As a first essential, our Nation should have a respectable position in the matter of military readiness so that it may be free of the fear of forceful domination imposed by sudden and unscrupulous attack. Free institutions confer on each of us priceless privileges, but with an equal obligation to defend them. To achieve this reasonable position in the modern world involves time for technical and physical training, and a definite drain upon the national purse. These expenditures are something that we cannot begrudge when we consider the alternative; but we must attain national military efficiency with the least possible diversion from productive pursuits of human energy and material resources.

Even when we have done this, we have not provided a cure for a world sickness that has re-appeared through the ages with persistent frequency.

Admitting that freedom cannot thrive under conditions of perpetual or frequent global conflict, it is necessary, in addition to all other steps, to remove or ameliorate conditions that lead communities toward war. Among those conditions a traditional one has been want, fear of starvation. Another has been mutual racial and national antagonisms, most frequently built upon ignorance. A third has been greed for power or material gain, largely inspired by some individual who, eager to increase the power in his own hands, has falsely led a nation into a belief that might and right are synonymous.

There are others, but consider only the three just named.

To reduce privation in the world, prosperous nations must be ready so to guide their own economies that those less fortunate can also live. No principal section of the earth should become so habitually impoverished that its inhabitants reach the stark conclusion that no catastrophe - even war - could represent a worsening of their situation. Everybody, everywhere, must come to feel that he has something to risk, something to lose, in a resort to war! If realization of this purpose requires from prosperous nations some reduction in expected profit - the cost can scarcely be so great as that imposed by international unrest and the threat of conflict! Certainly it will be far less than war itself!

To reduce mutual suspicions and antagonisms it is important that people - and I mean the people themselves, rather than only governmental representatives - learn to know more of each other. Among the soldiers now returning to our shores from Europe, plenty can be found who will object to certain policies and customs that they encountered overseas. But few you will find who have lived in Britain that do not like the British people. They appreciate sincerely the hospitality and good humor that they encountered in the British home and in public. The same for large sections of Europe! Even though our returned soldiers may complain about monetary rates of exchange, you will find that almost all think of ordinary European citizens as people much like themselves, and in the circle of actual contact are losing those suspicions we instinctively hold toward strangers.

Admittedly a whole world cannot become international travelers and so learn these things at first hand. But there is recourse to education! Particularly it is important that throughout the world the history of all races and nations be accurately written and taught. Knowledge of others is important to us. From the primary grade to the master’s degree, educators must seek objectivity, honesty and a broadly human approach to subjects affecting all peoples of the earth. In the pulpit, the press, the radio, and every type of public organization we should differentiate clearly between patriotism and jingoism - we should teach that knowledge leads to cooperation; ignorance to disaster!

Lastly, with respect to the greed for power, freedom-loving peoples instinctively react in friendliness to any government what takes as its principal purpose the benefit of all citizens. Americans need not be fearful of every other form of government, even though we know that, for us, our own is the best. But we cannot dismiss for our anxieties any instance where an individual, rising to power, begins to pursue the age-old methods of the tyrant to lead his people into the vicious doctrine that whatever they may seize and hold is rightfully their own. These false leaders must be detected in time and measures must be promptly applied by the new-born concert of nations so that future Hitlers can early be made helpless to disturb the peace and endanger freedom.