Now nothing, it seems to me, is so valuable to a nation as the truth. All of a nation’s woes, and all the woes of those who dwell within that nation, have their rise in men’s inability to recognize the truth, or their unwillingness to tell the truth—the truth as to why wars are fought, and how they are bungled and protracted, while those who fight them lose their lives and fortunes: the truth as to why taxes are levied, and how politicians misspend them: the truth as to the pettiness and ineptitude of those who, by flattery and misrepresentation, rise to high places. Only by being told the truth can man be saved from his own follies, and from repeating in the future the insanities that in the past have brought disaster.

That is why patriotic speeches by politicians set me all a-sweat; for I saw how frequently, even in the darkest days of our rebellion, politicians placed their own small interests ahead of the truth, ahead of the army, ahead of their country—just as they always have and just as I fear they always will. That is why my gorge rises when village wiseacres deliver profound judgments on men and measures of which they know next to nothing. And that is why I find it agonizing to hear some little antimire of a man, without knowledge of how battles were fought or how our country was governed, or how America tottered for a decade on the brink of destruction, talk mighty condescending and contemptuous about Arnold; mouthing that his treachery cannot be extenuated.

Knowing Arnold, and the sort of man he was, and the battles he planned, and his hold on the hearts of those who fought under him and beside him, I have this to say, and I say it gladly. Benedict Arnold was a great leader: a great general: a great mariner: the most brilliant soldier of the Revolution. He was the bravest man I have ever known. Patriotism burned in him like an unquenchable flame. But of all his brave and patriotic deeds, the one he was surest would, in the end, be most useful to his country, was, I truly believe, the tragic step that branded him forever with the name of traitor.