“Arthur,” the General admitted, “is the only one who can tolerate my singing.” Arthur learned the old army songs fast, and Mrs. MacArthur would hurry breakfast along when she heard, down the hall, the bellowed duet of “Old soldiers never dieeee—” followed by shrieks of boyish laughter. Thus the Commander in Chief of the Southwest Pacific Theater prepared for another day.
Every meal in the MacArthur household in Brisbane was prepared by Mrs. MacArthur…. It was the manifestation of this father-son relationship which caused all who knew MacArthur fully to understand his reply when informed that he had been selected as Father of the Year in 1942. For that reply exemplified the spirituality that is a part of their relationship. “By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact,” MacArthur said. “But I am prouder –infinitely prouder—to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still.”
Major Gen. Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), 99-100.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 317
