○  thayer award acceptance address  ○

e merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. these great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night: duty, honor, country.

you are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. from your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. the long gray line has never failed us. were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words: duty, honor, country.

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 words of plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "only the dead have seen the end of war."

the shadows are lengthening for me. the twilight is here. my days of old have vanished, tone and tint. they have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. i listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, 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 evenin

上一页  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] 下一页