Remarks at the Dedication Ceremony of the George C. Marshall Conference Center

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. Thank you, Henrietta for the wonderful introduction. Thank you to the members of the Marshall family for being here and to members of the Marshall Foundation Board. I want to thank you all for coming. It's certainly an honor to be here to commemorate a man who was truly America's public servant. Through multiple careers as a military officer and advisor to presidents, as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, George Marshall set an impeccable standard for service to one's nation. It's a standard that few have been able to match and so I'm very pleased to be a part of the dedication of this conference room in this lovely conference center.

I would like to thank the members of the Marshall family because it is a great pleasure for me to meet, literally, his legacy. We think about his legacy in terms of his great work, but I am quite certain that as a man, he would have thought of his family as his legacy. I want to thank too those who have been so active in keeping the Marshall story alive. That was a wonderful presentation, Dr. Bland. Thank you. I learned a great deal and I appreciate very much your being here.

It's only fitting that this dedication occurs this year. It marks the 60th anniversary of that great speech that was given at Harvard University outlining the Marshall Plan, a program of economic assistance to war-ravaged Europe. And a copy of that speech, as Henrietta says, hangs in my office today.

During his tenure as Secretary of State, Marshall developed and worked to implement the Marshall Plan from an office that's directly above where we stand right now on the fifth floor of this building. So perhaps in the literal sense, we are all standing in the shadow of Marshall's greatness today. And as we know, he won the Nobel Prize for that plan. George Marshall was also known, I'm told, for his blunt honesty and his uncanny ability to dissect and resolve even the most difficult problems. It's no wonder that another great person of that time, Bernard Baruk, dubbed him the first global strategist.

You see, he saw the world at its great potential, free of strife and poverty and heartache, a place where men and women and their children could live in peace with good jobs and good educations with food on their tables and roofs over their heads. And he saw that that shared vision for humanity was one that would be at the heart of a truly secure world. Marshall understood an enduring truth of the human condition, that we're all interconnected, that we're divided only by geography and circumstance, but that we're united in our desire for freedom and opportunity. He worked hard to help even more people realize that dream and that is why we honor him today.

The inscription on the plaque that will hang in this conference center is from a 1947 speech that Secretary Marshall gave in Boston. It reads, "It is rather trite to say that the world is now a small place, but that is the fact and what happens in distant places affects our affairs and our lives inevitably, often very quickly, and sometimes most seriously." Marshall's words were certainly true of his time, but I cannot think of more appropriate words for our time.

Today, the men and women of the State Department, Foreign Service, Civil Service, and Foreign Service Nationals are working hard each and every day in far-flung places across the globe, working as partners to foreign citizens in their fight against poverty and extremism, against injustice and intolerance. So as we dedicate this center to Secretary Marshall's lasting legacy, let us also remember those who keep his memory alive through their deeds, alive in service, to peace, and to human dignity the sense that every person deserves the great benefits of liberty that we as Americans enjoy.

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