We Americans are in good, brave company in this war, and we are playing our own, honorable part in the vast common effort.

As spokesmen for the United States Government, you and I take off our hats to those responsible for our American production—­to the owners, managers, and supervisors, to the draftsmen and the engineers, and to the workers—­ men and women—­in factories and arsenals and shipyards and mines and mills and forests—­and railroads and on highways.

We take off our hats to the farmers who have faced an unprecedented task of feeding not only a great Nation but a great part of the world.

We take off our hats to all the loyal, anonymous, untiring men and women who have worked in private employment and in Government and who have endured rationing and other stringencies with good humor and good will.

Yes, we take off our hats to all Americans who have contributed so magnificently to our common cause.

I have sought to emphasize a sense of proportion in this review of the events of the war and the needs of the war.

We should never forget the things we are fighting for.  But, at this critical period of the war, we should confine ourselves to the larger objectives and not get bogged down in argument over methods and details.

We, and all the United Nations, want a decent peace and a durable peace.  In the years between the end of the first World War and the beginning of the second World War, we were not living under a decent or a durable peace.

I have reason to know that our boys at the front are concerned with two broad aims beyond the winning of the war; and their thinking and their opinion coincide with what most Americans here back home are mulling over.  They know, and we know, that it would be inconceivable—­it would, indeed, be sacrilegious—­if this Nation and the world did not attain some real, lasting good out of all these efforts and sufferings and bloodshed and death.

The men in our armed forces want a lasting peace, and, equally, they want permanent employment for themselves, their families, and their neighbors when they are mustered out at the end of the war.

Two years ago I spoke in my Annual Message of four freedoms.  The blessings of two of them—­freedom of speech and freedom of religion—­are an essential part of the very life of this Nation; and we hope that these blessings will be granted to all men everywhere.

’The people at home, and the people at the front, are wondering a little about the third freedom—­freedom from want.  To them it means that when they are mustered out, when war production is converted to the economy of peace, they will have the right to expect full employment—­full employment for themselves and for all able-bodied men and women in America who want to work.

They expect the opportunity to work, to run their farms, their stores, to earn decent wages.  They are eager to face the risks inherent in our system of free enterprise.