"Duty, Honor, Country"

General Westmoreland, General Grove 1, distinguished 2 guests, and gentlemen of the Corps 3!

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

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award]. Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize 4 a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry 5 of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation 6 of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics 7 of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility 8 which will be with me always: Duty, Honor, Country.

Those three hallowed words reverently 9 dictate 10 what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain 11 faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence 12 of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance 13 of metaphor 14 to tell you all that they mean. The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant 15 phrase. Every pedant 16, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker 17, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely 19 different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule 20.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians 21 of the nation's defense 22. 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 23 and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion 24 on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity 25 of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness 26 of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor 27 of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless 28. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty 29, he gave all that mortality can give.

He needs no eulogy 30 from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty 31 in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration 32 I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism 33. He belongs to posterity 34 as the instructor 35 of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues 36 and by his achievements. In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude 37, that patriotic 38 self-abnegation, and that invincible 39 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 40 of courage.

As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling 41 dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire 42 of shell-shocked 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 43 seat of  God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death.

They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.

Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.

And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth 44 of murky 45 foxholes 46, the stench of ghostly trenches 47, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless 48 heat, those torrential rains of devastating 49 storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence 50 of tropical disease; the horror of stricken areas of war; their resolute 51 and determined 52 defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody 53 haze 54 of their last reverberating 55 shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of: Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate 56 embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated 57 for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.

The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training -- sacrifice.

In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker 18 gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute 58 instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.

However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.

You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch 59 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 60 or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless 61 frontier.

We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic 62 materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable 63 distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister 64 forces of some other planetary galaxy 65; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.

And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains 66 fixed 67, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.

Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication 68. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment 69. 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 70 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 71, calm, aloof 72, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena 73 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 74 voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit 75 financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty 76, by power groups grown too arrogant 77, by politics grown too corrupt 78, by crime grown too rampant 79, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation 80 or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon 81 in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.

You are the leaven 82 which binds 83 together the entire fabric 84 of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not mean that you are war mongers.

On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

But always in our ears ring the ominous 85 words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

The shadows are lengthening 86 for me. The twilight 87 is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint 88. They have gone glimmering 89 through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous 90 beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed 91 and caressed 92 by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles 93 blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle 94 of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.

Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.

I bid you farewell.