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emergency, for have we not seen what happened to countries that were not
alert, that had failed to be prepared, that sought to avoid the honorable de-
fense of their possessions?

Almost alone of all the peoples of the world, America and the other English-
speaking nations retain the rights and privileges that true Democracy insures.
This Democracy finds its truest expression here in the United States, where
more than a century and a half of the enjoyment of individual liberties has de-
veloped a Nation so grounded in the traditions of freedom that it never will
permit itself to be beaten into submission by any foreign power.

Herr Hitler may rant as he will, but, as President Roosevelt has so well
declared, "the important question in this conflict will be, who fired the last
shot?" And America for all its love of peace, for all the differences of opinion
that now becloud the important issues of the moment, will not, and cannot
afford to, permit that final shot to be fired from a German gun.

Every fibre of our national being rebels at the thought of an American
dominated by the Nazi ideology. The free, courageous stride of the pioneers
who dared, and toiled, and fought to build the America we now call home, will
never degenerate into the goose-step of Nazi domination. Patrick Henry's
historic plea, "Give me liberty, or give me death, " rings with even truer force
today than it did in Colonial times, because the subjugation threatened by the
Nazi militarists is so infinitely more loathsome to people who have known free-
dom than any tyranny ever practiced on our Colonial ancestors by their rulers
across the sea.

No! Those who would gloss over the tragic record of Hitler's broken
promises to Belgium, to Greece and to all the hapless countries his legions
later overran, and who would have us bargain with him in an effort to secure
German assurance that we will not be attacked, might just as well try to bar-
gain with the mad dog that runs amuck down the street. For Hitler's way of
life is so completely opposed to the free American way of life that we know, the
two could never exist side by side in the world. And Hitler knows it!

Ours is a national creed of hope and of opportunity! Hitler can survive
only as long as he retains full control over the minds and the actions of his
subjects! And he can never be sure of this while the torch of American liberty
gleams in the sky, for all the world to see.

Our course, therefore, is plain for all to see, we must plan, and work, in
unity of national spirit, to give every possible aid to those who are bearing the
brunt of saving the world from Hitlerism today. And we must be ready, pre-
pared to the hilt to resist any aggressive assaults, steady and courageous of
soul to withstand anything, everything, rather than to lose our priceless liberty.