It is often amusing, and it is sometimes politically profitable, to picture the City of Washington as a madhouse, with the Congress and the Administration disrupted with confusion and indecision and general incompetence.
However--what matters most in war is results. And the one pertinent fact is that after only a few years of preparation and only one year of warfare, we are able to engage, spiritually as well as physically, in the total waging of a total war.
Washington may be a madhouse--but only in the sense that it is the Capital City of a Nation which is fighting mad. And I think that Berlin and Rome and Tokyo, which had such contempt for the obsolete methods of democracy, would now gladly use all they could get of that same brand of madness.
And we must not forget that our achievements in production have been relatively no greater than those of the Russians and the British and the Chinese who have developed their own war industries under the incredible difficulties of battle conditions. They have had to continue work through bombings and blackouts. And they have never quit.
We Americans are in good, brave company in this war, and we are playing our own, honorable part in the vast common effort.
As spokesmen for the United States Government, you and I take off our hats to those responsible for our American production--to the owners, managers, and supervisors, to the draftsmen and the engineers, and to the workers-- men and women--in factories and arsenals and shipyards and mines and mills and forests--and railroads and on highways.
We take off our hats to the farmers who have faced an unprecedented task of feeding not only a great Nation but a great part of the world.
We take off our hats to all the loyal, anonymous, untiring men and women who have worked in private employment and in Government and who have endured rationing and other stringencies with good humor and good will.
Yes, we take off our hats to all Americans who have contributed so magnificently to our common cause.
I have sought to emphasize a sense of proportion in this review of the events of the war and the needs of the war.