**Previously recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // May 1999 **
A good way to celebrate this Memorial Day is to recall the text of one of the most famous speeches ever delivered in American history. I’m talking about the duty, honor, country speech given to the graduating cadets at West Point by General Douglas MacArthur, who next to George Washington, was our country’s greatest military hero.
General MacArthur said, “my estimate of the American soldier 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. His name and fame are the birthright of every American. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that man can give. When I think of his patience in adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty and victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. In 20 campaigns on 100 battlefields around 1000 campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, 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.”
“I do not know the dignity of their birth,” General MacArthur concluded. “But I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining with faith in their hearts and on their lips, in the hope that we would go on to victory under the banner duty, honor, country.”
Those are the great words of General Douglas MacArthur.
This post originally appeared at https://phyllisschlafly.com/national-sovereignty/duty-honor-country/
Ryan Hite