American Valor Quarterly Issue 6 - Spring/Summer 2009 | Page 11

mine were ever The Guildhall situation that compelled the to provisions that he trespass not upon similar rights of others – a
faced with the tragic Address
appointment of an Allied Commander-in-Chief, the capacity in Londoner will fight. So will a citizen of Abilene.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
which I have just been so extravagantly12, 1945
London - June commended.
When we consider these things, then the valley of the Thames draws
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives closer to the farms of Kansas and the plains of Texas.
acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.
To my mind it is clear that when two peoples will face the tragedies
Conceivably a commander may have been professionally superior. of war to defend the same spiritual values, the same treasured
He may have given everything of his heart and mind to meet the rights, then in the deepest sense those two are truly related. So even
spiritual and physical needs of his comrades. He may have written as I proclaim my undying Americanism, I am bold enough and
a chapter that will glow forever in the pages of military history.
exceedingly proud to claim the basis of kinship to you of London.
Still, even such a man – if he existed – would sadly face the facts And what man who has followed the history of this war could fail
that his honors cannot hide in his memories the crosses marking to experience an inspiration from the example of this city?
the resting places of the dead. They cannot soothe the anguish of
the widow or the orphan whose husband or father will not return. When the British Empire stood – alone but unconquered, almost
naked but unafraid – to deny the Hitler hordes, it was on this devoted
The only attitude in which a commander may with satisfaction city that the first terroristic blows were launched.
receive the tributes of his friends is in the humble acknowledgment
that no matter how unworthy he may be, his position is the Five years and eight months of war, much of it on the actual battlesymbol of great human forces that have labored arduously and line, blitzes big and little, flying V-bombs – all of them you took in
successfully for a righteous cause. Unless he feels this symbolism your stride. You worked, and from your needed efforts you would
and this rightness in what he has tried to do, then he is disregardful not be deterred. You carried on, and from your midst arose no
of courage, fortitude and devotion of the vast multitudes he has cry for mercy, no wail of defeat. The Battle of Britain will take its
been honored to command. If all Allied men and women that have place as another of your deathless traditions. And your faith and
served with me in this war can only know that it is they whom this endurance have finally been rewarded.
august body is really honoring today, then indeed I will be content.
You had been more than two years in war when Americans in
This feeling of humility cannot erase of course my great pride in numbers began swarming into your country. Most were mentally
being tendered the freedom of London. I am not a native of this unprepared for the realities of war – especially as waged by the
land. I come from the very heart of America. In the superficial Nazis. Others believed that the tales of British sacrifice had been
aspects by which we ordinarily recognize family relationships, the exaggerated. Still others failed to recognize the difficulties of the
town where I was born and the one where I was reared are far task ahead.
separated from this great city. Abilene, Kansas, and Denison, Texas,
would together equal in size, possibly one five-hundredth of a part All such doubts, questions, and complacencies could not endure a
of great London.
By your standards those towns are young, without your
aged traditions that carry the roots of London back into the
uncertainties of unrecorded history. To those people I am
proud to belong.

Eisenhower Presidential Museum

But I find myself today five thousand miles from that
countryside, the honored guest of a city whose name stands
for grandeur and size throughout the world. Hardly would it
seem possible for the London council to have gone farther
afield to find a man to honor with its priceless gift of token
citizenship.
Yet kinship among nations is not determined in such
measurements as proximity of size and age. Rather we should
turn to those inner things – call them what you will – I mean
those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess.
To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before
law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit, subject only

Eisenhower speaks from the balcony at Mansion House following the Guildhall Address on June 12, 1945. Among the honors bestowed on him that
day was the Freedom of the City of London, the highest honor the city can

AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY - Spring/Summer 2009 - 12