Do we not still remember that the name of “Munich” symbolizes a vain hope of appeasing dictators?

At that time the policy of appeasement was tried, and it failed.  Prior to the Second World War Mussolini seized Ethiopia.  In the Far East Japanese warlords were grabbing Manchuria by force.  Hitler sent his armed forces into the Rhineland in violation of the Versailles Treaty.  Then he annexed little Austria.  When he got away with that, he next turned to Czechoslovakia and began taking it bit by bit.

In the face of all these attacks on freedom by the dictators, the powerful democracies stood aside.  It seemed that Ethiopia and Manchuria were too far away and too unimportant to fight about.  In Europe appeasement was looked upon as the way to peace.  The democracies felt that if they tried to stop what was going on that would mean war.  But, because of these repeated retreats, war came just the same.

If the democracies had stood firm at the beginning, almost surely there would have been no World War.  Instead they gave such an appearance of weakness and timidity that aggressive rulers were encouraged to overrun one country after another.  In the end the democracies saw that their very survival was at stake.  They had no alternative but to turn and fight in what proved to be the most terrible war that the world has ever known.

I know something about that war, and I never want to see that history repeated.  But, my fellow Americans, it certainly can be repeated if the peace-loving democratic nations again fearfully practice a policy of standing idly by while big aggressors use armed force to conquer the small and weak.

Let us suppose that the Chinese Communists conquer Quemoy.  Would that be the end of the story?  We know that it would not be the end of the story.  History teaches that, when powerful despots can gain something through aggression, they try, by the same methods, to gain more and more and more.

Also, we have more to guide us than the teachings of history.  We have the statements, the boastings, of the Chinese Communists themselves.  They frankly say that their present military effort is part of a program to conquer Formosa.

It is as certain as can be that the shooting which the Chinese Communists started on August 23d had as its purpose not just the taking of the island of Quemoy.  It is part of what is indeed an ambitious plan of armed conquest.

This plan would liquidate all of the free-world positions in the western Pacific area and bring them under captive governments which would be hostile to the United States and the free world.  Thus the Chinese and Russian Communists would come to dominate at least the western half of the now friendly Pacific Ocean.

So aggression by ruthless despots again imposes a clear danger to the United States and to the free world.