Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the 50th Anniversary of the Leyte Landing, Philippine Liberation Campaign

[Delivered in MacArthur Park, Palo, Leyte, Philippines, October 20, 1994]

Beyond war: peace,
prosperity, fraternity

THE DEEDS of the men and women from many countries who fought on this battleground of the brave need little elaboration—only our commitment to their cause—half a century after the event.

We celebrate this fiftieth anniversary of the Allied landing on Leyte—more for our own sake than for theirs. Their work is done; their heroism is secure; their place in history is recognized. And, save for the few who are here with us, the record of their lives is fully written.

Day of rejoicing

Their memory is part of what we—Filipinos, Americans, Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders, Chinese, Indians, Canadians, Koreans, Mexicans, Indonesians, Thais, French, Russians, Singaporeans, Vietnamese and those from Papua New Guinea and Myanmar—own together as our legacy from those brave warriors who struggled here years ago.

This day—fifty years ago—was a day of rejoicing for our people who were thrilled by General Douglas MacArthur’s declaration, “People of the Philippines, I have returned.” That ringing statement was a fitting fulfillment to his pledge—”I shall return”—as he escaped to Australia just before Bataan and Corregidor fell to the Japanese forces.

The Filipinos remembered that pledge in their hearts. They kept the faith throughout the Occupation as resistance fighters. Here in the Leyte area the guerrillas were under Colonel Ruperto K. Kangleon.

General MacArthur was said to have three “K’s” during the Leyte landings—Vice Admiral Kinkaid, Lieutenant General Krueger, and Air Force Commander Kenney. He actually had four—the fourth being Kangleon, a native of Leyte and a highly decorated hero who was one of my distinguished predecessors as Secretary of National Defense.

Kangleon’s Leyte area command gave MacArthur up-to-the-minute intelligence on enemy ship movements, the weather and minefields—intelligence that greatly minimized Allied casualties.

The same story was replicated by similar guerrilla units in other parts of the country as the Allied forces landed on other shores—Mindoro, Lingayen Gulf, Batangas and later Tagaytay Ridge and Corregidor by parachute.

In commemorating the Leyte Gulf landings, we not only honor our veterans, the resistance-movement heroes and our Allied comrades. We also pay homage to the auxiliaries and support groups and numerous civilians who also played some role in liberating our country and in securing for Filipinos an enduring tradition of freedom and democracy.

No distinction between winners and losers

We celebrate this historic anniversary without distinguishing between the victors and the vanquished. In the spirit of reconciliation, friendship and international cooperation, we leave the past behind us as we move forward—with joined hands—to attain peace for all mankind.

We are honored by the participation of our guests from Australia, China, Canada, France, India, Korea, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, New Zealand, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam—whose presence here exemplifies their spirit of cooperation and goodwill toward the Philippines, and among the nations of the world.

It is we, the living—who still must account for our lives—who need example and inspiration from those who met on this beach, at the beginning of the Philippine liberation campaign, fifty years ago.

Up to now, the story of man’s life on earth has largely been a story of wars. “History is a bath of blood,” wrote the philosopher William James.

Our century—in particular—has been a century of war. For the first time, war was fought on a global scale—and twice in one generation.

No wonder, then, that the survivors of those two world wars were the first generation of leaders to try to put an end to war, by the creation of the United Nations.

Over these past few years—after the end of the Cold War—the promise of enduring global peace has crept up on us and has, indeed, become an attainable reality.

We have returned: the practical dividends of peace

Here in the Philippines—for the first time in a generation—we have forged a society pursuing this ideal of enduring peace through a comprehensive peace process. Our contending groups have moved their conflict from the killing zones to the negotiating table.

The beginnings of political stability have enabled the Philippines to make a dramatic economic recovery. We see the promise not just of growth, but of sustained progress and sustainable development.

In many real life aspects, the Philippines has also returned. Our economic turnaround, the social reforms we have begun, and the renewed attention by our friends and well-wishers around the world have restored our beloved Philippines—no longer a sick man but a vigorous competitor—to its rightful place in the community of progressive nations in which each Filipino can hold his or her head high.

Peace is good in itself; but it has practical dividends for us as well—in economic growth and social development.

Slowly we have come to realize how economic growth can make countries not just richer but safer. We have seen how force and the threat of arms—as the arbiter of relationships between nations—can give way to the more benign regime of mutual benefit and a common vision of the future.

In fact, for the democracies of Western Europe and the Americas, war has become outmoded as an instrument of competition.

Of course, where there has been little or no growth, and even less development—as in unhappy Central Africa—”the condition of man” still is “a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” This we do not want to happen in our region—not in our region of Asia-Pacific, not anywhere in our world of the twenty-first century.

A need for modem-day heroes

The challenge facing us today is our need for modern-day heroes. While much has been accomplished, much more needs to be done.

We need modem-day heroes in our continuing battle against poverty.

We need modem-day heroes in our continuing battle against corruption and selfishness.

We need modem-day heroes in our continuing battle against lawlessness and injustice.

We need modem-day heroes in our continuing battle against apathy and mediocrity.

Our nations today do not need warrior-heroes, but plain everyday people who will respond to their social consciences and take up their share of civic responsibility.

The ultimate test of any human society is the way it treats the poorest groups in the population—and we must not fail this test of governance and compassion.

In a world that has made war obsolete, we must still wage its moral equivalent against the poverty, the injustice, the inequity that until now oppresses so many of our peoples.

And this is not as easy as it may seem.

To die for one’s country takes only one decision. To live with civic responsibility means innumerable small decisions—to obey the law even when no one is watching; to pay the right taxes even when a friendly examiner is at hand; to use one’s vote seriously, even when the temptations for vote-selling abound.

It can be heroic, at every juncture, to choose the public interest above our own.

And to do so can call up from within us all the spiritual energy, all the strength of character, all the “strenuous honor” that only deadly combat of the likes of the Second World War is supposed to summon from within every man.

We can all be modern-day heroes if we focus our energies to do battle against the sinister forces that block our march toward progress and development.

The spirit of fraternity

Beyond peace, the ending of war should also enable us to pursue the spirit of fraternity which alone can reconcile our conflicting democratic ideals of “liberty” and “equality.”

Only through such spirit of fraternity—the consciousness of community beyond personal interests—can we discover our common purposes as nations and aspirations as human beings.

And it is this sense of fraternity of free peoples that advances the cause of freedom and democracy in the world.

This century now ending saw the first—and in my view the last—of the global wars.

Thanks to the courage and self-sacrifice of the warriors whose deeds on these beaches half a century ago we commemorate today we can hope—justifiably—that this dawning new century will see lasting peace established for the first time on a worldwide scale.

For the first time, mankind can look forward to living in a condition of peace that is more than just a breathing spell between wars.

In this spacious horizon of enduring peace, our celebrations today do not distinguish on which side the people gathered here from many nations fought then.

The only thing that matters is that, today, we are all on the same side: we are all on the side of peace—bound no longer by the balance of terror and the discipline of command but by the attraction of mutual benefit and mankind’s sustained development.

Finally—let me give a special welcome to my fellow veterans and soldiers who are here: we are brothers in the fraternity of those who have walked through the valley of the shadow of death—yet feared no evil, being comforted by his rod and his staff.

Let us seek peace and make it endure—not so much for ourselves as for the sake of those who shall come after us.