Eisenhower, Dwight David, thirty-fourth President

Autograph letter signed ("Dad"), 5 pages (11 x 8 1/2 in.; 280 x 215 mm) on letterhead "Third Division Concentration, Camp Ord, California," to his son John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower; formerly folded.

A letter of extraordinary wisdom written to his son.

Dwight Eisenhower had, at this point in his career, returned from a post as assistant military adviser to the Philippine government, to a series of staff positions in Washington, D.C., Texas and California. The second World War had begun in Europe, but the U.S. had not yet entered, and there was passionate controversy on whether it should. His 17-year-old son John (b. 1922) was about to enter West Point, where he graduated on D-Day (6 June 1944).

Father begins by cautioning his son to filter the news: "I'm delighted to know you have your own opinions, deliberately arrived at, concerning such matters as the Far Eastern and the European struggles. However, I'd like to point out that our information concerning basic, rather than apparent, causes of these wars is most untrustworthy; so none of us can be certain that his conclusions are sound. In such cases it is more than ever necessary to combat the natural tendency to permit impulse and sentiment and prejudice to color our judgements. ... If you feel no kinship to, or any sympathy for, the British, — that's a matter of sentiment; and as such it's a settled matter so far as you are concerned. But as you expect others to respect your sentiments, you, likewise should not jeer at theirs."

He suggests that man has an ineffable, spiritual component: "Then again, you list the chemicals and elements of which man is made ... But that isn't the full answer! Suppose you take the same list and mix them together as you will; can you produce a young man, 17 years old, capable of thinking, laughing, working, struggling to realize ambitions — in short, of living? Is not a dog composed of approximately the same elements? Yet do you think that, in the higher manifestations of their accomplishments that man & the dog are to be compared? I'll admit, when I see things like are now going on in the world, that my respect for dogs as compared to man goes soaring to new heights, but dogs have not produced a Mona Lisa, a Taj Mahal, a Lincoln Memorial or a Notre Dame ... So, take all these things into consideration when you begin to consider the question of mans origin, his mission & his destiny."

Does age bring wisdom, or simply a change in opinions?: "Dont worry because age & maturity look at many things from a view point that seems to you unsound. Youth has done that, always. One of the things that makes life so intriguing is the superiority of every age. At 20 one wonders why the rest of the world doesn't get out of the way and permit the wisdom of 20 to run things; at fifty he feels exactly the same except that he adds 30 years to the ideal age. Having almost arrived at this latter age, I can realize how true this is—but I can realize too that my ideas differ radically from those I held at 20. The conclusion is inescapable that one was, or is, wrong!"

He counsels his son to be confident in his conclusions but not to "shout it from the housetops." "And above all, we must not be arbitrary and intolerant, for as surely as you find, as you will, that many of your ideas often years hence will be almost diametrically opposed to some you hold now, you will come to realize that, after all, even such smart fellows as you and I can be wrong; the other fellow might be right. Tolerance and a sense of humor are, I sometimes think, the two commodities the world is now needing most."