Eisenhower in 1953, Peter Mulvey in 2005

Dwight Eisenhower speaking to the American Association of Newspaper Editors in 1953:


Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

And the lyrics of the beautiful song by Peter Mulvey

Abilene (The Eisenhower Waltz)
God bless you, Dwight D. Eisenhower
As I stand next to the truck stop shower
Watching our bright destiny unfold.
Now your highway rolls from here to gone
This land we’ve laid our hands upon
And sir, it is a sight just to behold.
Oh God bless you, Dwight D. Eisenhower
Though this is not our finest hour
Highwaymen have made off with your creed.
Now the band is marching no matter what
The eyes of history are shut
This is the hour of our deepest need.
And the wind howls through the fields of Abilene.
So God bless you, Dwight D. Eisenhower
As now, the youth in all their flower
Hang on the iron cross you warned us of.
And they say you wept to hang them so
You among us all might know
These things it seems we sometimes do for love.
Oh these things we do for love.

And the wind howls through the fields of Abilene.