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Speech for Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College muster, April 21, 1946

This visit to Texas A&M allows me to pay a first installment on two debts, both of them long overdue. One is to acknowledge, in this Easter morning ceremony, the magnificent contribution made by your college in the gaining of the allied victory of 1945. The other is to pay tribute, through this largest of all ROTC units, to the vital role played by the entire ROTC system in that bitter moment.

Through the lean years following 1918, at a time when possibility of another war seemed, to the public mind, so remote as to challenge the sanity of any individual of contrary view, the nation-wide ROTC system steadily turned out reserve officers. Between 1919 and our entry into World War II, it produced 112,000, of whom 58,000 were still on the rolls in 1941. In the early days of mobilization, when officer procurement was one of our most critical problems, we had this substantial body to employ. General Marshal called it at the time, "our principal available asset."

The ROTC of this one institution furnished the Army 7,000 officers - far more than any other college. Figures - and I have already submitted you several - are sometimes more eloquent than words. No more convincing testimony could be given to the manner in which the men of Texas A&M lived up to the ideals and principles inculcated in them during their days on this campus than the simple statement that the Congressional Medal of Honor has been awarded to six former students, that 46 took part in the heroic defense of Bataan and Corregidor, and that nearly 700 are on the list of our battle dead. As one of the field commanders with whom served many of the veterans in this homecoming gathering, I can feel only a lasting admiration for the ROTC of Texas A&M. This admiration extends to the individual as well as to the institution that produced you.

You met the sternest of all tests. No matter how deep and instinctive our hatred of war, we still are quick to recognize that the weakling cannot measure up to the standard it sets.

Even people who have been so fortunate as to remain strangers to the terror of the diving plane and the nerve-shattering thump of bursting shells, who have not known the sickening smells, the dust, the mud, the stifling heat, the freezing cold of the battlefield or the bone-deep weariness of marching and firing and digging and crawling, who have not felt the sadness of blank files in the ranks - even these can sense that respect is won in combat only by manifestation of virtues we most admire in men - courage, devotion, endurance, discipline, optimism, mutual help, loyalty.

To these qualities there must be added, for success, still another, and vital, ingredient. It is leadership.
You veterans here know, better than others, that the highest commander cannot, by himself, provide the leadership necessary to tactical victory. He must be supported by a great organization of devoted assistants, the base of which must be the captains, the lieutenants, the sergeants and corporals - every man that has a position of responsibility over another in the battle. Through days and months of experience you veterans learned to distinguish between the true and the false, between the man who leads and the one who seeks under the cloak of undeserved authority to escape his own proper share of the costs that must be paid to achieve any positive and worthwhile purpose.


You well know that the officer who pretends to a position of human rather than of mere official superiority, who deliberately thrusts upon his men added danger, suffering or exhausting work in order that he may himself escape their full impact, is not, in the eyes of his men, an officer and a leader, regardless of the weight of the insignia he carries upon his shoulder.

During the war a broad survey was made to determine what qualities enlisted men considered most important in a good officer.

Our soldiers thought the two prime requisites were first, his ability or competence; secondly, they named his interest in the welfare of his men. As to his personal attitude, Major General John M. Schofield described it well to the cadets at West Point back in 1887. He said, "The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. He who feels the respect which is due to others cannot fail to inspire in them regard for himself; while he who feels disrespect towards others ... cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself."

It is the commander who shares, naturally and unpretentiously in every problem of the group, who gains the confidence of his men and gives to them his own, who shares with them every turn of fortune, who takes no thought of himself until every need of all his men has been accommodated, who learns from them as much as he can teach them, and who expresses in every word and deed his pride of belonging to the whole, that invariably gains for himself the greatest reward that can come to any man.

This reward is the respect, esteem and love of his associates. Moreover, his is an elite unit. Such a man is a stranger to resentment from his men. They accord - they demand for him - a position before the world that comes only to those who have rendered honest service to their fellows.

It is this type of officer that the ROTC must develop. It cannot be done in days or weeks - it requires months of training, of study, of reflection. The nation's war needs in officers - if war should come again to us - cannot possibly be met without the ROTC. No regular establishment can meet the requirements in numbers, while shorter, emergency periods of training, although effective in the rapid selection and specialized combat training of promising material, cannot provide the opportunity for full development of the promise into rounded, understanding leadership.

For it is not true that leaders are born - never made. That notion is a tattered remnant of a system that went out with the bow and arrow. It is true that a real leader must be inherently endowed with certain essentials, among which are personal integrity, intelligence, common sense, and stability under pressure. But this is the raw material that reaches its ultimate effectiveness only under wise and persistent development. Given the rich stock of American manhood to draw upon, selection and training will continue to produce an even more magnificent body of unit leaders than those who, in the late war led 8 million other Americans to the most decisive and the greatest victory, with the lowest losses, that the world has known.

The ROTC accomplishes, to a remarkable degree, both this selection and this training. A college course is by its nature a selective and screening process. By and large, those who graduate are tested risks for carrying through to a successful conclusion the diverse enterprises of modern military science. The ROTC man receives much more than military training. He is subjected to an increasingly difficult series of mental challenges. He gains information and, more important, he gains tolerance, appreciation, and understanding of the problems of mankind. He grows, matures, broadens in interests. His training is calculated to give him a feeling of confidence and sureness, but not an attitude of superiority and snobbishness toward his fellow men.


In our country, we hold that every man should have the opportunity to rise to any station in his chosen profession commensurate with his ability. This is not merely a pretty theory in the Army. It is our guiding principle. We provided the Military Academy, to which entrance lies in the hands of our elected representatives of the people; we established the CMTC before the war and the officer candidate schools during the war; we commissioned specialists direct from civil life, and finally, gave battlefield commissions to men who displayed the ultimate requirements of an officer in being able to lead troops successfully in the face of the enemy. The war-time Officer Corps of the American Army was the best the American nation could provide. It had no artificial limitations due to race, color, or creed. Its record is one to thrill every true American. Its splendid leadership enabled our Army to defeat two of the most powerful military machines the world has ever seen. To say that some officers might have done more or done better should not be allowed to obscure the main issue.

The soldier of our citizen army recognizes his commander as one of his fellow men. He has no fear and must not be allowed to have any fear of that officer as a man, no feeling of inferiority toward him as a citizen of this republic. The American way of life has taught each to think for himself, to be an individual, to be self-reliant. It has engendered within him the desire for success and achievement.
At the same time he has learned, from his daily contacts, to recognize intelligence and integrity and the qualities of leadership in others. He is not a follower by nature but will extend himself to the utmost for those in whom he feels he can place his trust. He knows the value of organization and of discipline.
It is out of such stuff that American armies have always been made. To the American military commander, this truth offers an opportunity and a challenge. An opportunity in that these men can, by proper leadership, be welded into an unbeatable army. A challenge in that it calls for the exercise of the highest degree of justice, imagination, and initiative to explore and develop the potentialities of the young Americans in his charge.

The education of the officer never ends. The global nature of the recent war, with its close relationships to the political, industrial, and economic life of the nation, has made plain the need for more than purely military skills and knowledge, particularly in those who are to bear responsibilities in the higher staffs, or with other Government agencies. Here again, the educational practices absorbed in the ROTC are certain to assist in the continuous broadening and growth of the individual.

I cannot close without suggesting to you a more human and more profitable employment of the qualities developed in the ROTC than mere success in battle. We have briefly surveyed the soldierly virtues that are essential to victory in war. But not yet has been solved the problem of employing those virtues, which sustain the truth that man was created in the image of God, to serve as effectively the cause of peace as the demands of war. Must we admit that only the compulsion of a common, deadly fear can produce the teamwork that is as necessary to the peaceful concert of peoples as it is to batter and crush a stubborn foe? Why is it that the demonstrated abilities of a great nation and her allies to produce the mightiest force of righteous destruction yet seen upon the earth, cannot produce an equal progress toward the heart's desire on every individual on that earth - the assurance that he may pursue his peaceful desires in tranquility and absence of fear?

The answer again is leadership, and again the answer must comprehend leadership in all walks of life, in all spheres of influence. Knowledge of the world - of other countries and peoples as well as our own, understanding of the need of strength to support good intent, and of the need for organization for the constructive work of peace. These, supported by energetic, tireless leadership, are the greatest need of a near-chaotic world.

The graduate of ROTC must acquire in his makeup the elements of mental and moral fitness, the desire to help and inspire his fellows, that will mark him for leadership in any community in this land. If he is truly trained, he will be the man to rely on - the one to respect - in danger or in calm. He is one of the great hopes of this nation - of civilization itself.

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