Softly Call The Muster, Let Comrade Answer 'Here'....

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Speech for Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College muster, April 21, 1946 This visit to Texas A&M allows me to pay a first installment on two debts, both of them long overdue. One is to acknowledge, in this Easter morning ceremony, the magnificent contribution made by your college in the gaining of the allied victory of 1945. The other is to pay tribute, through this largest of all ROTC units, to the vital role played by the entire ROTC system in that bitter moment. Through the lean years following 1918, at a time when possibility of another war seemed, to the public mind, so remote as to challenge the sanity of any individual of contrary view, the nation-wide ROTC system steadily turned out reserve officers. Between 1919 and our entry into World War II, it produced 112,000, of whom 58,000 were still on the rolls in 1941. In the early days of mobilization, when officer procurement was one of our most critical problems, we had this substantial body to employ. General Marshal called it at the time, "our principal available asset." The ROTC of this one institution furnished the Army 7,000 officers - far more than any other college. Figures - and I have already submitted you several - are sometimes more eloquent than words. No more convincing testimony could be given to the manner in which the men of Texas A&M lived up to the ideals and principles inculcated in them during their days on this campus than the simple statement that the Congressional Medal of Honor has been awarded to six former students, that 46 took part in the heroic defense of Bataan and Corregidor, and that nearly 700 are on the list of our battle dead. As one of the field commanders with whom served many of the veterans in this homecoming gathering, I can feel only a lasting admiration for the ROTC of Texas A&M. This admiration extends to the individual as well as to the institution that produced you.

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