Evaluation of the North African campaign places a long list of gains on the credit side of the United Nations ledger. The material prizes have already been catalogued and given to the public by responsible governmental officials. The prisoners we took and the losses inflicted upon the enemy - by land and sea and air - are history. We have jolted the enemy’s morale; for in this theater one of the best and proudest of his armies has been utterly destroyed. But there are many other benefits that have not been so widely publicized - things that may be classed as intangibles but which, nonetheless, are transcendently important.

One of these is measured in improved battle technique - particularly among those units that came into the theater through the Northwest African ports. The American divisions had never before been in campaign, while the British forces that came directly from England had seen no active service since Dunkirk. All these have been tempered in the heat of battle. They have learned the requirements of survival, and the essentials of victory. The British First Army and the American II Corps have become formidable fighting machines. They know what it takes to win and, through them, other Allied units going into the fight for the first time will be better prepared - more ready to absorb the first shocks of conflict. The British Eighth Army, coming from the desert into the mountainous regions of eastern Tunisia, was confronted by strange battle conditions. So, even among that brilliant array of fighting men - which our enemies have ruefully asserted to be the finest organization of its strength in the world - there were advances in technique and professional ability.

Beyond all this, one of the greatest of our gains is represented in the Allied team play that has reached here a high degree of proficiency. I speak not merely of senior commanders, and their readiness to meet each problem on its merits and without division along nationalistic lines, but of the rank and file as well. Each man here has come to realize that the greatest patriot, the greatest lover of his own country, is the one that is quickest to promote Allied team play and to demand its perfection. This spirit has inspired also the French troops that fought alongside us during the Tunisian campaign. For them and their sacrificial devotion to duty, every British and American soldier has only words of praise. They were magnificent.

This demonstration of unity on the battlefield, of unity in adversity as well as in victory, is sorely puzzling the Axis today. Our solidarity terrifies them, because they had complacently counted on the divided counsels and inter-family quarrels that have been characteristic of Allied campaigns in former wars. Their propaganda has been devoted to the creation of cleavage among us, and some of their most vindictive and most insidious lies have been poured upon each of us in turn in an attempt to make one friend turn against the other. To us here, all this sounds like the snarls and whimpering of helpless rage. This team is bound together by indestructible devotion to a common cause. On this team are Cunningham, Tedder, Alexander, Spaatz, Montgomery, Anderson, Patton, Hewitt, Willis, Bradley, Clark, Coningham, MacFarlane, and Doolittle. At our sides stand Giraud, Juin, Le Clerq, Koeltz, and Mast. These are the names you have most often heard, but under each of them, and imbued by the same spirit, are countless thousands of others.

We are ready to undertake any further task that our countries may choose to assign us. We stand as a single body - determined that there will be no cessation of effort until, working in concert with all other forces of the United Nations, we shall have brought the last army of Germany, Italy and Japan to its inevitable Tunisia.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER