of Governor Herbert R. O'Conor 659

optimism. We have been told again and again that the way to victory and
salvation is going to be torturous, dark and fraught with danger and death.
We should thank our leaders for their candor—for their open confidence in the
ability of free men to know and to face the truth.

Nor have our leaders—civil or military—Roosevelt or MacArthur—ever for
a moment left us in doubt as to the final outcome.. Men who see this bitter
picture in its entirely—in its vast world-wide immensity—know that whatever
the cost, whatever the length of the struggle, it can have but one result—that
of a righteous triumph over the powers of evil.

We accept that proposition, unwelcome though it is, with complete faith
that the better things will be there for us at the end.

It has been said in public places—even in the Halls of Congress—that we
ought to reinforce those islands and rescue our forces along with their valiant
Filipino allies.

But stop and think. How long, let us ask, could the British Island of
Bermuda hold out if the United States happened to fling an undeclared war
against England. The situation (unthinkable, but useful for demonstration
purposes) would be the exact parallel with what goes on in the Pacific. Could
England, do you think, reinforce Bermuda against the entire might of the Amer-
ican fleet—against the swarms of airplanes and parachutists!—that we could
send from our adjacent shore bases? If we took less than four days to capture
the island, we should rightly feel that we had done very badly indeed. Yet the
battle of the Philippines has lasted over four months! It has cost Japan thou-
sands of tons of shipping, thousands of lives in battle, the using up of uncount-
able stores of ammunition, and the death by suicide of a General. And still
the fight goes on, every hour of every day adding to the wonder of the world
that, as MacArthur said of the Bataan defense, an army can "do so much with
so little. "

And for this to happen puts the responsibility squarely up to us at home.
A nation's armed forces are never more than a relatively small selection from
its total population. The army is the fist that strikes—the rest of us are the
body behind that blow. We must give it weight. We must be sure that the fist
is driven with the muscles of a trim, well-conditioned body.

I spoke recently and used the phrase "aggressive defense. " No other kind
of defense is any good. Mere passive cooperation with the great war effort is
useless. We must work as if each turn of our machines were pumping bullets
at the foe. We must guard our skies, we must train ourselves to every service
and every sacrifice that makes toward the common goal. And we must do these
things aggressively, and with the same will to win that is in our fighting forces.
And if we do, as I know we are doing now, why then the way may be shorter
than we think—the end will come that much the sooner.