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"As I was leaving the hotel
this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I
replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there
before?"
"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."
"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."
"But these are some of the things
they do. They build your basic character. They give you a temper of the
will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the
deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of
an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman."
"The shadows are lengthening for
me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country."
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