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The greatness of our country has been based on our thinking that everyone has a right even to be wrong. The greatest good we can do our country is to heal it's party divisions and make them one people. I do not speak of their leaders who are incurable, but of the honest and well-intentioned body of the people. We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. We must acquire proficiency in defense and display stamina in purpose. We must be willing, individually and as a Nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. . . . The turkey. . . is a much more respectable bird. In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. 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 evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country. 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. |
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