MacArthur: The solitude of leadership

August 8, 2013

General Douglas MacArthur

[D]espite the companionship of his closest staff members, MacArthur was always alone, in the sense that any supreme commander is always thrown upon his own resources. After all the discussions and the reports and the advice, there is only one man who can make the decisions on which he will act and on which will depend victory or defeat. Only one man holds the responsibility, and that is the supreme commander….

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At Port Moresby his aides would wake in the night and hear his familiar pacing stride on the veranda below as he communed with himself and his God, making some decision that could shorten the war by months—or prolong it by even more.

 

Major Gen. Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 97.

Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 306

 

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