Gen. Douglas MacArthur on the Essence of Leadership
General Douglas MacArthur was Supreme Allied Commander, South West Pacific Area in WWII, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers overseeing the occupation of Japan following the war, and Commander-in-Chief of United Nations Command in the Korean War. He is one of only five people to hold the rank of General of the Army.
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In receiving the Sylvanus Thayer Award at the US Military Academy at West Point on May 12, 1962—two years before his death—he gave a commencement address that has come to be revered for its patriotism and emphasis on the moral and ethical responsibilities of future leaders.
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Five paragraphs of his speech, especially, read like a handbook of timeless leadership virtues. He began with the West Point motto—Duty, Honor, Country—to which he appended the virtues of courage, faith and hope:
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 seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
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The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
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He said the words of Duty, Honor, Country embody traditional virtues like strength, bravery, and honesty, as well as vulnerability, failure, humility, empathy, humor, and more:
But these are some 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 make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.
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They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, 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 master 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 take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
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They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, 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 gentleman.
Read the complete speech at the Society of the Honor Guard website.
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