656 State Papers and Addresses

have out-fought the adversary, they have been out-gunned and at a disadvan-
tage in numerical strength and air support.

That is why we have lost battles. That is why we have given ground. That
is why we have gone from bad to worse, and may continue going in that
direction through the weeks ahead. Why? The reason is clear enough, and it
is all too seldom set forth in. plain language.

Look back over the past ten years. During that period the American Gov-
ernment has been bending its every energy toward humanitarian endeavors.
The American Government has spent millions to exterminate poverty. It has
poured other millions into education, into soil conservation, into the elimination
of city slums. It has done so because, the people of America felt that it was a
function of Government to look to the physical and spiritual needs of the
individual. I wonder if there is a better explanation of war aims than in these.
facts. Are we not fighting so that civilization may have the opportunity of
saving these gains and making further improvement?

But in the last ten years or more, how have our enemies conducted their
affairs? While we in America pursued a program of self-improvement, the
youth of Germany and Japan were being taught the arts of slaughter and con-
quest. While we built reservoirs against flood-control, the Axis was storing up
gun-fodder to feed its fierce and savage gods of destruction. While we built
roads, they built guns. While we reforested, they rearmed.

Is it any wonder then, that in the first few months of war, these war-geared
nations should have the advantage in numbers and materials?

Is it any wonder that peoples, whose younger generations have been
brought up to glorify war and all its bloody savagery, could do the terrible
things our Axis enemies have done and are doing, and will do to us unless we
destroy them first?

Our military authorities warn that right here in our very midst saboteurs
are ready in large numbers to undertake against us, when the time is ripe, the
type of destruction and defeatism practiced so successfully in all the
conquered countries of Europe prior to actual invasion. As the military authori-
ties point out, we have difficulty now in recognizing these potential saboteurs.
We don't know what key place they may occupy in industry or in governmental
life. We cannot be sure that our Army, Navy, Police, or other uniformed
forces are free of their activities. All we can be sure of, these responsible
authorities tell us, is that acts of sabotage will occur, possibly on a broadly
planned scale, to come at a time when our protective forces may be engaged
elsewhere and thus are not immediately available.

Despite this, despite what has happened in all the conquered countries, we
hear today many appeals, some of them undoubtedly from well-intentioned
persons, who ask that we go about this war job meekly, lest we engender hate
among our people for the peoples of the countries with which we are locked in
bitter conflict. It is the Axis leaders who are to blame, they would tell us—not
the people themselves.