634 State Papers and Addresses

It is precisely here that the strategic importance of Baltimore County's
vast war industries becomes; apparent. We have the man power and the cour-
age and the daring necessary to win through to victory. Time and again it has
been shown that plane for plane, and man for man, American fighters are more
than a match for the only foes we have come into actual contact with up to now,
on land and in the air, the Japs. •

That we are suffering continued reverses in the Far Eastern area, is the
result solely of our inability to place at the scene of fighting, the planes and
tanks and anti-aircraft guns and fighting ships that Japan has opposed to us
in overwhelming numbers.

To you leaders of business and industry in this particular section of the
County, therefore, I can only say that if your thinking has not been adjusted
solely on the basis of all-out production for victory, you had better so adjust
it quickly. If you are not convinced completely that everything must yield
before the demands of defense production, you are not yet in tune with the
tempo of this fast-moving war. There is no telling what changes you still may
have to make in the hitherto orderly processes of your lives, all for the one
purpose of speeding war production. There is no telling what conveniences and
what every-day necessities in the way of food, clothing, and house furnishings
you may further have to do without, in the interest of supplying our Army and
Navy with the implements they need.

No one, of course, can evaluate the importance of the battle of production
as well, perhaps, as the heroic forces of Americans and Filipino soldiers that
withstood the Japs so many weeks under the superb leadership of General
Douglas MacArthur. If they could have immediately at their disposal even one
week's supply of the fighting planes, the ammunition, and the other vital neces-
sities of war produced in Baltimore County alone, it would make all the dif-
ference in the world to them.

I am sure, however, that the thousands of men who are assembling the
planes, or building the ships, that one day may save these embattled forces, or
ether American lives, are putting into their efforts more energy and more care
than they have ever done with anything they produced. Because, unquestion-
ably, they realize what their efforts may mean some day to some Americans,
somewhere. For it may well be a brother, a son, or even a husband, whose
life may be saved by these Baltimore County products.

Here let it be said that, undoubtedly, every red-blooded American was
happy to learn yesterday that General MacArthur had arrived in Australia to
assume supreme command of the United Nations forces in that area. He is
too true a symbol of the American will-to-fight, of American courage and de-
termination and resourcefulness, to have been allowed to be sacrificed in a trap,
when there were opportunities of such vast scope elsewhere for his remarkable
qualities of leadership and planning.

We may be sure that, as the reports indicate, he did not leave his en-
trenched forces on Bataan Peninsula until he felt assured that everything pos-
sible to insure their continuing defense had been done. Certain it is that his
arrival in Australia gave a tremendous "lift" to the morale not only of our