50篇经典英文演讲之25

General Douglas MacArthur: Thayer A ward Acceptance Address

General West moreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!

As I was leaving the hotel this m orning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I re plied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award]. Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills m e with an em otion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to sym bolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the anim ation of this m edallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the Am erican soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of hum ility which will be with m e always: Duty, Honor, Country.

Those 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 seem s to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becom es forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of im agination, nor that brilliance of m etaphor to tell you all that they m ean. The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every dem agogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, som e others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of m ockery and ridicule.

But these are som e of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They m ake you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of com fort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to m aster yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the sim plicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the m eekness of true strength. They give you a tem per of the will, a quality of the im agination, a vigor of the em otions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a tem peramental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for

adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentlem an.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the Am erican m an-at-arm s. My estim ate of him was formed on the battlefield m any, 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 m ost stainless. His name and fam e are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that m ortality can give.

He needs no eulogy from m e or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his m odesty in victory, I am filled with an em otion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest exam ples 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 achievem e nts. In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand cam pfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and 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.

As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on m any a weary m arch from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for m any, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death.

They died unquestioning, uncom plaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.

Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.

And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slim e of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storm s; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stricken

areas of war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their com plete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly m en reverently following your password of: Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate em braces the highest m oral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirem ents are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.

The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training -- sacrifice.

In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created m an in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.

However horrible the incidents of war m ay be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of m ankind.

You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of m ankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or m ore billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a m ore abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathom ed m ysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.

We speak in strange term s: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of m aking winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic m aterials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a m ore equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the m oon; of the prim ary target in war, no longer limited to the arm ed forces of an enem y, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of som e other planetary galaxy; of such dream s and fantasies as to m ake life the m ost exciting of all tim e.

And through all this welter of change and developm ent, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.

Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or sm all, will find others for their accomplishment. But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be: Duty, Honor, Country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.

Let civilian voices argue the m erits or dem erits of our processes of governm ent; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too m ighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by m orals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and com plete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professiona l 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 com e the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the m oment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a m illion ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those m agic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not m ean that you are war m ongers.

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 m emory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the sm iles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching m elody 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 m usketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

But in the evening of m y memory, always I com e back to West Point.

Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

Today m arks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river m y last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.

I bid you farewell.