The overwhelming majority of our people have met the demands of this war with magnificent courage and understanding.  They have accepted inconveniences; they have accepted hardships; they have accepted tragic sacrifices.  And they are ready and eager to make whatever further contributions are needed to win the war as quickly as possible—­if only they are given the chance to know what is required of them.

However, while the majority goes on about its great work without complaint, a noisy minority maintains an uproar of demands for special favors for special groups.  There are pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to the basic interests of the Nation as a whole.  They have come to look upon the war primarily as a chance to make profits for themselves at the expense of their neighbors—­profits in money or in terms of political or social preferment.

Such selfish agitation can be highly dangerous in wartime.  It creates confusion.  It damages morale.  It hampers our national effort.  It muddies the waters and therefore prolongs the war.

If we analyze American history impartially, we cannot escape the fact that in our past we have not always forgotten individual and selfish and partisan interests in time of war—­we have not always been united in purpose and direction.  We cannot overlook the serious dissensions and the lack of unity in our war of the Revolution, in our War of 1812, or in our War Between the States, when the survival of the Union itself was at stake.

In the first World War we came closer to national unity than in any previous war.  But that war lasted only a year and a half, and increasing signs of disunity began to appear during the final months of the conflict.

In this war, we have been compelled to learn how interdependent upon each other are all groups and sections of the population of America.

Increased food costs, for example, will bring new demands for wage increases from all war workers, which will in turn raise all prices of all things including those things which the farmers themselves have to buy.  Increased wages or prices will each in turn produce the same results.  They all have a particularly disastrous result on all fixed income groups.

And I hope you will remember that all of us in this Government represent the fixed income group just as much as we represent business owners, workers, and farmers.  This group of fixed income people includes:  teachers, clergy, policemen, firemen, widows and minors on fixed incomes, wives and dependents of our soldiers and sailors, and old-age pensioners.  They and their families add up to one-quarter of our one hundred and thirty million people.  They have few or no high pressure representatives at the Capitol.  In a period of gross inflation they would be the worst sufferers.

If ever there was a time to subordinate individual or group selfishness to the national good, that time is now.  Disunity at home—­bickerings, self-seeking partisanship, stoppages of work, inflation, business as usual, politics as usual, luxury as usual these are the influences which can undermine the morale of the brave men ready to die at the front for us here.