Any man, particularly any soldier, must feel a profound sense of pride and distinction in an invitation to address a group such as you men compose. Each of you bears upon his body the permanent, honorable scars of dangerous service: service rendered in order that our great nation might continue to live according to the expressed will of its own citizens. I come here to salute you, true soldiers of freedom. I come also to pledge to you that so far as there lies within me any power to assist in eliminating from the earth the ignorance, the intolerance, the stupidity that has led nations to aggressive use of force and you men to beds of suffering, that power will always be unstintedly exerted.

In our hatred of war - in our repudiation of rule by force, which means enslavement - we still cannot forget those ennobling traits of human character which alone can carry men forward to victory, when war is thrust upon us.

Even people who have fortunately remained strangers to the terror of the diving plane, the nerve-shattering thump of bursting bombs and shells, the sickening smells, the dust, the mud, the stifling heat, the freezing cold of the battlefield, the bone-deep weariness of marching and firing and digging and crawling, the sadness of blank files in the ranks - even those that have been spared all these can sense that battles are won only by a mass manifestation of virtues we most admire in men. Courage, devotion, drive, sacrifice, discipline, optimism, mutual help, loyalty: together they mean effective teamwork.

But not yet has been solved the problem of employing these 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 of every individual on that earth - the assurance that he may pursue his peaceful desires in tranquility and absence of fear?

To this question I believe there is but one answer. It is leadership.

I do not refer exclusively to the leadership exercised by those in high places, although they must be wise, far-seeing and completely selfless. I mean, primarily, the day by day influence of all who by reason of their qualifications are entitled to be classed as leaders, regardless of race, creed, profession or standing in the social or economic world.

You men 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 on the battlefield. The issue of victory or defeat lies, finally, in their hands.

To enumerate their necessary qualifications no one could be better fitted than you that I am now facing. Through days and months of experience where real leadership was essential to success, you learned to distinguish between the true and the false, between the man who leads and the one who seeks by virtue of undeserved authority to escape his own proper share of the costs that must be paid to achieve any positive and worthwhile purpose.

You may well know that the officer who pretends to a position of human rather than of mere official superiority, who dares not test himself to the fullest before the eyes of his followers, 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.

One the other hand, you likewise know that the commander who shares, naturally and unpretentiously in every problem of the group, whether in bivouac or on the battlefield, who gains the confidence of his men and gives to them his own, who shares with them every vicissitude 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 to them, and who expresses in every word and deed his pride of belonging to the whole, invariably gains for himself the greatest reward that can come to any man.

This reward is the respect, esteem and love of those with whom he is privileged to associate. Moreover, his is an elite unit, whether designed for destruction of the enemy or constructive work in the ordinary processes of peace. Such a man is 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.

These truths have a direct application to the future of you men here before me. Both by force of circumstances and by individual fitness you will be persons of influence. The visible evidence of your physical suffering makes you also a marked man in the automatic respect and dignity that will be accorded your words by others who have not undergone the trials of the battlefield. What you have to say will be listened to attentively because all the world acknowledges the dignity of sacrifice. Moreover, your presence in this university is evidence that you have flatly declined to accept varying degrees of physical disablement as a serious blight upon your future. You have thus demonstrated certain essential qualifications of leadership, including self-reliance, optimism and definite refusal to admit defeat.
Thus there extends before you widened responsibility to which you will bring already demonstrated qualities of leadership, qualities ripened and matured both in battle and in the classrooms of this university.

You will serve in many places and, eventually, in many varieties of useful activity. But underneath all differences in daily preoccupations is one common objective toward which you can work effectively. That is a safe and enduring and democratic peace for all the world. Unless this great country of ours with its almost limitless potential remains a leader in this effort, success will elude us. This means, in turn, that you, who best understand the terrible alternative, must exert yourselves ceaselessly in this effort.

You will stand for cooperation as against domination and you know that cooperation implies readiness to give as well as to receive, to help with your full strength another from whom you in turn expect the help of his full strength. We must deal with those who do not well understand us, just as we do not fully understand them. We must work with those who view our motives with suspicion as we are suspicious of their intent. To achieve true concert of action these finally must be eliminated. The prospect may at times seem dark, but discouragement must not paralyze your efforts. If our country is to do all of which it is capable in the problem of promoting peace, it must be always ready to cooperate in solving the problems that beset us all. One of these is to protect the peace, our own peace and that of others that look to us for leadership. Until the world is ready completely to repudiate force as a means of settling international difficulty, our country must be strong in those processes by which force is represented. We must feel secure, else fear will warp our own judgment and, externally, reduce our influence to futility.

Our Armies, our Navies, our Air Forces, in fact our whole citizenry, must always be ready to uphold against any apparent threat, principles that we believe to be right – almost sacred. But as the certainty of security for those principles progressively develops, we, like all others, must hasten to keep in step therewith, so that a diminishing portion of our labor and our wealth will be devoted to security organizations and their essentially negative purposes.

You men, and others like you throughout our country, are equipped to lead toward this goal. With your knowledge of war you will fight the indifference, the blind complacency, the sheer selfish laziness that more than once have permitted war to burst upon us. With your keen insight into the responsibilities of leadership, your understanding that the only true privilege of the leader is the opportunity to serve his fellows, you will bring under your banner a constantly increasing army determined, with you, to win the peace. With the qualifications of patience, endurance, determination and optimism you have so clearly displayed, you will let no set-back, no discouragement diminish the effectiveness of your efforts. Before you is an opportunity – a challenge to your leadership. You have proved your ability to seize the one and to meet the other.

Some of you I had the great privilege of serving with in Europe. Others of you served our flag in the far Pacific and here at home. All of you have a definite investment of time, effort and of sacrifice in the future of our country. The glorious victory you hammered out will become still more so as, through your leadership, men everywhere can believe that you and your Allies have won the last victory which need be attained through the suffering and slaughter of men.

I congratulate American University upon having had in its student body this group of disabled veterans; I congratulate you men upon your battle and your scholastic records. More than this, I believe that your future lives in the cause of promoting understanding, forbearance, and tolerance among nations, will be of far greater value to your country than have even your past achievements, to which all of us pay tribute.

To each of you I say from the heart – Good Luck, may God go with you.