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Show No Substitute For Freedom As free American citizens W2 have found we can meet the test of war. We have the ability to get things done. We have courage and daring. Our men have shown In stark heroism that on the military front we are not soft. We can fight with the tricks our forefathers learned from the Indians, and we can fight with machines. Guadalcanal Guadal-canal and Noith Africa have proven prov-en thnt. In brief, we can win the war. But there is more than the military mil-itary front. There is the home front. And here, except for. the production miracle of Industry, there is evidence of softness, of confusion of Ideals. Group bickering bicker-ing has put the attainment of personal per-sonal comfort and security ahead of the national welfare. In many quarters a desire to eliminate human hu-man want at one fell swoop has become an obsession. An agency of government has even prepared a new bill of rights, the basic tenet cf which Is economic security. This new bill is proposed as a supplement to the old bill defining our liberies liber-ies at the time the United States Constitution was adopted. It puts security on a par with freedom, on the theory that the American people peo-ple will abandon freedom if they are not guaranteed three square meals a day. It Implies that the American people, bitter from the "great depression" and fearful of post-war uncertainty, do not pro-po pro-po e to go hungry; that if they cannot have their freedom with full stomachs they will do without freedom. If such is true, we have drifted far from the ideals the Pilgrims carried ashore at Plymouth Rock Even as our men on the battlefields battle-fields are now dying, the Pilgrims died and suffered hardship for just one reason: to preserve a spot on this globe where the Individual could be free. And they got that freedom. They got it because they were tough. Their ideals came first, their stomachs second. Our men are winning battles now because they are tough. They are thinking of freedom. A year ago there was a grave question In the minds of millions aa to whether we could arm fast enough to stem the tide of aggression. aggres-sion. There was an equally grave question of whether we could do it without destroying free enterprise and; representative government. There were those who believed It would take total dictatorship to beat the dictators. The challenge fell on industry. The machines had to be built by Industry. Our natural resources and our factories had to be mobilized for war on a scale that wrought shattering ihangs in technique and precedent. Industry Indus-try kn"w that the cracker-box a2 - tators were waiting to pounce upon the country with revolutionary themes at the slightest sign ot failure. It Is to the credit of think'ng government officials that revolutionary revolu-tionary changes in government and industry were not forced before free enterprise had a chance to show what It could do to prove that our democracy was not a failure. fail-ure. Our factories did a magnificent magnifi-cent job. In a matter of month they underwent retooling and conversion. con-version. Today tanks, planes, guns, ships, are rolling off the assembly lines by the scores of thousands. Our war production has caught and passed the dictator enemy who spent years producing for war under an elaborate "economic security" se-curity" program which by its very completeness had destroyed individual indivi-dual freedom the same years tint our industries continued to produce pro-duce for America's unreglmented. peaceful millions. Back of the manufacturers man-ufacturers stand American farm producers and distributors, together togeth-er with the metal and coal mines the oil, the power and transportation transporta-tion industries. They feed our war workers and keep the materials moving Into the assembly lines. The end of the war may be distant dis-tant still, yet It is in sight. Apaln free enterprise faces a challenge. And again it faces it agaliut a backdrop of threats. Those threats are cloaked In the prevalent Wei that a full stomach is an inalienable inalien-able rigliit. Far-tilglited leaders know that the challenge of the post-war world will be the toughest of all. It will be far tougher than the facts Justify because of demagogic dema-gogic attempts to soften our people with illusory social dreams of total "economic security.'' But industry is making its plans. These plans will have to be daring. Industry must go on the offensive. It must show that unprecedented production under a system of free enterprise Is the only sure way ti build a lasting peace under the banner of individual freedom. It must lay the groundwork for this, production now. And it must have the wholehearted cooperation of all Americans on the home front. There is no room for the lator racketeer any more than for the exploiting capitalist or the faithless faith-less ixl:tic!an. j We on the home front must da a lot of clear thinking. We mutt now be hardened by a determination determina-tion that above all else we must save the right of the Individual to be free. We must realize now and in the peace to come, that individual indivi-dual freedom ls more important than Individual comfort. Bitter experience ex-perience has demonstrated that without freedom there can be neither comfort nor security. We must reaffirm our belief in our Constitutional government. |