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Selference (Price-Safire) JK Contingency Statement STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT With the death of Dwight David Eisenhower, something irreplaceable has gone out of the lives of us all. General Eisenhower held a unique place in America's history, and in its heart, and in the hearts of people the world over. For a quarter of a century he spoke with a moral authority seldom equalled in American public life. This was not only because he held the nation's highest military rank and its highest civilian office, but more importantly because of the kind of a man he was. He was a man of great strength, wisdom and compassion. But it always seemed to me that two qualities stood out above all in both his public and his private life: one was an unwavering sense of duty; the other was that whatever he did, he did because he believed it was right. The measure of Dwight Eisenhower's place in history is that we have to reach back two centuries, to the first days of our Republic, to find another American who was "a citizen, first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen."