It is with feelings of the deepest humility and the greatest gratification that I accept this high honor from your hands today. My feeling of humility arises from the fact that all of those things for which you are honoring me were really the products of a vast force, not only the Allied force that I was privileged to lead into Europe, but of all the democratic peoples behind it that contributed by their work and their sacrifice to our final victory.

My great pride arises from the fact that his honor comes to me from an old, ancient, proud university of Europe, situated in a country which stands high in the affections of my own country and of all democratic people everywhere, and which has established a record in this war that, according to its history, is worthy to rank with any other. Your own University, twice within our own lifetime, has been subjected to the horrors of an occupying force. It has never wavered in its adherence to truth and in that was one great obstacle that Hitler and his predecessors could not overcome. Dictatorships are based and founded upon falsehood and deceit; truth, in the long run, will always defeat. It was around truth that the peoples of the world rallied to defeat Hitler.

The position of Louvain University in all this has been a leader in those matters of the spirit that have achieved even this military victory. In the years to come institutions such as yours will have an even greater responsibility , as I see it. This war has seen advances in science that are so great that they stagger the imagination of man in his effort to control them and devote them to his usefulness rather than his destruction. Only objective education, through leaders who are concerned with the rise of man and with the Christian principles on which all true democracy is based, can help us point the way.

In the years to come Louvain University will be one of the leaders in this effort and I am exceedingly proud that my name may forever be associated with that University. I thank you again for allowing me to serve as a symbol for all those soldiers, sailors and airmen in receiving the honor that you have conferred upon me today.