Today's threat to our national security is not a matter of military weapons alone. We know of new methods of attack.
The Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery.
Spies, saboteurs and traitors are the actors in this new strategy.
With all of these we must and will deal vigorously.
But there is an added technique for weakening a nation at its very roots, for disrupting the entire pattern of life of a people. And it is important that we understand it.
The method is simple. It is, first, a dissemination of discord. A group—not too large—a group that may be sectional or racial or political—is encouraged to exploit its prejudices through false slogans and emotional appeals. The aim of those who deliberately egg on these groups is to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and eventually, a state of panic.
Sound national policies come to be viewed with a new and unreasoning skepticism, not through the wholesome political debates of honest and free men, but through the clever schemes of foreign agents.
As a result of these new techniques, armament programs may be dangerously delayed. Singleness of national purpose may be undermined. Men can lose confidence in each other, and therefore lose confidence in the efficacy of their own united action. Faith and courage can yield to doubt and fear. The unity of the State can be so sapped that its strength is destroyed.
All this is no idle dream. It has happened time after time, in nation after nation, during the last two years. Fortunately, American men and women are not easy dupes. Campaigns of group hatred or class struggle have never made much headway among us, and are not making headway now. But new forces are being unleashed, deliberately planned propaganda to divide and weaken us in the face of danger as other nations have been weakened before.
These dividing forces are undiluted poison. They must not be allowed to spread in the New World as they have in the Old. Our morale and our mental defenses must be raised up as never before against those who would cast a smokescreen across our vision.
The development of our defense program makes it essential that each and every one of us, men and women, feel that we have some contribution to make toward the security of our nation.