Douglas MacArthur
Class of 1903
Duty • Honor • Country
Inscribed on these walls are excerpts from General MacArthur’s last address to the Corp of Cadets, 12 May 1962
Duty • Honor • CountryThose three hallowed words reverently dictate 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 faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
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 would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic wordsDuty • Honor • Country
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 wonderous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point, always there echoes and re-echoesDuty • Honor • Country
It is the story of American man at arms. In memory’s eye I could see those staggering columns, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, to form grimly for the attack. Blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, driving home to their objective and, for many, to the judgement seat of God. Always for themDuty • Honor • Country
Your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable – it is to win our wars. All other public purposes will find others for their accomplishment. Yours is the profession of arms – the will to win; the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that the very obsession of your public service must beDuty • Honor • Country
In war
there is no substitute
for
Victory
Marker is on Jefferson Road, on the left when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
