The peril we are in today is this:
For the first time since we became a nation, a power exists strong enough to destroy us.
This book is about the strength we have to destroy our enemies—where it lies, what hinders it, how we can use it. It is not about munitions, but about men and women; it deals with the unity we have to create, the victory we have to win; it deals with the character of America, what it has been and is and will be. And since character is destiny, this book is about the destiny of America.
The next few pages are in the nature of counter-propaganda. With the best of motives, and the worst results, Americans for months after December 7, 1941, said that Pearl Harbor was a costly blessing because it united all Americans and made us understand why the war was inevitable. A fifty-mile bus trip outside of New York—perhaps even a subway ride within its borders—would have proved both of these statements blandly and dangerously false. American unity could not be made in Japan; like most other imports from that country, it was a cheap imitation, lasting a short time, and costly in the long run; and recognition of the nature of the war can never come as the result of anything but a realistic analysis of our own purposes as well as those of our enemies.
What follows is, obviously, the work of a citizen, not a specialist. For some twenty years I have observed the sources of American unity and dispersion; during the past fifteen years my stake in the future of American liberty has been the most important thing in my life, as it is the most important thing in the life of anyone whose children will live in the world we are now creating. I am therefore not writing frivolously, or merely to testify to my devotion; I am writing to persuade—to uncover sources of strength which others may have overlooked, to create new weapons, to stir new thoughts. If I thought the war for freedom could be won by writing lies, I would write lies. I am afraid the war will be lost if we do not face the truth, so I write what I believe to be true about America—about its past and present and future, meaning its history and character and destiny—but mostly about the present, with only a glance at our forgotten past, and a declaration of faith in the future which is, I hope, the inevitable result of our victory.
We know the name and character of our enemy—the Axis; but after months of war we are not entirely convinced that it intends to destroy us because we do not see why it has to destroy us. Destroy; not defeat. The desperate war we are fighting is still taken as a gigantic maneuvre; obviously the Axis wants to "win" battles and dictate "peace terms". We still use these phrases of 1918, unaware that the purpose of Axis war is not defeat of an enemy, but destruction of his national life. We have seen it happen in France and Poland and Norway and Holland; but we cannot imagine that the Nazis intend actually to appoint a German Governor General over the Mississippi Valley, a Gauleiter in the New England provinces, and forbid us to read newspapers, go to the movies or drink coffee; we cannot believe that the Axis intends to destroy the character of America, annihilating the liberties our ancestors fought for, and the level of comfort which we cherished so scrupulously in later generations. In moments of pure speculation, when we wonder what would happen "at worst", we think of a humiliating defeat on land and sea, bombardment of our cities, surrender—and a peace conference at which we and Britain agree to pay indemnities; perhaps, until we pay off, German and Japanese soldiers would be quartered in our houses, police our streets; but we assume that after the "shooting war" was over, they would not ravish our women.
All this is the war of 1918. In 1942 the purpose of Axis victory is the destruction of the American system, the annihilation of the financial and industrial power of the United States, the reduction of this country to an inferior position in the world and the enslavement of the American people by depriving them of their liberty and of their wealth. The actual physical slavery of the American people and the deliberate taking over of our factories and farms and houses and motor cars and radios are both implied in an Axis victory; the enslavement is automatic, the robbery of our wealth will depend on Axis economic strategy: if we can produce more for them by remaining in technical possession of our factories, they will let us keep them.
We cannot believe this is so because we see no reason for it. Our intentions toward the German and Italian people are not to enslave and impoverish; on the contrary, we think of the defeat of their leaders as the beginning of liberty. We do not intend to make Venice a tributary city, nor Essen a factory town run by American government officials. We may police the streets of Berlin until a democratic government proves its strength by punishing the SS and the Gestapo, until the broken prisoners of Dachau return in whatever triumph they can still enjoy. But our basic purpose is still to defeat the armed forces of the Axis and to insure ourselves against another war by the creation of free governments everywhere.
(Neither the American people nor their leaders have believed that a responsible peaceable government can be erected now in Japan. Toward the Japanese our unclarified intentions are simple: annihilation of the power, to such an extent that it cannot rise again—as a military or a commercial rival. The average citizen would probably be glad to hand over to the Chinese the job of governing Japan.)