is rare, but it was characteristic of Judge Hand, who was careful about not stealing anything.
The following year, on May 20, 1945, he spoke again at the same occasion. The two talks fit together nicely in reverse order, and I've taken the liberty of so arranging them; the 1944 section begins, "We have gathered here to affirm a faith…."
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WE MEET ONCE more to attest our loyalty, and pledge our allegiance…. As we renew our mutual fealty, it is fitting that we should pause, and seek to take account of the meaning of our cost and suffering. Was not the issue this: whether mankind should be divided between those who command and those who serve; between those who use others at their will and those who must submit; whether the measure of a man's power to shape his own destiny should be the force at his disposal? Our nation was founded upon an answer to those questions, and we have fought this war to make good that answer. For ourselves and for the present, we are safe; our immediate peril is past. But for how long are we safe, and how far have we removed our peril? If our nation could not itself exist half slave and half free, are we sure that it can exist in a world half slave and half free? Is the same conflict less irrepressible when worldwide than it was eighty years ago when it was only nationwide? Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
No, our job will not end with the sound of the guns. Even in our own interest we must have an eye to the interests of others; a nation which lives only to itself will in the end perish; false to the faith, it will shrivel and pass to that oblivion which is its proper receptacle. We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with noble aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take: we shall face the strongest passions of mankind—our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not have wholly failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun: in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours: it is worth the trial….
We have gathered here to affirm a faith, a faith in a common purpose, a common conviction, a common devotion. Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty—freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought; this we now believe that we are by way of winning. What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few—as we have learned to our sorrow.
What, then, is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten—that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. And now in that spirit, that spirit of an America which has never been, and which may never be—nay, which never will be except as the conscience and courage of Americans create it—yet in the spirit of that America which lies hidden in some form in the aspirations of us all; in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America so prosperous, and safe, and contented, we shall have failed to grasp its meaning, and shall have been truant to its promise, except as we strive to make it a signal, a beacon, a standard, to which the best hopes of mankind will ever turn. In confidence that you share that belief, I now ask you to raise your hands and repeat with me this pledge:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Underground Fighter Menachem Begin Pledges His Group's Allegiance to the Newborn State of Israel
"Quickly! Quickly! Our nation has no time! Bring in hundreds of thousands…. We are now in the midst of a war for survival; and our tomorrow and theirs depend on the quickest concentration of our nation's exiles."
Menachem Begin, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor, served as head of Israel's main opposition party until 1977, when he became prime minister; he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt as a result of their peace accords. At the White House ceremony with President Carter on March 26, 1979, Begin began to speak in his customary formal style: "The ancient Jewish people gave the New World a vision of eternal peace, of universal disarmament, of abolishing the teaching and learning of war." He used both the Hebrew and the Arabic words for peace: "No more war, no more bloodshed, no more bereavement. Peace unto you. Shalom, salaam, forever." Finally, he offered a prayer of thanksgiving, which he "learned as a child in the home of father and mother, who do not exist anymore, because they were among the six million people—men, women and children—who sanctified the Lord's name with their sacred blood, which reddened the rivers of Europe from the Rhine to the Danube, from the Bug to the Volga, because—only because—they were born Jews; and because they didn't have a country of their own, or a valiant Jewish army to defend them. And because nobody, nobody, came to their rescue, although they cried out 'Save us! Save us!' de profundis, from the depths of the pit and agony."
He called that treaty-signing day "the third greatest day" in his life. He said the second was in 1967, when Israeli soldiers turned back a Jordanian attack and unified Jerusalem. The first was the day in 1948 on which Israel became a state.
In his youth, the head of the Irgun Zvai Leumi was a fiery speaker. The emblem of the Irgun was a raised right arm grasping a bayoneted rifle, with the legend "Only Thus"; the point was that only through military uprising could Jews achieve their homeland.
On May 14, 1948—Begin's "greatest day"—the less militant Jewish leaders in the Haganah dared to proclaim a provisional Hebrew government. The next night, as Arab forces prepared for attack, Begin went to the secret radio station of the Irgun in Tel Aviv. He wrote later, "I felt no stage-fright. I was among my friends, in 'my house,' in the radio station from which the voice of Revolt and Freedom had for years gone forth to every town and village in our land. But the solemnity of the hour overawed me…. My comrades told me that almost every Jewish home with a radio had listened in to my address, and I was thankful that my words had helped to hearten the people."
***
AFTER MANY YEARS of underground warfare, years of persecution and moral and physical suffering, the rebels against the oppressor stand before you, with a blessing of thanks on their lips and a prayer in their hearts. The blessing is the age-old blessing with which our fathers and our forefathers have always greeted holy days. It was with this blessing that they used to taste any fruit for the first time in the season. Today is truly a holiday, a holy day, and a new fruit is visible before our very eyes. The Hebrew revolt of 1944–48 has been blessed with success—the first Hebrew revolt since the Hasmonean insurrection that has ended in victory. The rule of oppression in our country has been beaten, uprooted; it has crumbled and been dispersed. The state of Israel has arisen in bloody battle. The highway for the mass return to Zion has been cast up.
The foundation has been laid—but only the foundation—for true independence. One phase of the battle for freedom, for the return of the whole people of Israel to its homeland, for the restoration of the whole land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners, has ended. But only one phase….
The state of Israel has arisen. And it has arisen "Only Thus": through blood, through fire, with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, with sufferings and with sacrifices. It could not have been otherwise. And yet, even before our state is able to set up its normal national institutions, it is compelled to fight—or to continue to fight satanic enemies and bloodthirsty mercenaries, on land, in the air, and on the sea. In these circumstances, the warning sounded by the philosopher-president Thomas Masaryk to the Czechoslovak nation when it attained its freedom, after three hundred years of slavery, has a special significance for us.
In 1918, when Masaryk stepped out onto the Wilson railway station in Prague, he warned his cheering countrymen, "It is difficult to set up a state; it is even more difficult to keep it going." In truth, it has been difficult for us to set up our state. Tens of generations, and millions of wanderers, from one land of massacre to another, were needed; it was necessary that there be exile, burning at the stake and torture in the dungeons; we had to suffer agonizing disillusionments; we needed the warnings—though they often went unheeded—of prophets and of seers; we needed the sweat and toil of generations of pioneers and builders; we had to have an uprising of rebels to crush the enemy; we had to have the gallows, the banishments beyond seas, the prisons, and the cages in the deserts—all this was necessary that we might reach the present stage where six hundred thousand Jews are in the homeland, where the direct rule of oppression has been driven out, and Hebrew independence declared in part at least of the country, the whole of which is ours.
It has been difficult to create our state. But it will be still more difficult to keep it going. We are surrounded by enemies who long for our destruction. And that same oppressor, who has been defeated by us directly, is trying indirectly to make us surrender with the aid of mercenaries from the south, the north, and the east. Our one-day-old state is set up in the midst of the flames of battle. And the first pillar of our state must therefore be victory, total victory, in the war which is raging all over the country. For this victory, without which we shall have neither freedom nor life, we need arms—weapons of all sorts, in order to strike the enemies, in order to disperse the invaders, in order to free the entire length and breadth of the country from its would-be destroyers.
But in addition to these arms, each and every one of us has need of another weapon, a spiritual weapon, the weapon of unflinching endurance in face of attacks from the air; in face of grievous casualties; in face of local disasters and temporary defeats; unflinching resistance to threats and cajolery. If, within the coming days and weeks, we can put on this whole armor of an undying nation in resurrection, we shall in the meantime receive the blessed arms with which to drive off the enemy and bring freedom and peace to our nation and country.
But, even after emerging victorious from this campaign—and victorious we shall be—we shall still have to exert superhuman efforts in order to remain independent, in order to free our country. First of all it will be necessary to increase and strengthen the fighting arm of Israel, without which there can be no freedom and no survival for our homeland….
We shall need a wise foreign policy in order to free our country and maintain our state. We must turn our declaration of independence into a reality. And we must grasp this fact: that so long as even one British or any other foreign soldier treads the soil of our country, our sovereign independence remains nothing but an aspiration, an aspiration for whose fulfillment we must be ready to fight not only on the battlefront but also in the international arena. Secondly, we must establish and maintain the principle of reciprocity in our relations with the nations of the world. There must be no self-denigration. There must be no surrender, and no favoritism. There must be reciprocity. Enmity for enmity. Aid for aid. Friendship must be repaid with friendship….
We must foster friendship and understanding between us and every nation, great or small, strong or weak, near or far, which recognizes our independence, which aids our national regeneration, and which is interested, even as we are, in international justice and peace among nations.
Of no less importance is our internal policy. The first pillar of this policy is the return to Zion. Ships! For heaven's sake, let us have ships! Let us not be poisoned with inertia. Let us not talk empty words about absorptive capacity. Let us not make restrictions for the sake of so-called order. Quickly! Quickly! Our nation has no time! Bring in hundreds of thousands…. We are now in the midst of a war for survival; and our tomorrow and theirs depend on the quickest concentration of our nation's exiles.
And within our homeland: justice must be the supreme ruler, the ruler over all rulers. There must be no tyranny. The ministers and officials must be the servants of the nation and not their masters. There must be no exploitation. There must be no man within our country—be he citizen or foreigner—compelled to go hungry, to want for a roof over his head, or to lack elementary education. "Remember, ye were strangers in the land of Egypt"—this supreme rule must continually light our way in our relations with the strangers within our gates. "Righteousness, Righteousness shalt thou pursue!" Righteousness must be the guiding principle in our relations amongst ourselves….
The Irgun Zvai Leumi is leaving the underground inside the boundaries of the Hebrew independent state. We went underground, we arose in the underground under the rule of oppression, in order to strike at oppression and to overthrow it. And right well have we struck. Now, for the time being, we have Hebrew rule in part of our homeland. And as in this part there will be Hebrew law—and that is the only rightful law in this country—there is no need for a Hebrew underground. In the state of Israel we shall be soldiers and builders. And we shall respect its government, for it is our government….
The state of Israel has arisen, but we must remember that our country is not yet liberated. The battle continues, and you see now that the words of your Irgun fighters were not vain words: it is Hebrew arms which decide the boundaries of the Hebrew state. So it is now in this battle; so it will be in the future. Our God-given country is a unity. The attempt to dissect it is not only a crime but a blasphemy and an abortion. Whoever does not recognize our natural right to our entire homeland, does not recognize our right to any part of it. And we shall never forgo this natural right. We shall continue to foster the aspiration of full independence.
Citizens of the Hebrew state, soldiers of Israel, we are in the midst of battles. Difficult days lie ahead of us…. We cannot buy peace from our enemies with appeasement. There is only one kind of "peace" that can be bought—the peace of the graveyard, the peace of Treblinki. Be brave of spirit and ready for more trials. We shall withstand them. The Lord of Hosts will help us; he will sustain the bravery of the Hebrew youth, the bravery of the Hebrew mothers who, like Hannah, offer their sons on the altar of God.
And you, brothers of our fighting family, do you remember how we started? With what we started? You were alone and persecuted, rejected, despised, and numbered with the transgressors. But you fought on with deep faith and did not retreat; you were tortured but you did not surrender; you were cast into prison but you did not yield; you were exiled from your country but your spirit was not crushed; you were driven to the gallows but went forth with a song. You have written a glorious page in history…. You will not recall past grievances; you will ask for no reward.
But for the time being let us think of the battle, for only the outcome of the battle will decide our fate and future. We shall go on our way into battle, soldiers of the Lord of Hosts, inspired by the spirit of our ancient heroes, from the conquerors of Canaan to the Rebels of Judah. We shall be accompanied by the spirit of those who revived our nation, Zeev Benjamin Herzl, Max Nordau, Joseph Trumpeldor, and the father of resurrected Hebrew heroism, Zeev Jabotinsky. We shall be accompanied by the spirit of David Raziel, greatest of the Hebrew commanders of our day; and by Dov Gruner, one of the greatest of Hebrew soldiers. We shall be accompanied into battle by the spirit of the heroes of the gallows, the conquerors of death. And we shall be accompanied by the spirit of millions of our martyrs, our ancestors tortured and burned for their faith, our murdered fathers and butchered mothers, our murdered brothers and strangled children. And in this battle we shall break the enemy and bring salvation to our people, tried in the furnace of persecution, thirsting only for freedom, for righteousness, and for justice.
Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson Defines the Nature of Patriotism
"Men who have offered their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something; it is the love of something."
"The ordeal of the twentieth century—the bloodiest, most turbulent era of the Christian age—is far from over," Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois told the Democratic National Convention that selected him as standard-bearer in 1952. "…Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains."
"Sense" was a favorite word of the man for whom the epithet "egghead" was coined. Four years later, in his second unsuccessful campaign against Dwight Eisenhower, he said, "If I were to attempt to put my political philosophy tonight into a single phrase, it would be this: Trust the people. Trust their good sense…."
In 1952, after the Truman administration had been labeled "the mess in Washington," Stevenson had to run against "communism, corruption, and Korea." Thanks to the effectiveness of charges of "twenty years of treason" in high places by Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, Democrats were on the defensive. Stevenson had to confront this corrosive theme directly; he put on his veteran's cap and addressed the American Legion Convention in New York's Madison Square Garden on August 27 on "the nature of patriotism."
***
…I HAVE NO claim, as many of you do, to the honored title of old soldier. Nor have I risen to high rank in the armed services. The fact that a great general and I are competing candidates for the presidency will not diminish my warm respect for his military achievements. Nor will that respect keep me from using every honest effort to defeat him in November!…
We talk a great deal about patriotism. What do we mean by "patriotism" in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility which will enable America to remain master of her power—to walk with it in serenity and wisdom, with self-respect and the respect of all mankind; a patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. The dedication of a lifetime—these are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
Patriotism, I have said, means putting country before self. This is no abstract phrase, and unhappily, we find some things in American life today of which we cannot be proud.
Consider the groups who seek to identify their special interests with the general welfare. I find it sobering to think that their pressures might one day be focused on me. I have resisted them before, and I hope the Almighty will give me the strength to do so again and again. And I should tell you—my fellow Legionnaires—as I would tell all other organized groups, that I intend to resist pressures from veterans, too, if I think their demands are excessive or in conflict with the public interest, which must always be the paramount interest.
Let me suggest, incidentally, that we are rapidly becoming a nation of veterans. If we were all to claim a special reward for our service, beyond that to which specific disability or sacrifice has created a just claim, who would be left to pay the bill? After all, we are Americans first and veterans second, and the best maxim for any administration is still Jefferson's: "Equal rights for all, special privileges for none."
True patriotism, it seems to me, is based on tolerance and a large measure of humility.
There are men among us who use "patriotism" as a club for attacking other Americans. What can we say for the self-styled patriot who thinks that a Negro, a Jew, a Catholic, or a Japanese-American is less an American than he? That betrays the deepest article of our faith, the belief in individual liberty and equality which has always been the heart and soul of the American idea.
What can we say for the man who proclaims himself a patriot—and then for political or personal reasons attacks the patriotism of faithful public servants? I give you, as a shocking example, the attacks which have been made on the loyalty and the motives of our great wartime chief of staff, General Marshall. To me this is the type of "patriotism" which is, in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "the last refuge of scoundrels."
The anatomy of patriotism is complex. But surely intolerance and public irresponsibility cannot be cloaked in the shining armor of rectitude and righteousness. Nor can the denial of the right to hold ideas that are different—the freedom of man to think as he pleases. To strike freedom of the mind with the fist of patriotism is an old and ugly subtlety.
And the freedom of the mind, my friends, has served America well. The vigor of our political life, our capacity for change, our cultural, scientific, and industrial achievements, all derive from free inquiry, from the free mind—from the imagination, resourcefulness, and daring of men who are not afraid of new ideas. Most all of us favor free enterprise for business. Let us also favor free enterprise for the mind. For, in the last analysis, we would fight to the death to protect it. Why is it, then, that we are sometimes slow to detect, or are indifferent to, the dangers that beset it?
Many of the threats to our cherished freedoms in these anxious, troubled times arise, it seems to me, from a healthy apprehension about the Communist menace within our country. Communism is abhorrent. It is strangulation of the individual; it is death for the soul. Americans who have surrendered to this misbegotten idol have surrendered their right to our trust. And there can be no secure place for them in our public life.
Yet, as I have said before, we must take care not to burn down the barn to kill the rats. All of us, and especially patriotic organizations of enormous influence like the American Legion, must be vigilant in protecting our birthright from its too zealous friends while protecting it from its evil enemies.
The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anticommunism.
I could add, from my own experience, that it is never necessary to call a man a Communist to make political capital. Those of us who have undertaken to practice the ancient but imperfect art of government will always make enough mistakes to keep our critics well supplied with standard ammunition. There is no need for poison gas….
Let me now, in my concluding words, inquire with you how we may affirm our patriotism in the troubled yet hopeful years that are ahead.
The central concern of the American Legion—the ideal which holds it together—the vitality which animates it—is patriotism. And those voices which we have heard most clearly and which are best remembered in our public life have always had the accent of patriotism.
It was always accounted a virtue in a man to love his country. With us it is now something more than a virtue. It is a necessity, a condition of survival. When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
Men who have offered their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something; it is the love of something. Patriotism with us is not the hatred of Russia; it is the love of this Republic and of the ideal of liberty of man and mind in which it was born, and to which this Republic is dedicated.
With this patriotism—patriotism in its large and wholesome meaning—America can master its power and turn it to the noble cause of peace. We can maintain military power without militarism; political power without oppression; and moral power without compulsion or complacency.
The road we travel is long, but at the end lies the grail of peace. And in the valley of peace we see the faint outlines of a new world, fertile and strong. It is odd that one of the keys to abundance should have been handed to civilization on a platter of destruction. But the power of the atom to work evil gives only the merest hint of its power for good.
I believe that man stands on the eve of his greatest day. I know, too, that that day is not a gift but a prize—that we shall not reach it until we have won it.
Legionnaires are united by memories of war. Therefore, no group is more devoted to peace. I say to you now that there is work to be done, that the difficulties and dangers that beset our path at home and abroad are incalculable. There is sweat and sacrifice; there is much of patience and quiet persistence in our horoscope. Perhaps the goal is not even for us to see in our lifetime.
But we are embarked on a great adventure. Let us proclaim our faith in the future of man. Of good heart and good cheer, faithful to ourselves and our traditions, we can lift the cause of freedom, the cause of free men, so high no power on earth can tear it down. We can pluck this flower, safety, from this nettle, danger. Living, speaking, like men—like Americans—we can lead the way to our rendezvous in a happy, peaceful world.
General Douglas MacArthur Reminds West Point Cadets of Duty, Honor, Country
"Your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars… When I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the corps, and the corps, and the corps."
Douglas Macarthur's record as a cadet at West Point has served as a criterion for generations; after World War I, he returned to serve as commandant of the military academy; he went on to command all Allied forces in the Far East in World War II, and UN forces in Korea until he was fired by President Truman (see "Old Soldiers Never Die" speech, p. 425); and he returned to West Point on May 12, 1962, to deliver his most memorable address. He spoke as a soldier of one era to the soldiers of another to remind them of the values that undergird the profession of arms.
He took as his text "Duty, Honor, Country" from the legend on the West Point coat of arms, a motto adopted in 1898, one year before he entered the academy. Instead of dealing with each word, making that the organizing principle of his speech, MacArthur unified them as a trinity of patriotism. After an ostentatious bit of humility ("Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination…"), perhaps patterned on Lincoln's "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here," the general pointed to all the valuable qualities that a dedication to the three created. From there, he pointed to the sufferings of the soldier who persevered to victory under the single "password" of duty, honor, country. From that look back, he then took a long look ahead, to "a conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy," theme of a thousand television movies to come. Having established that sense of timelessness to the need for the military profession, the speaker reasserted the values that keep it outside the realm of politics—a poignant point to be made by a general who wanted to be president.
The language is poetic. Evoking the ghosts of the military dead, he dresses them in the colors of their wars: the "olive drab" of World War II, the "brown khaki" of World War I, "the blue and gray" of the Civil War. He uses surprising metaphors: "a thirsty ear," the "mournful mutter of the battlefields," and the curious "My days of old have vanished—tone and tints." (The once-strong sound of fighting and once-vivid color of war?)
***
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.
"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 build. 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.
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 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.
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 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 the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil population; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; 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 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 lever 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.