For the first time since the Japanese and the Fascists and the Nazis started along their blood-stained course of conquest they now face the fact that superior forces are assembling against them.  Gone forever are the days when the aggressors could attack and destroy their victims one by one without unity of resistance.  We of the United Nations will so dispose our forces that we can strike at the common enemy wherever the greatest damage can be done him.

The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war.  But the massed, angered forces of common humanity will finish it.

Destruction of the material and spiritual centers of civilization—­this has been and still is the purpose of Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen.  They would wreck the power of the British Commonwealth and Russia and China and the Netherlands—­and then combine all their forces to achieve their ultimate goal, the conquest of the United States.

They know that victory for us means victory for freedom.

They know that victory for us means victory for the institution of democracy—­the ideal of the family, the simple principles of common decency and humanity.

They know that victory for us means victory for religion.  And they could not tolerate that.  The world is too small to provide adequate “living room” for both Hitler and God.  In proof of that, the Nazis have now announced their plan for enforcing their new German, pagan religion all over the world—­a plan by which the Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy would be displaced by Mein Kampf and the swastika and the naked sword.

Our own objectives are clear; the objective of smashing the militarism imposed by war lords upon their enslaved peoples the objective of liberating the subjugated Nations—­the objective of establishing and securing freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear everywhere in the world.

We shall not stop short of these objectives—­nor shall we be satisfied merely to gain them and then call it a day.  I know that I speak for the American people—­and I have good reason to believe that I speak also for all the other peoples who fight with us—­when I say that this time we are determined not only to win the war, but also to maintain the security of the peace that will follow.

But we know that modern methods of warfare make it a task, not only of shooting and fighting, but an even more urgent one of working and producing.

Victory requires the actual weapons of war and the means of transporting them to a dozen points of combat.

It will not be sufficient for us and the other United Nations to produce a slightly superior supply of munitions to that of Germany, Japan, Italy, and the stolen industries in the countries which they have overrun.

The superiority of the United Nations in munitions and ships must be overwhelming—­so overwhelming that the Axis Nations can never hope to catch up with it.  And so, in order to attain this overwhelming superiority the United States must build planes and tanks and guns and ships to the utmost limit of our national capacity.  We have the ability and capacity to produce arms not only for our own forces, but also for the armies, navies, and air forces fighting on our side.