Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

Remarks at the Department of State 1954 Honor Awards Ceremony

October 19, 1954

Mr. Secretary and friends:

In his opening remarks the Secretary wall described my relationships with this great group, both with the Foreign Service and with the State Department civil personnel. So you can understand why I feel that this is a family gathering. I feel it keenly, and hope you do the same, because you are the people that execute a responsibility that is laid upon me by our Constitution--the responsibility for the foreign affairs of our country.

You are, of course, in carrying this responsibility, concerned with promoting the prosperity and happiness and well being of the United States, through solidifying those relations with other nations that will be helpful in this regard.

Now this can be done only in peace. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world. I often recall an argument I got into once with a foreign diplomat. He was a member of the British Foreign Office. And he was very worried about the arrangement that had been made to place the control of Germany temporarily in the hands of soldiers. He thought--and I don't know why--that those war-weary soldiers would be too anxious to start a war, and finally in rather resentful disgust I said to him, "My friend, I would like for you to know that the soldier has only one excuse for living in this world, and that is to regain the peace that you diplomats lost in the first place."

Now the reason I bring this up is that even if there was a modicum of truth in what I said then, there no longer is. The soldier can no longer regain a peace that is usable to the world. I believe that the best he could do would be to retain some semblance of a tattered nation in a world that was very, greatly in ashes and relics of destruction. But possibly he could keep us from immediate and complete domination by some outside force. That would be a poor climate in which to start again the development of a peace. Certainly it would be a far worse opportunity than we now have.

The reason I paint this little picture--even in a sort of digression--is this: we have glorious opportunity ahead of us. Because we have opportunity in a world that has not yet suffered that kind of destruction--pray God must not suffer that kind of destruction.

In these halting words, and with these halting examples, I am trying to impress upon you my opinion of the importance of your work. There is no task facing the world today so important as maintaining a peace and giving to the world confidence that that peace will be just and lasting.

That is the measure of what you people and those like you--those above you and those below you--in these services, must do for America.

Now, some among you today are being rewarded for unusual service. I have been a party to such ceremonies in the military service many times during my lifetime. They reward for courage, unusual ability and devotion and dedication, just as do you people. And I remind you that in my conviction your work is now more important than theirs. But I want to bring out another point. Those experiences I had in the military service convinced me that the gradations in character among the different services, is often difficult to determine. We select one man for a decoration and then another man is not selected. And yet the second man may have faced hardships, dangers, and privation. But you can say, well if this service is not rewarded what shall we do? I think you can only remind yourself of the words on the Iwo Jima Statue, "Uncommon Courage Was a Common Virtue."

So these people, as they come up to be decorated, will be representative of each of you. Each of you will at least vicariously and in some small part be a recipient of that same award. By the same token, one day, undoubtedly, you will be standing there to receive a token that will be representative of the work of a great body. Because only as we think of it in that way, only as we work together from top to ,bottom, only as we give loyalty and not jealousy and envy, only as we cling together secure in our confidence that we are dedicated to the great ideals of Americanism, justice and decency and fair play--even for those with whom we are dealing, sometimes, at swords-points, across the distances of an ocean-only as we do that can we be truly successful.

If there is any organization that should have the highest morale based firmly in its own convictions, as to the importance of its work, the necessity for successful accomplishment regardless of what critic or opponent may say, a morale based in that high belief in a cause, then that should be the Foreign Service and the State Department--as, indeed, I believe it is.

So you can understand something of the happiness I feel when I gather here with you to witness the decoration of a few among you who, standing as symbols for all, will exemplify and typify the appreciation that your country feels toward them--and each.

Thank you very much.

Note: The ceremony was held in Constitution Hall.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Remarks at the Department of State 1954 Honor Awards Ceremony Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/232841

Filed Under

Categories

Attributes

Location

Washington, DC

Simple Search of Our Archives