Building for Victory and the Future

OPPORTUNITY AGAIN KNOCKS AT OUR DOOR

By THOMAS S. HOLDEN, President, F. W. Dodge Corporation

Delivered before the annual convention banquet of the Michigan Society of Architects,Lansing, Michigan, Friday, April 3, 1942

Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. VII, pp. 439-444.

BUILDING for Victory, according to the scheduled program of the War Production Board, consists in producing in the United States during the year 1942 a greater volume of construction than ever before, producing the needed structures in record time, and working against unusual difficulties with respect to labor supply, deliveries of materials and acute shortages of some highly important items. In addition to this job to be done in continental United States, we must ship designers, builders, superintendents, skilled mechanics and essential materials across the seven seas to construct assembly plants, storage depots, air and naval bases, debarkation ports and cantonments in all the other continents of the earth.

Converting the Construction Industry to War To accomplish this gigantic task the construction industry is now being conscripted. Last year it was conscripted to the extent of about 50 per cent of its output; during the past three months, up to about 80 per cent. As soon as the long-expected order forbidding all civilian construction except that which is licensed as essential is promulgated, the industry will be conscripted 100 per cent. Just exactly as in the case of other war industries, the producing units in the construction industry are being obliged either to convert their facilities to war work, to secure prime contracts or subcontracts, to give up their private business and seek employment in war-construction organizations either private or governmental, or go out of business. If the war construction program, which has slackened somewhat during the past three months, picks up and increases as anticipated by the War Production Board, there will be enough work during the remainder of this year and most of 1943 to employ practically all the facilities and practically ail the technically competent people in the industry, provided the conversion to war purposes is promptly and adequately made.

The construction industry has been frequently called a backward industry; it has been criticised for its apparent lack of standardized procedures, its reputed lack of modern factory methods, its failure to resemble in all particulars the automotive industry. However, the most significant fact about the modern building industry, which has enabled it to make its great contribution to the country in peace and in war, is its immediate adaptability to new requirements and its capacity to turn itself at once to new kinds of jobs, a flexibility largely due to its lack of rigidly standardized and full mechanized procedures. Our designers and builders are habitually accustomed to turn from schools and hospitals to large-scale housing projects, from large-scale housing projects to cantonments and airplane factories and Army bases and fortifications. It is an industry which, for conversion from peace-time production to war-time production, requires only a retooling of minds, which is for many of its members a continuous and a customary procedure.

Very much as in the case of the manufacturing industries, the larger designing and contracting organizations were the ones first selected to take on war work. By reason of reputation, adaptability, and capacity to expand, they have until quite recently received the bulk of the war contracts. The smaller contracting and subcontracting organizations and the smaller architectural and engineering offices maintained business as usual with normal civilian work through most of 1941, until the necessities of material shortages brought curtailment of non-essential building. Their position today is very similar to that of the small manufacturer of metal products, who is faced with the alternatives of converting his plant, securing subcontracted war orders, or going out of business. For all of them business as usual is out for the duration. However, to fully mobilize their services, it will be necessary for the war agencies of government to adopt measures to spread the work much more widely than before.

Architects and engineers who are engaged on war projects are sharpening their minds on new design problems of various kinds. They are working on airplane factories, airports, cantonments, fortifications, naval bases, air-raid shelters, demountable houses, large scale site plans. They are having to work to a new criterion of economy, economy in the use of metals and metal products. They are having to acquaint themselves with substitute materials and alternative methods. They, who have heretofore been bewildered by selection of the best within the wide range of materials and methods at their disposal, are having to exercise their utmost ingenuity in utilizing such second-best materials as they hope to get. They are having to work to rigid time schedules in turning out plans and specifications. They are having to work under previously undreamed of business arrangements with new kinds of clients. Undoubtedly these far-reaching technical changes have a great significance for the future of architecture and architectural practice.

Victory Essential to Economic and Social Progress

However, streamlined technical facility and changed building industry procedures will have little scope unless our postwar world is one of expanding opportunity and of economic and social progress. The prerequisite is victory. Defeat is Unthinkable; it is possible, if our war effort is half-hearted, but its result would be, for us, a slave economy with totalitarian overlords engineering a world-economy in which prosperity and opportunity would be reserved for the master races. A negotiated peace would mean a stalemate, an armed truce, with a continuous tightening of our war economy until the point of exhaustion of resources or patience would be reached, ushering in World War III. Thinking and planning for any kind of future that the American people can willingly visualize must assume victory as the major premise.

Yet there are today appreciable numbers or honest and patriotic American men and women who seem to dread the consequences of victory almost as much as they dread the consequences of defeat. They support the nation's war effort as a matter of grim duty, uncomplainingly for the most part, but without the fire of great hopes or expectations of making the world better for their children and their children's children.

Unfounded Fears

It seems to me that these pessimistic people are beset by understandable but basically unfounded fears. They fear that a public debt mounting to fabulous totals will bring about either a financial collapse, or at best, an intolerable burden of taxation upon future generations. They fear that the United States will slide into some form of national socialism. Some fear that our ally, Russia, whose economic and political philosophy is so different from our own, may make great trouble for us hereafter. Many fear, arguing upon what I believe to be false analogies to past situations, that a great and prolonged depression will be the inevitable result of this greatest of all war efforts. I cannot give you circumstantial proofs that these things are not to be, but I will try to sketch for you the reasons why I am not fearful of these dire predictions.

Finance and Taxation

Being no expert in finance, the best that I can contribute to the discussion of that problem is to list certain observations relative to the situation. First, the Government is financing this war at 2 1/2 per cent, instead of 4 1/4 per cent as in World War I. At 2 1/2 per cent, the annual interest item in our national budget to service a total debt of $200,000,000,000 amounts to $5,000,000,000; this is a very large sum relative to a national income of 40 to 60 billions but much less burdensome relative to a national income of 100 billion dollars or more. It is generally believed that the Government can and must adopt policies that will maintain national income at 100 billions or better in the post-war period. Furthermore, the debt we are now piling up is entirely an internal debt owed to ourselves; payments on interest and on principal represent transfers of funds from American taxpayers to American bondholders, which may very considerably affect the fortunes of particular individuals and institutions, but not the total wealth or income of the country. Unless we are defeated and have to pay tribute to a conqueror, the debt imposes upon us no necessity of transferring real wealth, goods or services to other nations.

New experiments and new discoveries in the field of long-term finance have been the order of the day for ten years or more, in this and other countries. We in the building industry have seen in the operations of the H.O.L.C., the Federal Home Loan Bank System and the F.H.A. a transformation of mortgage-lending from a pawn broking system into a long-term credit system. We have seen the wide range of. operations of the R.F.C, which have demonstrated that national credit can be used for long-term financing without direct reference to the current pool of savings. These examples prove nothing as to the amount of debt that we can carry; but they do illustrate expanded financial concepts unthought of twenty years ago.

Government debt has become very different from the thingit was when medieval monarchs pawned the crown jewels to raise funds to feed and pay their armies. Today, it is a matter of using national credit, principally for the purpose of stimulating maximum production. Total industrial production this year will be at least 50 per cent greater than in 1929; national income will be more than one hundred billion dollars, far in excess of the previous peak and much more than double the income of the lowest depression year 1933. A very sizable proportion of current expenditures is being devoted to creating new productive facilities and another sizeable proportion is being devoted to the production of basic material much of which is likely to be salvageable hereafter. Much of it is being devoted to the building of new industries, such as aviation, synthetic rubber, tin-smelting, all with great potentialities for peace-time use. While war-finance today deals in figures that are almost beyond comprehension, we must remember that dollars are only claim checks for goods and services; ultimately we pay for what we get out of our resources and our productive activity. Debts and taxation will impose problems of stupendous magnitude, but I believe they will be manageable problems. I fear financial collapse and unbearable taxation only as a consequence of defeat and not as a consequence of victory.

What About Socialism?

With respect to the fear that this country will adopt some form of state socialism after the war, I can only say that among the more important government economists who are studying post-war problems the prevailing thought is maximum stimulation to private enterprise. This may seem an astonishing statement to many who have suspected the New Deal of strong tendencies toward state socialism. It is true that socialistic ideas have been greatly emphasized by literary radicals inside and outside of government, and are now being advocated by some of them for the post-war period. But responsible government administrators, who have gained intimate acquaintance with our productive system in their conduct of the war program, have come to realize, if they did not always do so, that, in order to maintain the four freedoms we talk about so much, we must maintain a fifth one, essential to all the rest—freedom of enterprise. Enlightened labor leaders are of the same mind. Many of the larger post-war problems will have to be dealt with by governmental policy-making and governmental programs of action, and there will be hot arguments as to the proper boundary line between governmental and private activity; but, assuming victory, I believe private enterprise is likely to have enlarged scope and opportunities, with effective government co-operation. With defeat, national socialism of some sort is practically guaranteed.

What About Russia?

With regard to potential post-war difficulties with Russia, I can obviously not speak with any more authority than I can about the larger aspects of finance. Events of the past year have served to clear up many misunderstandings about the Soviet Government and the Soviet economy. They have shown us that, of the powers arrayed against the Axis, Russia was in peace-time the most realistic in appraising the menace of another war; it is the one anti-Axis power that has been preparing for twenty-four years. Her very ruthlessness in imposing a new form of government and a new economic system upon her own people has been in part a ruthlessness deemed necessary to a war economy. Her encouragement of subversive activities in other countries, which rightly aroused our resentment and suspicions, has been dictated, at least in part, by the belief that all other countries were potential enemies and that fifth-column activities were necessary as preparatory measures for war. Recognition of this does notimply condoning these subversive activities in our country, but it does suggest that more satisfactory live-and-let-live arrangements between Russia and this country can be worked out hereafter. Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Ambassador to the United States, one of the world leaders who worked most consistently and most earnestly for peace through the years since World War I, said in a recent address in New York: "We are all interested in the speediest possible ending of the war, the speediest possible conclusion of a just peace treaty, enabling each nation to develop in accordance with its own aspirations and ideals, without interference from outside, and in no fear of war again breaking out." Russia does not appear to have any notions of world domination, but might consider herself to be top-dog in the post-war world if she makes the biggest contribution to victory. The way for the United States to have the biggest say at the peace-table, and the best opportunity for friendly arrangements with Russia and other allies, is to fulfill our promises of all-out aid and to make the contribution to victory for democracy that our own people and our allies expect us to make. Here again the thing we fear might come about as a consequence of defeat, and is far less likely to happen as a consequence of victory.

No Inevitable Post-War Depression

The fear that is perhaps most widely held by those who view the post-war future with great misgivings is based on the belief that the biggest war-effort of all time must inevitably result in the biggest post-war depression of all time. This theory of the inevitability of a great post-war depression seems to be based in large part upon the notion that the depression of the 1930's was simply and solely the outcome of World War I. To my mind, such an explanation of our last big depression is wholly inadequate.

It is my belief that most of the extremely painful adjustments of the past decade were avoidable results of general misunderstanding of our economic status and of grievous mistakes in national policies and of wrong judgments in national programs, in finance, and in direction of economic affairs. In 1929 and the the years that followed, this nation went broke because it was rich, not because it was poor.

The decade of the 1930's was not a period of ordinary depression; it represented an historic turning point in the nation's economic growth. The immediate effect of World War I upon our economy was, in the 1920's, a short period of price deflation followed by a great wave of prosperity. Trouble came from failure to understand and control the boom and from failure to take into account basic economic changes of historic importance which had taken place.

These basic factors included: (1) the change of status from a debtor to a creditor nation; (2) a lessened rate of population growth, ushered in by immigration restriction in 1924; (3) completion of our railroad system, with respect to mileage, and other factors previously dominant in our extensive economic expansion; (4) rapid growth and coming-of-age of the automotive industry; (5) the revolutionary impacts of all these factors upon real estate and the fundamentals of construction demand; (6) growth and collapse of foreign trade based upon unsound and unrealistic financing; and (7), perhaps most important of all, failure of the American nation to accept its responsibilities as an adult nation, and, on the basis of its economic and financial status, as a world power.

Twenty-three years ago circumstances made us the most powerful nation in the world. We shrank away from the responsibility; a whole generation got lost trying to run away from its destiny. The postman is ringing twice; opportunity again knocks at the door. But, in giving us a second chance, destiny is saying to us this time, "Make good or bust." We cannot achieve victory in the war or in theperiod of peace with any spirit of defeatism or any thought that disaster is inevitable at either stage. In my opinion, an inseparable corollary of belief in a system of free government and free enterprise is the conviction that economic trends result from mass-decisions of men, not from blind forces of nature; that no statistical charts of the past need to serve as blue-prints for the future. No, the only inevitability that free men have to recognize (except death) is the grim necessity of paying for their mistakes, whether their mistakes be the wrong things that they do or the right things that they leave undone. The only things we ought to fear are disunity, halfheartedness, bungling efforts in the war and wrong judgments when we try to win the peace.

Unprecedented Prosperity Can Be Achieved

Believing these things to be true, I hold the strong conviction that, in the period which will follow victory for us in World War II, the people of the United States can enjoy a greater and a more widely distributed prosperity than ever before in their history. I share most heartedly the view expressed by Wendell Willkie in a speech he made last July. He then said: "We are living in another period of doubt and confusion, but it, too, can be a creative age. For it is an age not merely of economic opportunity—of opportunity to open up a new world in which our freedom will be stronger because we shall have learned how to share it more widely among ourselves and with others. We are on the verge of an era in which freedom will be no man's specialty, but rather the common possession of millions upon millions of people who cherish and defend it. Together we will increase its rich rewards and insure its benefits to all men.

Now, the post-war world will be no Utopia, nor will the potential prosperity that is in prospect be achieved cheaply, easily, automatically. Success is no more inevitable than is disaster. It will require great wisdom and superlatively good management. There will be enormous problems of adjustment, both national and international, both economic and political. The job of winning the peace may be in some ways more complicated and more difficult than the job of winning the war.

Post-War Economic Needs

The political and economic arrangements made at the peace table will affect our post-war economy greatly. Arrangements for policing the world and for maintaining peace will determine the size of the military establishment the United States will maintain during the post-war era. It is unthinkable that we should disarm to the extent we did the last time, or that we should again so completely dismantle our arsenal of democracy. A certain amount of war production will doubtless continue. The reconstruction needs of the world will be tremendous and will require large-scale assistance by the United States. Nor is it necessary or desirable that this be done on a philanthropic basis. The several empires we are allied with today in the struggle against the axis powers will have, if they regain lost territories, vast resources in strategic materials essential to our economy, such as rubber, tin, tea, jute and many of the important rare metals. These offer the opportunity for business arrangements to compensate for our share in the reconstruction job. Possibilities of revival of international trade are being carefully studied by experts in that field; our present trade relationships with Latin America will scarcely be permitted to lapse. These matters of national policy and peace-table diplomacy are beyond the immediate concern of most of us here tonight; but the developments that willtake place in the international field will profoundly affect our internal economy and will play a part in determining the extent of internal prosperity and construction activity that we shall enjoy.

National policies affecting more directly our domestic economy are, however, of direct interest to most people in the building industry. They will require wisdom and good management, too. Financial and tax policies will be all-important. It will be necessary that they be so well managed that we escape any such serious price deflation as brought about the short-lived though serious depression of 1920 and 1921. It will be necessary to maintain national income at one hundred billion dollars or more, in order that the big debt load can be carried and that as nearly as possible full employment be maintained. If private enterprise is to carry the maximum possible share of post-war activity, future tax programs of Federal, State and local governments must be so devised that, while they will produce public revenues adequate to carry the total debt service and to meet currently necessary public expenditures, they will not be so repressive as to eliminate business profits and stifle incentive. It will be no easy task to devise such taxes, and, being no expert, I cannot tell you how it will be done. Defeatists say it cannot be done; but defeatists never even solve easy problems, much less hard ones. A solution must be found. Perhaps the way has been indicated by Congressman Angell of Oregon, who introduced in Congress a bill (H.R. 5196) proposing the creation of a National Tax Commission to study the whole range of taxation as now operated by our 175,000 existing taxing authorities. Since this measure has in times past been strongly advocated in principle by both President Roosevelt and Mr. Willkie, it is difficult to understand why Congress has as yet failed to take positive action on the bill. Such a national tax study is one of the most urgent pieces of unfinished national business on our agenda and needs to be undertaken at once.

Of great importance will be the policies adopted with reference to disposal of surplus industrial and housing facilities. That is a fairly big problem, too, but it also ought to be a manageable one. Some of the new facilities will be needed for continued production of war materials on the appropriate peace-time scale. Such new and expanded industries as aviation and house-prefabrication will be readily converted to peace-time uses. Already airplanes are carrying freight to points all over the world, one indication of potential commercial expansion of this great industry. The possibilities of expanded peace-time uses of aluminum, in construction and in other fields, are very great. Many of our largest industrial corporations are today, even while devoting 100 per cent of productive capacity to implements of war, developing new peace-time products in their research laboratories and are surveying potential peace-time markets. Our victory effort is giving to this nation what is incomparably the greatest array of productive facilities the world has even dreamed of. Most of this newly created wealth will have to be utilized in the post-war period, if one hundred billion dollars of national income and reasonably full employment are to be maintained and if we are going to produce enough to service our war debts. The amount of industrial plant capacity that will be actually scrapped may turn out to be surprisingly small.

Following victory, there will be immediate demands for all kinds of goods and services resulting from the curtailments and postponements of the war period. The magnitude of such pent-up demands will naturally depend upon the duration of the period of curtailment. If automobiles, radios, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and private residences are out of production no longer than twelve or eighteenmonths, the demand on resumption of production is apt to keep these industries working at full capacity for several years merely to catch up. in spite of taxes, there will be purchasing power, since the great mass of people in this country is now being forced to save or to invest in defense bonds that portion of its income which cannot at this time purchase non-existent goods. There will undoubtedly be some difficulties experienced in the transition period of reconversion of production facilities to peace-time activity, but even this job may be done surprisingly quickly. Again I say, we may have more difficulty controlling the post-war boom than in dealing with problems of depression.

I have not recited all these things to you and displayed my optimism regarding the post-war future merely by way of pleasant entertainment to divert your minds and mine from the grim—the even tragic—realities of the moment. This is no time to try to escape reality by indulging in Utopian fancies. It is no time to minimize the sacrifices and the hard adjustments we must make in order to achieve victory, or to gloss over the fact that many lives will be lost and many promising careers cut short. It would be particularly unrealistic for the building industry to ignore the probability of a substantial decline in volume after the peak of the war construction program is reached, perhaps sometime in 1943. But, I believe it is vitally necessary for us to appraise as best we can all the long-range possibilities of the situation, to see whether we are fighting for mere survival or for greater objectives and for the promise of great rewards. The dictators of the Axis powers have inspired their peoples, and particularly the younger generation, with glowing promises of a better world built out of the spoils of conquest. This country seeks no spoils of conquest, no domination of others by force, but its destiny requires that it assume leadership in a world that will provide broader opportunities for individuals and peoples than any that history has yet recorded. I firmly believe that, if we are determined to carry the spirit of victory over into the postwar era, we can promise our young people far greater and more satisfying rewards than have been promised by Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.

The Future of Architecture and Building

I will try to explain what all this has to do with building and architecture. When I was an architectural student at M.I.T. we had a very stimulating three-year course on European Civilization and Art; it was what we would call today an orientation course. It was designed to give the architectural student an appreciation of the way in which the great architects and master builders of the past produced great works by reason not only of their mastery of the techniques of their own times, but also by reason of their intimate awareness of the religious, social and political factors of the day and their capacity to make their works fully expressive of contemporary civilization.

Today it seems quite likely that the capital of western civilization has moved to this hemisphere. If it is going to be greater and finer civilization than that which we have previously enjoyed, as I firmly believe it will, our architects and master builders will have to orient themselves in the religious, social and economic life of the present time and of the foreseeable future. In the great adventure of creating the future, they will have to make a major contribution. On the more material plane of economics, it is, I think, essential to be able to visualize an expanding economic and social life, because it is only in such expansive times that people have the urge and the wherewithal to build.

If the post-war prosperity which I visualize as the possible—or rather the probable—result of victory becomes an actuality, the demand for construction, as measured inannual dollar volume, is likely to be greater than anything we ever had before. There will be a large accumulated demand for houses and commercial buildings and public improvements caused by current postponements. There will be new needs incidental to the expansion of our economic activities. Work will be resumed on our highways and parkways; in all likelihood slum redevelopment, a necessary and long-awaited program, will be undertaken in many of our large cities. Post-war planning studies of governmental and private agencies alike assign a major role to construction in our post-war economy. One of the most carefully worked out private studies that has been made, that of the General Electric Company, visualizes a possible total expenditure for the construction of all kinds, plus plant equipment, for the year 1946, assumed as a typical post-war year, of 23 billion dollars. This figure, vastly larger than any annual total yet realized in this country, is related in the estimates to an assumed national income of 110 billions of dollars. This is not a prediction, but a statement of an attainable objective. Such an unprecedented figure may surprise you. But, I ask you to consider, if you will, the potentialities of the greatest productive plant ever created in the history of the world, when 90 per cent of it will be devoted to turning out the goods and implements of peace, instead of the mere 40 to 50 per cent that will be devoted to civilian products this year and next.

Nor is it necessarily true that such enormous construction programs will consist principally of government work. Commenting on the General Electric estimates, David C. Prince, vice-president of that company and president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, says: "It is my hope that private industry is going to so organize itself that it will be able to set up a reserve of private projects sufficient to take care of practically all of this 23 billion, and the amount that we will have to pay in taxes will be inversely proportional to our success. That is, if we can provide almost all the 23 billions in private projects we won't have to pay taxes to support the rest of it. Or, more exactly, we will pay taxes to support the rest of it, but the rest of it will be small."

In the main, I would say that I share Mr. Prince's hope. We must realize, however, that private construction must always be accompanied by sizeable expenditures for necessary community facilities. For that reason I believe the proposals that have been made for setting up a public works reserve are sound, and represent a very essential program that should be undertaken at the earliest moment. The proposal fell by the wayside in the House of Representatives during the recent Congressional revolt against boondoggling, but it will be revived. Soundly projected and soundly administered, a public works reserve program represents a necessary part of adequate post-war planning and a highly appropriate use during wartime of such planning and designing talent as may not be employed directly in the victory effortThere will undoubtedly be some stiff arguments between advocates of gigantic government programs and those who believe that private construction demand can be responsible for a major proportion of the total activity necessary to maintain investment and employment at sufficiently high levels. In one important sector, the forces are being marshalled today. There is in preparation a bill to be introduced in Congress, which if passed would authorize Federal subsidies for urban rehabilitation programs. On the other hand, many people believe this job can be done without financial aid from the Federal government. Proponents of the redevelopment laws that have been enacted during the past twelve months in New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Kentucky, believe this job can be done, perhaps less quickly but also perhaps more soundly, by local initiative and private capital. Whether one or the other or both of these methods will be used thejob will be undertaken on a vast scale. It is another big piece of unfinished national business.

To enumerate all the kinds of building and engineering structures that will be needed to regenerate and advance twentieth century American civilization is beyond my capacity. The needs will call for all the creative talents our architects and engineers may possess. The needs should inspire them to greater achievements than any we have yet seen. I ask you to recall the transformations wrought in previous eras by the building of railroads and industrial centers. Think back over the specialized demands created by the automobile—highways, parkways, toll bridges, factories, filling stations, roadside restaurants, tourists camps, parking garages in cities, bus terminals, suburban communities, built-in garages in our modern houses; the contribution of the automobile to our way of life has only been partly expressed in fitting architectural forms and community patterns; the modifications it has affected in our structures nave not yet reached the end. This great industry will come to life again in the post-war period and will demand more new structural types. The airplane industry has created an ever-increasing demand for hangars, airports, terminals. Can anyone today set limits to the future possibilities of this industry and the future demands it will make for new types of buildings? What will the availability of cheap aluminum mean to construction? What of the possibilities of prefabricated houses, which are finding in the victory program their first opportunity for large-scale demonstration?

What of the many needs for planned residential communities, for recreational facilities? The evolving demand for better buildings for family living, better facilities for a motorized and air-minded generation, for recreation, education, health, and civilized community life will challenge all the ingenuity and creative ability that we can find. If victory does not ultimately result in a truly great American architecture, we shall have proved unequal to our task.

So, building for victory is building for the future, and for a future in which architecture and building will occupy the key position they have always occupied in an era of vital and expanding civilization. But, I firmly believe that the great architecture our revitalized civilization will demand will be an architecture keyed to the future and not to the past. The present time of trial and adjustment, and the post-war period of reconversion of building industry talents' and facilities to peace-time purposes, may serve as times of testing the design ideas, the professional and business practices and the designing and building organizations that are fitted to survive. Our fight for freedom is a fight for survival as a nation; but it is much more than that. It is a fight for opportunity, for the right to carry the torch of western civilization; a fight for the chance to create our own future and to make it just as good a future as our intelligence and our determination and our good-will may merit. When we say our prayers for victory, let us also pray that we may prove worthy of the great opportunities that victory will bring.