 Throughout its history, the United States Army has been what the crisis of the times demanded it to be. It has, in varying periods, been rough and primitive and aggressive. When it could do no other, it has stood in the mud and fought for victory. When the only skills that counted were doggedness and daring, the Army applied them and wrote new pages of its triumphant story. Today, the complexities of the modern age demand of the Army a posture and a composition substantially different from those which have marked it in the past. And the Army, as it has always responded to the challenges of the times, has responded no less to this one. Today's modern Army is a carefully honed, thoroughly skilled, balanced force, essential to the security of the United States. Tailored to fight and win a modern war, and thus one of the nation's most effective deterrents to war. This state of being did not just happen, many men have contributed to it. But since the creation of the National Security Act in 1947, which coincided with the beginning of the modern Army as we know it, four men have held down the role of top soldier, the awesomely demanding job of chief of staff, the state of the Army today can be in great part attributed to the mark made upon the times in which we live by these four leaders. An official report produced for the armed forces and the American people. Now to show you part of the big picture, here is Sergeant Stuart Queen. The chief of staff of the United States Army is defined by law as the principal military advisor to the president and the joint chiefs of staff. On matters relating to the Army. His office is the command post for all Army operations. Over this desk daily pass communications and decisions which are part of the unceasing story of the nation's effort to preserve peace by making the prospect of war unprofitable for any aggressor. Today the big picture camera focuses on the men who have occupied this desk. And the problems they have faced as they have shaped the Army into the organization it is today. The men who have worn the proud title of top soldier. The Army has always had a top soldier. General Washington was the first. Only the office was called General and Chief then as it was until the beginning of this century. The 1900s have seen some powerful and dynamic chiefs of staff including Peyton C. March who guided the overall destinies of the Army during the first World War. And General John J. Pershing who succeeded him. Douglas MacArthur who was perhaps the best known chief of staff between the two World Wars. George C. Marshall whose global responsibilities were greater than those of any chief before him. Dwight D. Eisenhower who became the first Army chief of staff in the post World War two period. And Omar Bradley who was the last chief of staff before the enactment of the National Security Act. During World War two the military staffs of the United States and Great Britain had worked together to plan the war in the western theater. After the war our own military chiefs continued to work together as the joint chiefs of staff. Congress officially gave legal status to the joint chiefs operating under the Department of Defense in the National Security Act. When the office of chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was created the job of Army chief of staff went to the man who was then serving as vice chief. General J. Lawton Collins. Collins picked up the nickname Lightning Joe when he commanded the 25th Division in its position as spearhead of the attack which drove the Japanese off Guadalcanal in 1943. In June 1944 General Collins was commanding the 7th Corps which landed in Normandy on D-Day. The 7th Corps captured Sherbourg. It was General Collins who turned the city over to the French. Collins 7th Corps led the attack of the 1st Army which made the break out from San Lowe. His reputation as a brilliant fighter and tactician was made and it grew through the war. When he became the first chief of staff to operate in the new era the problems confronting him were many. The armed forces had demobilized at a pale male pace after World War two. Collins began an earnest effort to beef up Army strength with the forceful reserve program. Unification of the armed forces was still a new and relatively untried concept. Collins was the first of the post-war chiefs of staff to have to fight to preserve a note of reality in the face of a growing and unrealistic idea that somehow war could now be fought and won without recourse to ground combat. At the same time he spelled out a philosophy of inter-service cooperation to which all chiefs of staff since him have adhered. We are pro-air force and pro-navy. Because the Army is dependent to a large degree on both of these great services in playing its own role in defense of our nation. Just as each of them in turn is dependent upon the Army. While I've always held that one of the major lessons to be learned from the past war is the tremendous importance of air power. I think that there is an even greater lesson and that is this. That no single service can achieve victory alone. This can be done only by a team of Army, Navy and Air Force working together on the unified direction and control. Collins had been in office little more than a year when the United Nations voted to halt the aggressive push of the North Korean communists into free South Korea. The agony of those first weeks went badly outnumbered American troops fought desperately to maintain their hold in the perimeter around Busan provided all the proof that was needed of his belief that a weakened Army could mean only danger to the nation. Collins kept in close and frequent contact with the fighting in Korea. And at home he pressed his program to increase the Army's strength not only in numbers but in weapons as well. When General Collins retired as chief of staff in 1953 not all the problems he had seen in the course of his tour of duty were solved by any means. But there was now at least a deep awareness in the nation's mind that wars are still fought on the ground and a growing awareness that a strong Army is essential to the nation's security. Collins was succeeded in the office of chief of staff by a West Point classmate class of 1917, General Matthew B. Ridgway. Ridgway's command during World War II was the 82nd Airborne Division. He parachuted with them into Normandy. Later he commanded the 18th Airborne Corps in a number of vital engagements. Ridgway first burst on the national consciousness however in December 1950 when he was selected to command the beleaguered 8th Army in Korea after the death of General Walton Walker. His dashing presence and fighting spirit infused heart into the troops in Korea at a time they sorely needed it. He succeeded General MacArthur as commander in chief of the Far East Command. In this capacity he was host in Japan for the dignitaries who officiated at the signing of the peace treaty which officially ended our World War II hostilities with Japan. He initiated the truce talks with the enemy forces in Korea and visited the site of the talks many times. He maintained an official calm despite harassment and provocation from the communists. He was a tough fighter but he was also an idealist and he stirred the heart of an entire army with his memorable statement on the principles for which Americans were fighting in the ravaged and desolate land of Korea. The real issues he sent are whether the power of western civilization as God has permitted it to flower in our own beloved lands shall defy and defeat communism. Whether the rule of man who shoot their prisoners, enslave their citizens and derive the dignity of man shall displace the rule of those to whom the individual and his individual rights are sacred. Whether we are to survive with God's hand to guide and lead us or to perish in the dead existence of a godless world this has become he said and it continues to be a fight for our own freedom for our own survival in an honorable independent national existence. Ridgway took over command of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe or SHAPE from General Eisenhower in 1952. He forcefully continued the work that had been started in the building of an effective military defense in Europe. Ridgway became chief of staff in 1953. He made his case as effectively as he could for an army large enough to fulfill the global responsibilities that had been assigned to it. His contributions to the new army were many. The development of new techniques of war absorbed much of his attention. New weapons were introduced during his tenure. New equipment was developed in which he took a personal interest. But in the minds of many Ridgways remembered chiefly for his interest in the individual soldier. In an age of technology when the transition was being made from the army of the past to the army of the future Ridgway called attention time and again to the essential fact that it is the soldier himself who is the only indispensable factor in war. At no time did he state his case more forcefully than in his farewell address. As I look back upon my service it seems to me that never has the importance of the ground fighting man been greater than it is today. In the end an army can only be as good as a man who employ its weapons and make up its units. Throughout history battlefields have been littered with the machines and weapons abandoned by men who have lost the will to fight. Thus as we improve technically as we grow in strength and power we still must rely in the final analysis on our greatest strength of all. On the qualities of strong character discipline and initiative which are the traditional hallmarks of all good soldiers. This focuses the hope of victory precisely on that part of our complex powerful army of today and tomorrow where attention properly belongs. To the individual soldiers whether our army can be successful in any contest depends on him. It depends on his technical skill in handling the weapons which technology is giving us to use. It depends on his courage in the face of danger his stamina to endure the tensions of modern battle. His dedication to the defense of those God given things which bind us all together and constitute our heritage and our hope. Ridgeway's successor was another officer who had emerged from World War II as a spectacular commander of airborne troops Maxwell D. Taylor. Taylor contributed to the invasion of Italy by making his way to Rome through enemy lines 24 hours before thus helping to open the way for the attack. The 101st airborne division whose reputation became immortal on D-Day. He led them into Normandy in the pre-dawn hours of that fateful day. Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge brought new challenges to the 101st and to Taylor. Taylor who was in the United States at the time of the attack once again made his way through enemy lines to join his men and his assistant division commander General McCullough who himself became immortal through his succinct reply to the German demand for surrender. Nuts was McCullough's answer and Bastogne became a memorable chapter in the Army's history. With the end of the war Taylor became superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. His scholarly talents left their mark on that institution's educational life. And on athletics too for West Point had two successive national championship football teams during his time. Taylor left for Korea to assume command of the 8th Army early in 1953. Under him that army engaged in some of the most bitter fighting of the war. When the armistice was signed the troops Taylor commanded stood well into the enemy's territory above the 38th parallel. While he was in Korea Taylor instituted a vigorous program to build the Republic of Korea Army into a 20 division force. He supervised the return of United Nations troops who had been captured and held in communist territory. He initiated the Armed Forces Assistance to Korea program under which members of the Armed Forces contributed material assistance to the Korean people in the rebuilding of their nation. After the fighting was over he was placed in command of all ground forces in Japan, Okinawa and Korea. When Taylor became chief of staff the pattern was already established for an army smaller than any professional soldier thought wise. But he set to work in great earnest to create a power which would provide the army with a margin of superiority over any enemy despite any disparity in numbers. Under him the pandemic concept was achieved in which the division with its massed three regiment structure was transformed into a unit with five smaller hard hitting highly mobile battle groups designed to fight on any kind of battlefield atomic or conventional. Under him also the strategic army corps was born to provide a highly mobile force which could move out literally on a moment's notice to any trouble spot anywhere in the world. Taylor became known as the prophet of army modernization, new weapons which would increase the soldiers effectiveness and at the same time lighten his load provided the incentive for a gigantic research program bearing new techniques were experimented with. All research and experimentation had one aim to keep the army abreast of technologies advance to adapt itself to changing conditions in a rapidly changing world. He traveled far and often to keep in close touch with the army's activities and by the end of his tenure the modern army was considerably different from the one which had fought in World War II. Upon his retirement he addressed the Washington press corps of the country's leading newspapers symbolizing that the entire country had come to regard him as a leader of first importance and the army he had led as a vital part of the fabric of the national life. The unprecedented attendance by the National Press Club demonstrated this condition. After Taylor came the man who occupies the office of Chief of Staff today, General Lamon L. Lemnitzer. In World War II Lemnitzer served as General Eisenhower's assistant chief of staff for plans and operations for the North African campaign and later as deputy chief of staff for Mark Clark's Fifth Army. In 1951 and 1952 he commanded the Seventh Infantry Division in Korea during some of its roughest days. Later he was commander in chief of the United Nations Command in the Far East succeeding General Taylor in that post too. His interest in children became something of a legend. He and Mrs. Lemnitzer contributed to the support of orphanages in the Far East and he made close friends with the Korean people through his demonstration of sympathy and identity with their cause. He returned to the states in 1957 to take over the duties of Vice Chief of Staff. As General Taylor's chief assistant he fully embraced the cause of army modernization. To realize the capabilities inherent in land power he has said, the army must be fully modern in its weapons, its equipment, its organization, its doctrine and its outlook. He has been active in furthering the army's participation in the space age, climaxed when the army's explorer became the first rocket to successfully launch a satellite in orbit around the earth. His taking over as Chief of Staff continues a tradition and a philosophy in the best interest of not only the army but the American people as well. For his has been a voice calling sober attention to one essential fact of life today, that if the nation prepares only for a possible atomic war it does so at its peril. For in the wake of atomic deadlock limited war launched by an aggressor becomes a deadly serious possibility. A military force strong and flexible enough to fight and win any kind of war is still the only factor in which the nation can put its trust. And in such an integrated force the modern army in which General Lemnitzer and his predecessors believe and which they have worked to build is as essential as the hope for peace. Lemnitzer's is a voice too calling for unity. Under the conditions existing today he has said it is necessary for free nations to present to any aggressor the manifest ability and the clear determination to offer effective resistance to any attack which might be made upon us. Through the military capabilities of the armed forces of our nation joined with those of our allies of the free world we are working together to achieve and perfect the unity of our efforts. Unity is vital today in the words of the top soldier of the United States Army because it is an indispensable prerequisite to the achievement of power for peace. The establishment and maintenance of the strength which will give the nation its best guarantee against the outbreak of war he has said is the goal to whose attainment your armed forces are dedicating their most earnest efforts.