of Governor Herbert R. O'Conor 725

by our combined industry, shielded by the total strength of one and all, yet en-
joying the blessed luxury of individualism.

That is the miracle of America. Whoever wonders how it came to pass,
can do no better than to study the family traits which hold Americans together
and make us one Nation, although we are many parts. Our National birthright,
the passion for liberty, has become a National characteristic. Who will say it
was not just as strong in the pioneers of the prairies as in the pilgrims of the
Mayflower? Who dares say that Lincoln's feeling for the Union was not as
profound as Hamilton's? Will anyone challenge the fact that the patriotism
at Bataan was different from that of Bunker Hill?

No, because these traits of Americans, these strong family characteristics
are neither weakened by time nor dissipated by space. Americanism ages well.
Like old wine, it gains in body and in flavor. Scratch a Californian and find a
Carolinian. We are all one brotherhood under the skin; we are all tribesmen
of the great Faith. The Liberty Bell of Philadelphia finds its echoes today in
the humming factories of Detroit; the thundering cannon of Old Ironsides have
their continuation in the Battles of Midway and the Coral Sea, and the descend-
ants of men who crossed the Delaware to smite the Hessians will soon be cross-
ing the Rhine to smite the Hun.

We are now engaged in a great world struggle—a global war, with many
fronts and involving many strategies. But there is a familiar simplicity to
the underlying theme of this complicated warfare. We Americans, from what-
ever part of the Nation—North, South. West; city or village; farmworker, fac-
tory-worker, office worker—we are privileged to see the one main issue clearly
and to see it whole. We see it with the quick and lucid perception that is not
so much the power of logic as the gift of instinct. Not in vain have we breathed
the air of freedom and walked the one section of the whole earth where no tyrant
ever trod. It is any wonder that a race of men bred to such traditions possesses
an inner light—a second nature, if you will—which makes them super-sensitive
to the challenge which Nazism has thrown in the face of Mankind?

Long before the tragedy of Poland we have hated Hitler. It went against
our grain to witness, even at a distance, the trampling down1 of human rights;
the debauchery of human decencies; the slow but sinister throttling of personal
liberties which signaled that madman's rise to power in middle Europe.

Here we have long believed in Government as the servant, not the overlord,
of its people. Here we have long believed in the right of worship, in the sover-
eignty of free expression, in the high privilege of dissent. We saw these things
strangled by the German madman, and much as we abhor warfare in itself, we
stirred with indignation, and from then on we knew in our hearts that we were
pitted against Hitlerism from the very first.

Nor did our disgust of Japanese aggression begin at Pearl Harbor. The
long and bloody effort to enslave the peoples of China aroused Americans from
the first. That Oriental counterpart of Hitlerism was not more acceptable to
us than what was going on in Europe. Those Powers of Evil and Darkness
revolted the American mind. Looking back now, we can see how this war which