Theodore Roosevelt in his presidential address before the American Historical Association in 1912 made a ringing plea to the young historian to do be… - Samuel Eliot Morison

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Theodore Roosevelt in his presidential address before the American Historical Association in 1912 made a ringing plea to the young historian to do better: “He must ever remember that while the worst offense of which he can be guilty is to write vividly and inaccurately, yet that unless he writes vividly he cannot write truthfully; for no amount of dull, painstaking detail will sum up the whole truth unless the genius is there to paint the truth.”

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About Samuel Eliot Morison

Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic (1930) with Henry Steele Commager.

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Native Name: Samuel Morison
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Additional quotes by Samuel Eliot Morison

General Eisenhower was reluctant to exploit the Tunisian victory prematurely by moving up the Sicilian D-Day from 10 July. He decided to use the time at his disposal to capture the Italian island of Pantelleria, although his air force advisors regarded it as not worth the effort, alleging that it could easily be neutralized by air bombing. But the General wished to deny to the enemy the excellent radio direction stations on the island, use of which would have prevented tactical surprise in the forthcoming Sicilian operation; and he wanted the island as an advanced base for Allied fighter planes. The Combined Chiefs of Staff signaled permission on 13 May 1943 for Operation "Corkscrew," which did indeed draw the cork from the Sicilian bottle.

If the prospects of a Japanese victory after the loss of Saipan were hopeless, as many leaders realized, they had declined to zero by December 1944, when the Great Battle for Leyte Gulf had been lost, Leyte itself overrun, and the Japanese merchant navy reduced to a mere skeleton. But Japan, by virtue of her traditions, her victorious past, her no-surrender psychology, and other factors in the national make-up, was unable as yet to make a conciliatory move. Some of her leading militarists still entertained the vain hope that the Western Allies would lose heart over the great expenditure of life necessary to carry the war into the home islands of Japan, and be the first to cry, "Let us have peace!"

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If victory over Japan meant anything beyond a change in the balance of power, it meant that eternal values and immutable principles, which had come down to us from ancient Hellas, had been reaffirmed and reestablished. Often these principles are broken, often these values are lost to sight when people are struggling for survival; but to them man must return, and does return, in order to enjoy his Creator's greatest gifts- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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