Our readiness to meet and defeat this kind of possible attack is forced upon us, both as a potent preventive of actual war and to insure survival in event of attack. This alertness to danger has to be translated into specific policies and activities in the several parts of the world where our rights - our way of life - can be seriously damaged. Work of this kind occupies my days and nights.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.

Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder.

A prodigious event had happened. The monotony of toil and of the daily round was suddenly broken. Everything was strange and new. War aroused the primordial instincts of races born of strife. Adventure beckoned to her children. A larger, nobler life seemed to be about to open upon the world. But it was, in fact, only Death.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.