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Today we celebrate a hero of three nations- Lithuania, Poland and the United States. Tadeusz Kosciusko was a brilliant military engineer, who constructed impenetrable fortifications to defend America’s freedom, and this place, West Point, is a testimony to his engineering talent.

He was a true and inspirational leader, admired by general and soldier alike, for his technical knowledge as well as for his sympathetic understanding and generosity;  and a great military commander, capable of repelling  a numerically superior enemy and defeating  professional Russian soldiers, although his troops were only scythe-wielding  serfs.

He was a great and caring human being, a firm believer in freedom and equality, and a devoted champion of the poor and the oppressed. Tadeusz Kosciusko sought to liberate his country as well as those most underprivileged – the Jews, the peasants, and the slaves.

General Nathanael Greene wrote of him: “Nothing could exceed his zeal for the public service…. What besides greatly distinguished him was an unparalleled modesty and entire unconsciousness of having done anything extraordinary. Never making a claim or pretension for himself and never omitting to distinguish and commend the merits of others”.

As President Thomas Jefferson said of Kosciuszko: "He is as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known." And also, "From one man we can have but one life…. and you gave us the most valuable and active part of yours, and we are now enjoying and improving its effects... ….The effusion of friendship and my warmest toward you which not time will alter. Your principles and dispositions were made to be honored, revered and loved. True to a single object, the freedom and happiness of man”...

A man beholden by a sacred sense of duty, Kosciuszko himself had written to a friend:” On ourselves, on our morals depends the improvement of the government. And if we are base, covetous, selfish, careless of our country, it will be just that we shall have chains on our necks, and we shall be worthy of them”.

What he possessed, are great and commendable qualities for any time and age. No wonder that Kosciuszko’s profound sense of morality  and single-minded dedication to the cause of freedom and for the bettering of the lives of others, often at the expense of his own comforts and expecting no rewards, inspired  his contemporaries and poets across Europe and the United States-  and continue to inspire us today.

I am pleased to note that on the occasion of the bicentenary of the death of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Lithuania’s parliament earlier this week called on the country’s public and municipal institutions, NGOs, and communities to celebrate his historic significance, which is universal and mobilizing our societies to further strengthen the transatlantic link.

Kosciuszko is and will remain an inspiration on both sides of the Atlantic, also because in our world today forces remain active that wage relentless attacks  against human rights and liberties; that seek to challenge our freedom and democracy, and even our very being as an independent state as steps are being taken to redraw national borders in our neighbourhood, including by naked force.  Kosciuszko may not have seen the return of freedom to his country. But freedom did come, thanks to the selfless sacrifice of many who held themselves to as high moral standards and as lofty a sense of duty as he did.  Our generation must make sure that hard- won freedom is never lost again.

Speach by Ambassador Raimonda Murmokaitė