INTRODUCTION BY HON. NEWTON D. BAKER, SECRETARY OF WAR Through these addresses he who listens shrewdly will hear the voices of the millions who have toiled and sacrificed that the promise of these words might come true. There are no literary exercises in this book. Nothing printed here was said because it sounds well, there are . no empty rhetorical vanities. These are the words of the chosen leaders of the free nations, and they are underwritten every one of them with the heroism and the skill and the benignant power and the unfailing endurance of those who love liberty more than their comfort and their lives. This is what makes a speech memorable and only this that it should be spoken at a turning point in human affairs on behalf of a great hope. These speeches were spoken in the days when the supreme decision was made to lay down the weight of the New World that the earth may be secure. In the light of such an event any utterance would be repeated while there were men to remember it. But the words printed here are touched not only with the glory of the American decision but with the undying warmth of the Three Years' Resistance. We recognized at the time and we shall not forget the messages brought to us overseas. We shall play our part and these words printed here shall be not only a promise but a prophecy that out of this agony and this enterprise we shall build a rich and enduring freedom. We seek nothing more and shall accept nothing less. Scientifically and inexorably we shall go on till the menace which has risen in Central Europe to terrorize mankind is destroyed from without or discarded from within. |