We must guard against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning--and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For many years he has prepared for this very conflict--planning, and plotting, and training, arming, and fighting. We have already tasted defeat. We may suffer further setbacks. We must face the fact of a hard war, a long war, a bloody war, a costly war.
We must, on the other hand, guard against defeatism. That has been one of the chief weapons of Hitler's propaganda machine--used time and again with deadly results. It will not be used successfully on the American people.
We must guard against divisions among ourselves and among all the other United Nations. We must be particularly vigilant against racial discrimination in any of its ugly forms. Hitler will try again to breed mistrust and suspicion between one individual and another, one group and another, one race and another, one Government and another. He will try to use the same technique of falsehood and rumor-mongering with which he divided France from Britain. He is trying to do this with us even now. But he will find a unity of will and purpose against him, which will persevere until the destruction of all his black designs upon the freedom and safety of the people of the world.
We cannot wage this war in a defensive spirit. As our power and our resources are fully mobilized, we shall carry the attack against the enemy--we shall hit him and hit him again wherever and whenever we can reach him.
We must keep him far from our shores, for we intend to bring this battle to him on his own home grounds.
American armed forces must be used at any place in all the world where it seems advisable to engage the forces of the enemy. In some cases these operations will be defensive, in order to protect key positions. In other cases, these operations will be offensive, in order to strike at the common enemy, with a view to his complete encirclement and eventual total defeat.
American armed forces will operate at many points in the Far East.
American armed forces will be on all the oceans--helping to guard the essential communications which are vital to the United Nations.
American land and air and sea forces will take stations in the British Isles--which constitute an essential fortress in this great world struggle.
American armed forces will help to protect this hemisphere--and also help to protect bases outside this hemisphere, which could be used for an attack on the Americas.