Beschreibung:

EISENHOWER, DWIGHT DAVID, President . Typed speech entitled "The GI and his Accomplishments Since Pearl Harbor," with extensive autograph additions and revisions by Eisenhower, delivered at the Georgia Bar Association at Savannah, Georgia, 24 May 1946. 7 pages, large folio, typed on rectos only, Eisenhower's revisions in pencil. WHITHER THE NATION, NOW THAT THE WAR IS OVER? An important address dealing with the issues of war and peace and the future defense posture of the United States. Eisenhower, who had succeeded George C. Marshall as Army Chief of Staff, had just returned from an extensive tour of the Pacific and Japan. The text is typed in upper-case letters, probably to facilitate reading; Ike's additions comprise some 200 words, mostly written between the typewritten lines or in blank margins. Eisenhower explains that his purpose is to give an account of America's accomplishments in the war, and to consider to the tasks still confronting the United States as a world power. The military is, after all, he reminds his audience, subject to civilian control, through the elected government. He describes, in detail, American war aims and praises "the American soldier, with his counterpart in the naval service, and with loyal allies." Their accomplishments, he asserts, "will continue to bear retelling as long as Americans are devoted to those ideals that are expressed in our nation's two great founding documents..." It is not true, he states, that "the American soldier did not know why he was fighting in World War II," although it is possible that Americans "were lulled into forgetting, between the two wars, that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." But after Pearl Harbor, the GI went to war "with the same firmness and courage that made Yorktown and the Meuse-Argonne such bright spots in our history....From the time of Washington, American soldiers fighting and dying for this republic have had their inspiration in its championship of liberty. The very cornerstone of that system is the supremacy of civil law and power." Eisenhower describes the challenges still remaining worldwide, "tasks set up by the American people, acting through their national government; they are not jobs that army has specified or selected." In the end, he concludes that: "We are, as a nation, still a principal exponent of freedom and justice, even as we were in 1941. Unless we play our part nobly now, as we did in war, there will be no peace....These problems I have talked over with many of the great leaders of this war just as I have talked them over with countless soldiers...I think that...I honestly represent the composite of their opinion....In long conversations...with General [George C.] Marshall and with General MacArthur, with General Whitehead of the Air Force and Admiral Towers of the Navy, they have expressed the hope that we now go forward to the full completion of the task we set ourselves so many bitter months ago....There is no soldier, be he brass hat or GI, that has anything to gain by pleading for reasonable action intended to secure and perpetuate the peace....He has but one hope, one ambition, that the war we have fought shall be the last which the United States shall ever be called upon to wage." Provenance : Given to the present owner by Major Robert L. Schulz, an Aide-de-Camp to Eisenhower after the speech had been retyped incorporating the additions.