Remarks of Major General William Donovan at final
gathering of OSS personnel, September 24, 1945,
Washington, DC
Men and Women of OSS:
We have come to the end of an unusual experiment.
This experiment was to determine whether a group of
Americans constituting a cross-section of racial
origins, abilities, temperaments, and talents could
meet and risk an encounter with the long-established
and well-trained enemy organizations.
How well that experiment has succeeded is measured by
your accomplishments and by the recognition of your
achievements. You should feel deeply gratified by
President Truman's expression of the purpose of
basing a coordinated intelligence service upon the
techniques and resources that you have initiated and
developed.
This could not have been done if you had not been
willing to fuse yourselves into a team - a team that
was made up not only of scholars and research experts
and of the active units in operations and intelligence
who engaged the enemy in direct encounter, but also of
the great numbers of our organization who drove our
motor vehicles, kept our records and documents and
performed those other innumerable duties of
administrative services without which no organization
can succeed and which, because well done with us, made
our activities that much more effective.
When I speak of your achievements that does not mean
that we did not make mistakes. We were not afraid
to make mistakes because we were not afraid to try
things thad had not been tried before. All of us
would like to think that we could have done a better
job, but all of you must know that, whatever the errors
or failures, you have done and honest and
self-respecting job. But more that that, because
their existed in this organization a sense of
solidarity, you must also have the conviction that this
agency, in which you played a part, was an effective
force.
Within a few days each one of us will be going on to
new tasks whether in civilian life or in governmental
work. You can go with the assurance that you have
made a beginning by showing the people of America that
only by decisions of national policy based upon
accurate information can we have the chance of a peace
that will endure.
