Duty, Honor, Country

Two Memorable Addresses by General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur

• Publisher: Eschenburg Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789125375
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The present volume, first published in 1962, consists of two distinguished speeches given by the General of the U.S. Army, Douglas MacArthur.The first address took place on April 19, 1951 and was held before a joint meeting of the two houses of United States Congress—the House of Representatives and the Senate—and took place in the Hall of the House of Representatives. This meeting followed on just one week from MacArthur's removal from command by President Harry S. Truman.The second address was held on May 12, 1921 and was given to The Members of the Association of Graduates, U.S.M.A., The Corps of Cadets, and Distinguished Guests. It was given on the occasion of MacArthur's acceptance of the Sylvanus Thayer Award for outstanding service to the nation, which had gone to Eisenhower the year before. The event was held at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

ADDRESS BY GENERAL OF THE ARMY DOUGLAS MACARTHUR BEFORE A JOINT MEETING OF THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES APRIL 19, 1951

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and distinguished Members of the Congress:

I STAND on this rostrum with a sense of deep humility and great pride—humility in the wake of those great American architects of our history who have stood here before me, pride in the reflection that this forum of legislative debate represents human liberty in the purest form yet devised. Here are centered the hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race.

I do not stand here as advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan consideration. They must be resolved on the highest plane of national interest if our course is to prove sound and our future protected. I trust, therefore, that you will do me the justice of receiving that which I have to say as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow American. I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life with but one purpose in mind—to serve my country.

The issues are global and so interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector, oblivious to those of another, is but to court disaster for the whole.

While Asia is commonly referred to as the gateway to Europe, it is no less true that Europe is the gateway to Asia, and the broad influence of the one cannot fail to have its impact upon the other.

There are those who claim our strength is inadequate to protect on both fronts—that we cannot divide our effort. I can think of no greater expression of defeatism. If a potential enemy can divide his strength on two fronts, it is for us to counter his effort.

The Communist threat is a global one. Its successful advance in one sector threatens the destruction of every other sector. You cannot appease or otherwise surrender to communism in Asia without simultaneously undermining our efforts to halt its advance in Europe.

Beyond pointing out these simple truisms, I shall confine my discussion to the general areas of Asia. Before one may objectively assess the situation now existing there, he must comprehend something of Asia’s past and the revolutionary changes which have marked her course up to the present. Long exploited by the so-called colonial powers, with little opportunity to achieve any degree of social justice, individual dignity, or a higher standard of life such as guided our own noble administration of the Philippines, the peoples of Asia found their opportunity in the war just past to throw off the shackles of colonialism and now see the dawn of new opportunity, a heretofore unfelt dignity and the self-respect of political freedom.

Mustering half of the earth’s population and 60 percent of its natural resources, these peoples are rapidly consolidating a new force, both moral and material, with which to raise the living standard and erect adaptations of the design of modern progress to their own distinct cultural environments. Whether one adheres to the concept of colonization or not, this is the direction of Asian progress and it may not be stopped. It is a corollary to the shift of the world economic frontiers, as the whole epicenter of world affairs rotates back toward the area whence it started. In this situation it becomes vital that our own country orient its policies in consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than pursue a course blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet the right to shape their own free destiny. What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support, not imperious direction; the dignity of equality, not the shame of subjugation. Their pre-war standard of life, pitifully low, is infinitely lower now in the devastation left in war’s wake. World ideologies play little part in Asian thinking and are little understood. What the peoples strive for is the opportunity for a little more food in their stomachs, a little better clothing on their backs, a little firmer roof over their heads, and the realization of the normal nationalist urge for political freedom. These political-social conditions have but an indirect bearing upon our own national security, but form a backdrop to contemporary planning whic...