2024年4月29日发(作者：)

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世界名人英语演讲词:麦克阿瑟将军

FarewellAddresstoCongress国会大厦告别演讲

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and Distinguished Members of the Congress:

I stand on this rostrum with a sense of deep humility and great pride --

humility in the wake of those great American architects of our history who have

stood here before me; pride in the reflection that this forum of legislative debate

represents human liberty in the purest form yet devised. Here are centered the

hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race. I do not stand here as

advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite

beyond the realm of partisan consideration. They must be resolved on the highest

plane of national interest if our course is to prove sound and our future protected.

I trust, therefore, that you will do me the justice of receiving that which I have to

say as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow American.

I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life,

with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country. The issues are global and so

interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector, oblivious to those of

another, is but to court disaster for the whole. While Asia is commonly referred to

as the Gateway to Europe, it is no less true that Europe is the Gateway to Asia, and

the broad influence of the one cannot fail to have its impact upon the other. There

are those who claim our strength is inadequate to protect on both fronts, that we

cannot divide our effort. I can think of no greater expression of defeatism. If a

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potential enemy can divide his strength on two fronts, it is for us to counter his

effort.

The Communist threat is a global one. Its successful advance in one sector

threatens the destruction of every other sector.

You can not appease or otherwise surrender to communism in Asia without

simultaneously undermining our efforts to halt its advance in Europe.

Beyond pointing out these general truisms, I shall confine my discussion to

the general areas of Asia. Before one may objectively assess the situation now

existing there, he must comprehend something of Asia’s past and the

revolutionary changes which have marked her course up to the present. Long

exploited by the so-called colonial powers, with little opportunity to achieve any

degree of social justice, individual dignity, or a higher standard of life such as

guided our own noble administration in the Philippines, the peoples of Asia found

their opportunity in the war just past to throw off the shackles of colonialism and

now see the dawn of new opportunity, a heretofore unfelt dignity, and the

self-respect of political freedom.

Mustering half of the earth’s population, and 60 percent of its natural

resources these peoples are rapidly consolidating a new force, both moral and

material, with which to raise the living standard and erect adaptations of the

design of modern progress to their own distinct cultural environments. Whether

one adheres to the concept of colonization or not, this is the direction of Asian

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progress and it may not be stopped. It is a corollary to the shift of the world

economic frontiers as the whole epicenter of world affairs rotates back toward the

area whence it started.

In this situation, it becomes vital that our own country orient its policies in

consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than pursue a course

blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet

the right to shape their own free destiny. What they seek now is friendly guidance,

understanding, and support -- not imperious direction -- the dignity of equality

and not the shame of subjugation. Their pre-war standard of life, pitifully low, is

infinitely lower now in the devastation left in war’s wake. World ideologies play

little part in Asian thinking and are little understood. What the peoples strive for is

the opportunity for a little more food in their stomachs, a little better clothing on

their backs, a little firmer roof over their heads, and the realization of the normal

nationalist urge for political freedom. These political-social conditions have but an

indirect bearing upon our own national security, but do form a backdrop to

contemporary planning which must be thoughtfully considered if we are to avoid

the pitfalls of unrealism.

Of more direct and immediately bearing upon our national security are the

changes wrought in the strategic potential of the Pacific Ocean in the course of the

past war. Prior thereto the western strategic frontier of the United States lay on the

littoral line of the Americas, with an exposed island salient extending out through

Hawaii, Midway, and Guam to the Philippines. That salient proved not an outpost

of strength but an avenue of weakness along which the enemy could and did

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attack.

The Pacific was a potential area of advance for any predatory force intent upon

striking at the bordering land areas. All this was changed by our Pacific victory. Our

strategic frontier then shifted to embrace the entire Pacific Ocean, which became a

vast moat to protect us as long as we held it. Indeed, it acts as a protective shield

for all of the Americas and all free lands of the Pacific Ocean area. We control it to

the shores of Asia by a chain of islands extending in an arc from the Aleutians to

the Mariannas held by us and our free allies. From this island chain we can

dominate with sea and air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore

-- with sea and air power every port, as I said, from Vladivostok to Singapore --

and prevent any hostile movement into the Pacific.

*Any predatory attack from Asia must be an amphibious effort.* No

amphibious force can be successful without control of the sea lanes and the air

over those lanes in its avenue of advance. With naval and air supremacy and

modest ground elements to defend bases, any major attack from continental Asia

toward us or our friends in the Pacific would be doomed to failure.

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