For millions of our friends and allies of the United Nations this is the fourth wartime Christmas. We in the United States are just approaching our second. We have hardly begun to feel, as you have, the privations of war. We have hardly begun to make the sacrifices that you have been making cheerfully, without fuss or heroics for years past. Yet the war is close to us this Christmas, and it brings us close to you. The common bond that draws us together now more than ever before is the fact that our men, like yours, are away from home - many of them on distant battlefields. All over the world, in Great Britain, the South West Pacific, Australia, India and in Africa our men are together, fighting the same good fight shoulder to shoulder, on deserts and in jungles, on the sea and in the skies. They are working together, learning to know and understand each other, as we must learn to understand each other, we who stay behind and man the home front.

That is a bond between us this Christmas - the thought of our sons and husbands who are joined in a common enterprise, the enterprise of victory for the United Nations; the enterprise of a better world for our children and a lasting peace, for all the world’s children. Christmas in peacetime is an occasion for family reunions, for gaiety and hospitality and present-giving. In wartime it means a great deal more. Let’s stop for a moment and think how our men would want us to celebrate this Christmas. The other day I came across some words written by Carl Sandburg, one of our greatest American authors. This is what he said: “Perhaps democracy can best survive where men know the right moments for complete and solemn reverence, or the nonsense that nourishes and the laughter that rests and may even heal.” This, I think, expresses the spirit in which most of us are gathering around our Christmas trees this year. This Christmas, more than any I can remember, is a moment for complete and solemn reverence. It is a moment to pause and think about the things that for us make life worth living - the things for which, three long years ago, you went to war. You don’t need to be reminded what they are.

We, the English-speaking peoples have values in common. But we have no monopoly on them. Anyone who has had the good fortune to live abroad, as I have done discovers that there are millions of simple and decent people all over the world who love freedom and hate tyranny as much as we do. These people are showing us, day by day, that they, like ourselves, are ready to work and fight and, if necessary, to die for freedom and decency. We can be grateful and thankful to have them as our allies. I am thinking at this moment of the people I knew personally in Paris and on the other side of the world in Manila, people I have lived among, who are now in temporary darkness, conquered but not beaten. Many of you who are listening must have friends cut off from you by the enemy, perhaps in Norway or Holland or Belgium or Poland or Malaya. I wish it were possible to send them personal Christmas messages, to assure them they are not forgotten and to tell them that the United Nations are on the march. I am thinking too of our other allies, the men and women of Soviet Russia and China whom we know only by their deeds - deeds so brave that we can hardly find words to tell them of our admiration and gratitude.

When we think of all these people and their courage and devotion, this Christmas becomes a moment for complete and solemn reverence, and for thankfulness that our idea of decency and freedom are shared by so many allies.

But our feeling of reverence this Christmas doesn’t for a moment mean that we are gloomy. Far from it. Carl Sandburg spoke too, of the nonsense that nourishes and the laughter that rests and may even heal. There will be plenty of nonsense and laughter as we gather round our Christmas tree, just as we know there is nonsense and laughter in desert and jungle outposts, in tents, and barracks, and on ships at sea. There will be fewer trimmings on our trees. There will certainly be simpler presents. Many streets will be blacked out, many windows without lighted candles. This year we will find other ways of expressing the Christmas spirit. Those of us who can will invite soldiers and sailors to Christmas dinner tables. Inside our homes we will laugh and joke this Christmas Day because our hearts and hopes are high; because we know that we are going to win; because that victory will give freedom to millions of people who are now conquered and in slavery. At last but not least, we will be gay because that victory will bring our men home to us for another Christmas, a happier Christmas on which we shall gather round the tree together and sing, “Peace on earth, good will to men.”

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER