The Surrender of Japan
by: Douglas A. MacArthur
Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended.The skies no longer rain death-the seas bear only commerce-men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world lies reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips forever stilled in the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way.
To the Pacific basin has come the vista of a new emancipated world. Today, freedom is an offensive, democracy is on the march. Today, in Asia as well as in Europe, unshackled peoples are tasting the full sweetness of liberty, the relief from fear.
As I look back on the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor when an entire world lives in fear, when democracy was on the defense everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balanced, I thank a merciful God that He has given us the faith, the courage and the power from which to mould victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.
No comments:
Post a Comment