In my reading of General Douglas MacArthur’s pictorial autobiography, I have found many an item for serious reflection. Gen. MacArthur was a man devoted to the great ideals of liberty. He knew well the cost of freedom and the necessity of defending it at all costs.
His words speak clearly to us today. I shall provide no additional commentary. From Duty, Honor, Country, pages 204-206:
Great changes have taken place in our military establishment, some good, some not so good. Materially the improvement has been spectacular, psychologically yet to be proven. The men in the ranks are largely citizen soldiers, sailors or airmen–men from the farm, the city, from school, from the college campus–men not dedicated to the profession of arms; men not primarily skilled in the art of war; men most amazingly like the men you know and see and meet each day of your life.
If hostilities come these men will know the endless tramp of marching feet, the incessant whine of sniper bullets, the ceaseless rustle of sputtering machine guns, the sinister wail of air combat, the deafening blast of crashing bombs, the stealthy stroke of hidden torpedoes, the amphibious lurch over perilous waves, the dark majesty of fighting ships, the mad din of battle and all the tense and ghastly horror and savage destruction of a stricken area of war.
These men will suffer hunger and thirst, broiling suns and frozen reaches, but they must go on and on and on when everything within them seems to stop and die. They will grow old in youth burned out in searing minutes, even though life owes them tranquil years. In these troublesome times of confused and bewildered international sophistication, let no man misunderstand why they do that which they must do. These men will fight, and, perchance die, for one reason only–for their country–for America. No complex philosophies of world intrigue and conspiracy dominate their thoughts. No exploitation or extravagance of propaganda dims their sensibilities. Just the simple fact, their country called.
But now strange voices are heard across the land, decrying this old and proven concept of patriotism. Seductive murmurs are arising that it is now outmoded by some more comprehensive and all-embracing philosophy, that we are provincial and immature or reactionary and stupid when we idealize our own country; that there is a higher destiny for us under another and more general flag; that no longer when we send our sons and daughters to the battlefields must we see them through all the way to victory; that we can call upon them to fight and even to die in some half-hearted and indecisive war; that we can plunge them recklessly into war and then suddenly decide that it is a wrong war or in a wrong place or at a wrong time, or even that we can call it not a war at all by using some more euphemistic and gentler name; that we can treat them as expendable, although they are our own flesh and blood; that we, the strongest military nation in the world, have suddenly become dependent upon others for our security and even our welfare.
Listen not from these voices, be they from the one political party or from the other. Be they from the high and the mighty or the lowly and the forgotten. Heed them not. Visit upon them a righteous scorn, born of the past sacrifices of your fighting sons and daughters. Repudiate them in the market place, on platforms, from the pulpit. The highest encomium you can still receive is to be called a patriot, if it means you love your country above all else and will place your life, if need be, at the service of your Flag…..
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