3 9002 11326 0534

PRIZE WINNING ESSAYS

*	CPL.	JACK J. ZUROFSKY	*	PVT. STANLEY L. JONES

*	PVT.	CLARENCE WEINSTOCK	*	PVT. ROBERT E. PARK

*	SGT.	HENRY C. NELSON	*	P.F.C. BENJAMIN E. KARN

*	SGT.	KENNETH BOARD	*	8/SGT. GEORGE P. SCHARF

FROM THE NORTH AFRICAN THEATER OF OPERATIONSNATOUSA ESSAY CONTEST

J MTRODI/CT ION

This pamphlet contains eight essays written by American ser-
vice men stationed In the North African Theater of Operations* The
essays are the result of a contest sponsored by the Morale Services
Section of NATOUSA* The fir^t three entries are prize winners, the
other five received honorable mention. Over 300 entries were Judged
by six officers and six enlisted men, all with different experi-
ences and from various branches.

The result of this contest Is significant. The final choice
of the contestants differs little from entries for similar and
earlier contests. It would appear from these essays that, like his
father In the first World War, the American soldier of today has
the strong urge "to get back hone" and back to everything he means
when he speaks of "hone", "For what has Hitler nade of the hone?"
asks S/Sgt. Scharf. The German youngster has no home which he
could call "hone" with the same Joy. But the American soldier
knows that he will not go back to a life at home which refuses to
accept changes. He has become Increasingly aware that the desire
for unaltered situations of the soldier generation before him Is
not parallel with his own reasons which drive him to fight. Pvt.
James writes:	"It has becone apparent that our own sanity and

safety depend upon (the safety of) the rest of the world." ’

NO ABSTRACT IDEAS. . .

It Is an Indication thajb the modern American soldier Is little
concerned with abstract Ideas, and that he has developed a pro-
nounced awareness of the state of the world and of what has to be
done about It. He realizes that the choice of his soldier-father
would In our time be harmful to his country, to his way of life,
and to his own Individual freedom. The choice of the previous gen-
eration cannot be his choice. What he means when he speaks of a
different state of things Is that which must be apparent after
everything has been done to smash the forces which threaten the
survival of his country, when everything ftas been done to assure
him at least a nininun guarantee for a lasting peace.

The modern American soldier Is aware that his Job is the
toughest any American generation has ever taken on. But he be-
lieves also that It can be done, that our nation Is not sick beyond
recovery as the Axis would have it, that Democracy Is youthful,
that we do not want to be ruled by Jungle law but to extend man's
humanity to man, and that we're as ready to fight and to die for
basic Democratic principles as any "supeman" for a promised "thou-
sand year Reich" based on perverted ambitions.

1This global war carries the American soldier into many corners
of the world. His experiences will enrich his knowledge about
world affairs and needs, and his outlook will be sharpened by that
which he can see and feel. Other nations, friend or foe, come to
know him as a soldier of generous impulses, one to whom fair play
is natural, a human being in uniform to whom an abundant life for
all is not only a hope but a promise and a possibility.

THE SOLDIER’ S CHOICE. . .

History, to which all his actions contribute, will record his
choice. While participating in discussions or in contests, a great
number of our men in uniform have stated clearly on which side they
stand. Between their choice and the choice of the founding fathers
of our country there is no basic difference. Freedom is on their
minds too, no matter how mistakenly casual newspaper correspondents
interpret their utterances while an attack is awaited or while on
the way to a rest camp.

For the first time in the history of the Uni.ted States Army,
the soldiers are encouraged not only to discuss the reasons why
they fight, but also to write about them. In this pamphlet we find
some of the results and many different reasons why men fight. The
authors are soldiers who have been thousands of miles away from
home for a long time. Some of them have seen action. This fact
should be remembered, and it is, in more than one way, an argument
against critics to whom the essays reproduced here appear to be too
much on the idealistic side. Youthful optimism and self-assurance
are virtues of men, who, even though they are not immune to dis-
illusion, are nevertheless going through the grind of this total
war with one aim alone: to move forward only, and not one step
backward. S/Sgt. Scharf speaks for many of then: "This army life
has sort of sobered me up. I see things I once took for granted in
a little different light."

THE WINNERS. . .

Corporal Jack J. Zurofsky of Brooklyn, New York is a 28 year
old Infantryman whose parents iimnigrated to the United States from
Europe at the turn of the century. His essay was Judged the best
out of over 300 entries. He is the winner of a $100 war bond.

Private Clarence tfeinstock of New York City is a member of the
Army Air Forces. • He was recovering from wounds received in combat
when he was informed that he had won second prize and a $50 war
bond.

Sergeant Eenry C. Kelson, Army Air Forces, who also hails from
Brooklyn, New York, is the ^winner of the third prize and a $25 war
bond.

2Honorable mention went to Sergeant Kenneth Board, Army Air
Forces, Private Stanley L. Jones, Military Police; Private Robert
E. Park, Medical Detachment; Private first Class Benjamin E. larn,
Anti Aircraft, Staff Sergeant George P. Scharf, Army Air Forces.

No changes have been made In the original text of the essays.
Orientation Officers and editors will find the material useful as
points of departure for discussions and as special features for
Army newspapers.

Essays were entered by members of all branches of the services,
Including WAC's and sailors.

The Director of Morale Services Section, NATOUSA, expressed
pleasure at the successful results of the competition and pointed
out that, "The purpose of the essay contest was to get the soldier
to define his stake in the tgar. Almost unanimously the men who en-
tered the contest expressed their animosity to the forces of ag-
gression and fascism and their great love for democracy and the
Principles of liberty."

* * *

■I FIGHT TO REMAIN FREE. . ."
by Cpl. Jack J. Zurofsky

This Is why I fight:

I fight because It's my fight.

I fight because my eyes are unafraid to look Into other eyes;
because they have seen happiness and because they have seen suffer-
ing; because they are curious and searching; because they are free.

I fight because my ears can listen to both sides of a question;
because they can hear the groanlngs of a tormented people as well
as the laughter of free people; because they are a channel for In-
formation, not a route for repetition; because, if I hear and do
not think, I am deaf.

I fight because my mouth does not fear to utter my opinions;
because, though I am only one, my voice helps forge my destiny; be-
cause I can speak from a soap-box, or from a letter to the news-
papers, or from a question that I may ask my representatives in
Congress; because when my mouth speaks and can only say what every-
one is forced to say it Is gagged.

3NO PASSPORT NEEDED.

I fight because my feet can go where they please, because they
need no passport to go from New York to New Jersey and back again;
because if I want to leave my country I can go without being forced
and without bribing and without the loss of my savings; because I
can plant my feet in farm soil or city concrete without anybody's
by your leave; because when my feet walk only the way they are
forced to walk they are hobbled.

I fight because of all of these and because I have a mind, a
mind which has been trained in a free school to accept or to reject,
to ponder and to weigh - a mind which knows the flowing stream of
thought, not the stagnant swamp of blind obedience; a mind schooled
to think for itself, to be curious, skeptical, to analyze, to form-
ulate, and to express its opinions; a mind capable of digesting
the intellectual food it receives from a free press - because if a
mind does not think it is the brain of a slave.

I fight because I think I am as good as anybody else; because
of what other people have said better than ever 1 could, "certain
inalienable rights", "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness", "government of the people, by the people, and for the
people", "give me liberty or give me death."

I fight because of my memories - the laughter and play of my
childhood, the ball games I was in and the better ones I watched,
my mother telling me why my father and she came to America at the
turn of the century, my sisters marrying, my high school graduation,
the first time I saw a cow, the first year we could afford a vaca-
tion, the crib at Camp Surprise Lake after the crowded, polluted
Coney Island waters, hikes in the fall with the many-colored leaves
falling, weenie and marshmallow roasts over a hot fire, the first
time I voted, my first date and the slap in the face I got instead
of the kiss I attempted, the way the nostrum quack would alternate
with political orators on our street corner, seeing the changes for
the better in my neighborhood - the El going down, streets being
widened to let the sun in, new tenements replacing the old slums -
the crowd applauding the time I came through with the hit that won
us the borough championship; the memories, which if people like me
do not fight, our children will never have.

T fight because I have something to fight for.

OPPORTUNITY AND SECURITY. . =

I fight because of the life I hope to live when the fighting
is finished, because that life offers opportunity and security and
the freedom to read and write and listen and think and talk, be-
cause, as before, my home will be my castle with the drawbridge
down only to those that I invite, because if I do not fight life
itself will be death.

4I fight because I believe in progress - not reaction, because
- despite our fault, there is hope in our manner of life, because
if we lose there is no hope.

I fight because some day I want to get married and I want my
children to be born into a free world, because my forefathers left
me a heritage of freedom which it is my duty to pass on, because if
we lost it would be a crime to have children.

FREE PEOPLE MUST FIGHT. . .

I fight because it is an obligation, because free people must
fight to remain free, because when the freedom of one nation or one
person are taken away the rights of all nations and all people are
threatened, because - through our elected representatives - I had
the choice - to fight or not to fight.

I fight not so much because of Pear] Harbor but because of
what Pearl Harbor meant. Because, finally after skirmishes with
the Ethiopians, the Manchurians, the Chinese, the Austrians, the
Czechoslovakians, the Danes, the Spaniards, and the Norwegians,
fascism was menacing us as we had never before been menaced, be-
cause only the craven will not defend themselves.

I fight because "it is better to die. than live on one's knees".

I fight because only by fighting today will there be peace
tomorrow.

I fight because I am thankful that I am not on the other side;
because, but for the Grace of God or an accident of Nature, the
brutalized Nazi could have been me and, but for my fighting, will
be my child.

I fight in the fervent hope that those that follow me will not
have to fight again but in the knowledge that, if they have to,
they will not be found wanting in the crisis.

I fight to remain free.

* * *

"WE DID NOT PANT FOR WAR. .
by Pvt. Clarence Ueinstock

Some weeks ago I was at a hospital to which sick and wounded
men are sent from the front. Every evening those of us who were
well enough to be up went to the dayroom to read, work Jigsaw puz-
zles, or listen to the guitar players. We sat around in the hand-
some maroon bathrobes of the Medical Department of the Army. The
robes were initialed 1IDUSA and the boys, with the wry humor of men
who live dangerously, claimed this meant Many die 0 shall also.

5One night we sang. Old American songs, souvenirs of other
times of crisis, "John Brown's Body", "There's a Long, Long Trail
Awinding", songs of the land, "Red River Valley", "Shenandoah",
songs of cities, "East Side, West Side", "St: Louis Blues".

We stopped for a moment and the man with the guitar said, "Ever
hear this one?" He hit the strings and sang. We knew the tune—
everyone does—hut here were the words:

There's no one on the skyline,

That's sure a pretty good sign	'

Those Eighty Eights are breakin' up
That old gang of nine.

Gee, you get that lonesone feelin'

When you hear that shrapnel whine,

Those Eighty Eights are breakin' up
That old gang of nine.

THEY COULD MAKE FUN OF DEATH. . .

Many of the hoys laughed, hut not as you do at a good joke.
They grinned because they could still make fun of death, because
brave men kid when there is really nothing to laugh about.

Afterward, lying on my cot, T kept thinking, "Do these boys
who are so good in a fight, and so gentle and thoughtful toward
each other here, have to be asked what they are fighting for?"
Isn't that one of those questions you cannot grasp because the
answer seems so obvious? "Why do you want to live?" "Is happiness
good or bad for one?"

I heard the ouestion put another way in the same dayroom. The
boys were talking about going home, where there were no C rations,
no shells, bombs, booby traps and machine pistols. "Sure, every-
body wants to get out of this," someone said, "but which one of us,
one nan alone, would take a personal trip ticket to the States and
wish the others good luck in their foxholes?"

It was in the song of the 88's and through the dayroom speaker
that I began to find my answer.

MEN OF ALL STATES. . .

No man stands alone. In war you leave your family and peace-
time friends and the comrades of your company lessen your fears and
your loneliness. In them you rediscover your country, the men of
all states, the people who made America, with their hundred ways of
speaking, their tall stories and their fast answers, their clever
repair-job hands and their clear making-something minds, their easy
giving and willingness to be shown, their big laughter at false

6fronts and their quick comeback for injustice. You hear their
songs of longing and battle, of loneliness and solidarity, the
songs of the whole history of your country. And then you know why
you fight on the cold Italian beaches and hills: If you failed
these nen it would be like walking out of your own house and never
coning back again.

Yet that isn't all you fight for. You can live in a house arid
not know who built it; but you have got to remember the thoughts
and blood that made our house, America, if you value your freedom.
I'm not thinking of the school textbooks where you see pictures of
noble gentlemen in lacy shirts and velvet breeches signing the De-
claration of Independence. I mean Franklin when he Joked like the
men in the hospital —"We must all hang together or we will all hang
separately." I mean Tom Paine writing on a drum in a*snowy field
by the light of his fellow soldiers' lamps: "These are the tines
that try men's souls. The sunner soldier and the sunshine Patriot
will, in this crisis, shrink fron the service of their1 country; but
he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of nan and wo-
man. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder th.e conflict the nore glorious
the triunph. What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly; it is
dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to
put a proper prbce upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed
if so celestial an article as freedon should _not be highly rated."

' l

PEACE IS INDIVISIBLE. . .

It took us some time to remember Tom Paine, to learn that we
couldn't buy our freedom with other men's effort. Few of us knew
that we were threatened and mocked in Manchuria, Ethiopia, and
Spain. The men who died there, our brothers, fell unhelped and un-
mourned by America. Our neighbor, Mr. Chamberlain, could even say
that the citizens of Czechoslovakia were a people "of whon we know
nothing", and whose affairs did not concern him. Mr. Chamberlain
also did not know Tom Paine, who said, "Where freedon is not there
is ny country." Not until Pearl Harbor did we, as a nation, learn
that liberty, like peace, is indivisible, that oppression anywhere
on this earth menaces our happiness and security. If we fight to-
day to free the countries overrun by Fascism, we also fight against
our own enslavement. Others' war of liberation is Just as much our
war of survival. Even if war had not been declared or waged a-
gainst us, we, a free people, could not exist in a conquered world.
We would be destroyed by a tyranny which our indifference had fed.
We would have to yield to power because we had given up our herit-
age of liberty, keeping ouiet when it was time to take up arms,
crying peace when there was no peace.

7PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

What else do we fight for? We are an Army fighting for happi-
ness. The pursuit of happiness was our idea and we fought for it
In 1776. Because we won, the great French revolutionist, Saint Just
was able to say, "Happiness is a new idea in Europe." He meant
that for thousands of years people may have desired and reached out
for simple pleasures, but it didn't occur to them that they had a
right to be happy. They fought wars because they were ordered to,
or to make money, like the Hessians whom Washington defeated at
Trenton. It took our .forefathers, with their inalienable rights of
man, to give men something truly their own to fight for.

Today we are at war with powerful industrial nations whose
social structures are viciously antiquated. These countries never
achieved a democratic revolution. Their rulers regard them as
feudal domains from the boundaries of which raids are made on high-
ways and neighboring lands. For them there are no citizens, only
serfs whose value lies in their eagerness to sacrifice themselves
for their "betters".' The Nazi knights rant about "duty" eund "sacri-
fice", and. every soldier in Italy has seen, painted on walls and
latrines, the favorite Fascist slogan, "Credere, Obbedire, Combat-
tere"—believe, obey, fight. Our enemies used to like to call us
effete democracies. Why effete? Because we desired happiness for
ourselves and our fellow citizens? Now we know they are afraid of
our great democratic happiness. For our idea of happiness is in-
dissoluble with liberty and equality. It excludes no human being
because of his color, the country he was born in, what he believes
or doesn't believe. It knows no elite, no restricted, no privi-
leged blood. It made us a great nation and as 1 ong as we hold to
it we shall be united against our enemies.

WE CANNOT LIVE DREAMS- - -

What of my own personal happiness then? How does the great
American dream, the pursuit of happiness, jibe with my present
life? The answer is simple. I know how liberty had to be achieved
in America and how it must be saved today. I know what price liber-
ty. I could have no happiness if, knowing what I do know, I found
myself unwilling or reluctant to pay. We cannot live the dream
created by our fathers for us-unless we give it new existence and
reality--for ourselves and our children. If freedom is imperilled
by my comfort, I must give up my comfort. My happiness now can
only spring from the fight to preserve my freedom on a plane com-
patible with human dignity, on terms which do not Involve its de-
nial to millions of my brothers.

I fight to return to my native land, and to help make its fu-
ture. I want every man and woman who fought or worked for victory
to enjoy the riches they helped defend—the soldier, the sailor,
the miner and millworker, the weaver and the typist. I want an

8America that will say to Anglo-Saxon and Slovak, Chinese and Porto
Rican, Negro and Jews, "I an your country, for which you stood
watch with your guns and before the nast, at furnaces and in the
fields, by loons and at desks. As you would have been slaves in
defeat, you are- co-equals in victory. "

ALL CREATED EQUAL. . .

I know there are some people who think they are better than
others because their great grandparents came over In the mayflower
or because they are paler than Pearl Harbor's Dorle Miller or the
slave Crlspus Attucks who died fighting at Bunker Hill. They think
they are entitled to bigger paying jobs, finer education, softer
seats in the theater and a greater say in the government. But ask
any man at the front, "Does a Jew, a Mexican, a Chinese boy or a
black nan not behave as nobly, do his wounds not run blood, do they
hurt hin less, does his mother weep less for hin when he dies?"
You know his answer already. I want that answer spoken in the
realities of American life, so that everyone of us will be able to
do useful, creative work, unhampered by poverty or discrimination.

Today we fight a great Just war of liberation. We do not
idealize conquest like the Nazi historians and Prussian officer-
landowners. We do not cry, "War is beautiful", like the Fascist
poet, Marinetti. We do not compare bomb bursts in defenseless
Ethiopian villages to the unfolding of rose petals, like the Fas-
cist duckling, Bruno Mussolini. Such heroics are not for us. The
face of war is no different for us now than it was to Harriet Tub-
man, escaped slave and Union soldier, who watched the storming of
Fort Wagner outside Charleston: "And then we saw the lightning and
that was the guns, and then we heard the thunder and that was the
big guns, and then we heard the rain falling and that was the drops
of blood falling, and when we cane to get in the crops it was dead
nen that we reaped. "

THE GUILTY MUST BE DEALT KITH. . .

No, we did not pant for war like our enemies; but now we thirst
for victory. The destroyers must be destroyed. The killers of
Gue.nlca, Lidice, Nanking, Pearl Harbor, the torturers of Russian
farmers have to be erased from our human world. Our hate will only
burn out when it has dealt with them all, the "Leaders", the "Dukes",
the. Gauleiters and the Squadristi, the Iron Guards and the Samurai.

We will come home bringing peace. Every one of us has gone
over the moment when he will walk down a familiar street and step
into his own house again. There are streets in London, Hankow,
Rotterdam, Sevastopol, in a hundred other cities, where a man might
not find his own house. Perhaps no one could tell him where his
wife and children are. Ve Americans are a lucky people. Even now

9we will return to a happiness others dare not even hope for. We
will return wiser too, more trustful of our Allies, readier to
stand together with them when freedom is at stake. And we will
have learnt that it is up to us to keep the promise our forefathers
made, of "A new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to 'the
proposition that all men are created equal."

Not every soldier will be able to put his thoughts in words
for you. For one thing he may be too busy behind his rifle sight.
Or he may just not feel like talking. But ask yourself, "Does this
nan know what he is fighting for?" And you will notice something.
He may bitch about the food, close order drill and lack of ratings.
He will.be afraid at times and lonely very often. But you will
never hear him pity himself. He knows that his people's fate bright-
ens in his steady hands and that their love follows him into battle.
I am proud to know him.

* ■ * #•

■TO BE ABLE TO LOOK MY CHILDREN IN THE FACE. .
by $gt. Henry C. Helson

Why am I fighting?

Not, certainly, "just because I was drafted" - the cynical,
easy retort of the half-believer. I was a draftee, yes - because
circumstances prevented me from joining up when I should have liked.
I envy and honor the boys who enlisted - the ones who, seeing their
country's need, acted upon it without waiting to be called - or
compel]ed.

Not just because of Pearl Harbor. That's an immediate reason,
yes, and may have'brought the conflict on sooner than it might
otherwise have occurred. But Pearl Harbor, or some other harbor,
would have come sooner or later; indeed, might have come too late.

Not to "pull anyone's chestnuts out of the fire." The time
for such picayune criticism has long gone by - indeed, never was;
for the chestnuts of honor, of freedom, of decency among nations,
are certainly as much ours as Great Britain's or China's or Rus-
sia's. When the day comes - pray God it never does - that America
yields up its right to defend and fight for the principles upon
which our nation was founded and which should ever go before us
like a holy banner, that day the spirit of America dies and her
lamp goes out.

10GOOD POWER AGAINST EVIL

Not to "force our ideas on the rest of the worldn - another
easy disparagement of the sophist. I am fighting for right of peo-
ples to say how they shall be governed. If they like our form of
government, fine. If not, let them have another - but let the
choicd be theirs, not something handed down to them from a self-
styled "Leader" - or a yoke laid on them by an invader.

Not for "the balance of power" - still another bugaboo for the
timid who see a communist in every woodpile and the British lion
behind every tree. I am sick unto death of the fearful ones who
are unable to distinguish between leadership and domination, and
what is even worse, who would hide from themselves the desirability
of replacing brutal domination with even reasonably decent leader-
ship pointed in the right direction. Which is preferable - a Hit-
lerian domination, or a United Nations leadership? To me the ans-
wer is so obvious that I am almost ashamed to pose the question.
This is not "balance of power", in the old, nation-against-nation
sense; this is the balance of good power against evil. The two are
different concepts entirely.

For what, exactly, are we fighting?

HONE IS A SYMBOL. . .

There is one most frequently heard answer to this. The fight -
ing men will all give it to you, sometimes just as a part of their
reason, sometimes as all of it; magazine articles are full of it,
the Sunday supplements boil it down into little paragraphs, you
even read it in the advertisements nowadays. It runs something
like this: "To get back hone again, to what we know and love; our
families, our old jobs, our churches and our theaters, and our
books and our little pleasures. A fire in the grate, an easy chair
pipe and slippers, and maybe a glass of beer, and a friend to share
it. A picnic in Oak Grove on a holiday, a fishing trip or a game
of golf on a Sunday. The chance to fraternize with fellow Ameri-
cans, to cheer for the Dodgers; to vote for your man and beef a-
bout him once he's in. The right to look your neighbor in the eye,
and, if need be, tell him to go to blazes..." Home! Yes, that's a
fair summing-up of what we all yearn to go back to, and so, in a

sense, it is what we are fighting for.

%

But, 0 America, there is so much more! And 0 Americans, don't
mistake by-products for the things that make them possible!

Vhat an I fighting for?

Well, it goes a long way back.

11THE ROOTS OF AMERICA.

It goes back into the taproots of America. Back beyond the
World War, with its simple slogan of fighting to make the world
safe for democracy. Back beyond '98, when we fought to set Cuba
free. Back beyond the Civil War when we fought to make and keep
America a nation of freemen. Back beyond 18.12, when our cry was
the freedom of the seas. Back even beyond the Revolution that saw
our forefathers pledge "their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor" that the colonies might be freed from the yoke of the
Hanoverian king. Back to the Bill of Rights, back, back to Magna
Carta seven hundred years ago - that first great landmark of man's
history-long effort to be politically free. And shining all down
through the struggle, a golden thread spun and woven in English
history and flung, gleaming, across the whole warp and woof of our
American Dream, is that shining, Lustrous thing - Freedom! Free-
dom of the individual to rule himself, to make his laws, to have
his say in council, to set his course and follow his star!

Fine words, you. say; but what have they to do with fighting a
Germany whose chief concern perhaps was Europe, a Japan whose ambi-
tions were - perhaps - only Oriental?

I say they have a lot to do with Japan and Germany. I say, in
fact, that they have everything to do with them. Everything - and
nothing. Nothing, in the obvious sense that our two ideologies are
as far apart as the poles; but everything, because the two could
not exist side by side in the world. They could not exist together,
beyond a little space of time, because each denies the validity of
the other and seeks to destroy it, and the incompatibility is so
great that sooner or later they must clash bloodily. You ask, "Why
couldn't we Just go on as before and deal with the Continent through
Germany?"

NO BUSINESS WITH HITLER. . .

"Why can’t we do business with Hitler?" and I answer that there
are two reasons. First, Hitler would only want us to do business
on his terms - which we, if we kept our honor, would find unpalat-
able. But the second reason is by far the more important, and at
the same time it is the less demonstrable, because less tangible.
It is the fact - and I am so sure of it that I label it a fact
rather than a promise - that Nazism successful and dominant in
Europe and Asia would result, as surely as the proverbial death and
taxes, in the emergence and ultimate dominance of the Hazi princi-
ple in American life. America - the Americas - seeing Nazism tri-
unphant all over the globe - would Nazify itself, even if Germany
made no attempt to Nazify us through military action. Not inten-
tionally would we do so - perhaps even unwillingly. But a force so

12all-powerful, so obviously the successful governmental principle,
would soon gain Its proponents In America, and then Its converts,
and then Its wi11ing-to-try-anything-once followers, and finally
Its half-convinced acqulescers and dubious go-along-with-the-crowd
straddlers and timid ones; and, first thing we know, we should have
the German story all over again. Fantastic ? Yes - and so are the
workings of human nature and the vagaries of the democratic but
Politically unoriented minds of the people. We must realize that
America is no longer a band of colonials united against a greedy
and unjust king; no longer a land with great frontiers to absorb
poverty and the restless drive of men's spirit, with huge territo-
ries to quell, even if but temporarily, a slavery question with a
Missouri Compromise. America's era of territorial expansion is
over; our frontiers now are those of sociology and economics and
political philosophy. These abstractions are our borders; we must
defend them.

DEMOCRACY HAS FAILED IN EUROPE. . .

These are our twentieth century counterparts of "Fifty-four
forty or fight!" and we must extend them. These are territories
of the mind and spirit, and wars for or against them will first be
wars of the mind and spirit, Just as Nazism first warred in the
minds of the German people, working up fury and hate before there
were any overt acts of aggression. Yield an inch anywhere along
the borders, and the enemy has a foothold, a bridgehead from which
to carry on his insidious work. And had we not gone into the strug-
gle, and Nazism had stood triumphantly and mockingly over the graves
of European democracy, there would have been the foothold, the
opening wedge. Men (some, not all - but alas! enough) would have
looked at each other in confusion and alarm and doubt. They would
have said, fearingly, "Democracy has failed in Europe. We thought
it was the best way, but how can it be, if it is so weak? Maybe
the Mazis have something. Maybe . . . maybe . .."So the whispers
would have started, and run along gathering weight and hysterical
conviction as they ran; and so the dike is penetrated, the trickle
grows into a breach, the enemy is across and the border is lost.
Men, searching for a new challenge, a new panacea, a new Way, a new
answer to old problems, would seize on this ready-to-hand . answer -
and we are swept away.

LIDICE MUST BE AVENGED. . .

That's why I'm fighting, somewhere in that welter of words.
I'm fighting because of tortured certainty that we must fight, or
write ignominy and defeat on the page of our generation. I'm fight-
ing to kill Fascism now, before it has a chance to eat its ugly way
into American vitals. I'm fighting because I hate Nazism and all
its works, and Nazism leaves me no other way of damning it but by

13the sword. I'm fighting because I don't want any hint of a "maybe"
in American thinking. I'm fighting because the world, like our own
America, "cannot exist half slave and half free." I'm fighting be-
caiise I think China has a right to live as a nation, not exist as a
vast puppet state. I'm fighting because I Just can't see a Lidice
die unavenged - not Just because Lidice is a crime for all history,
but because Lidice stands for all the helpless people who have been
ground under the Nazi heel. I'm fighting because America, my be-
loved America, is threatened with mortal danger - and far too many
of her people have not sensed it.

I'm fighting because I want to be able to look my children in
the face some day and say to them that America wasn't afraid to
fight once again for ideal, the ideals that have made America great.
I love peace, and I hate war for the shocking waste of everything
that it is; but even war is preferable to supine ac quiescence in
international murder, not merely of the body, but of the spirit.
I'm not ready, at the behest of a pseudo-super race, to yield with-
out a struggle those priceless things which are at once our tradi-
tion and the future hope of the world. It is a trite phrase, but
America has a rendezvous with destiny. She must meet it with honor
and courage, proudly, as befits a queen among nations. I am fight-
ing for the Christian future of the world, the dignity of the indi-
vidual, the whole concept of democracy. I don't want to see them
all swept away, a birthright sold for a mess of Nazi pottage.

That's why I'm fighting!

* * *

"THE FOUR FREEDOMS OF MY COUNTRY. . ."
by Sgt, Kenneth Board

I am fighting for man's most primitive instinct - self-pre-
servation.

I am fighting because my way of life, and my life itself, are
threatened with extinction.

I am fighting because everything I own in this world I owe to
the United States of America.

These are not figures of speech, but plain statements of fact.
I was not born in America, and when I landed there at the age of
twenty-one, I was a stowaway without a penny in my pocket. Eight
years later I was a citizen, with a grand wife, a comfortable home,
a good Job, and a respected position in the community. Twenty-one
years in another land had not been able to give me those things,
but in a few years America did, as it has done for thousands of
other young men.

14AMERICAN HAY OF LIFE.

I own a car and a refrigerator - my home has electric lights,
steam heat and hot water. "Shat of it" I am told, "these are com-
mon everyday things." To me they are not common everyday things.
They are miracles - precious Jewels for more comfortable life that
have been presented to me by American ingenuity. After eight years
it is still a source of constant amazement to me how the people of
America, especially the younger people, take these wonders of con-
venience so nonchalantly for granted. I know people in other lands
who can no more hope to buy a car, or even a Jaloppy, than to buy
the moon. I know people who buy food from day to day, because what
spoils overnight from the heat must be thrown away. I know people
who strain their eyes by the light of an oil lamp, and huddle over
wood fires for warmth. I know people who have to heat a kettle of
water before they can wash the dishes. America has raised me from
the ranks of those people. Ask the soldiers that have served in
other lands how people live there. So longer will those boys take
the American woy of life for granted. From now on they will deeply
appreciate every one of those jewels of American ingenuity, yes,
all the way down to the little Jewels of coca cola and ice cream.

There are four freedoms in my country. The language of the
politicians that clothes them also obscures them a little, but in
terms of my everyday life, they are as obvious as the Washington
monument.

THE FOUR FREEDOMS. . .

Freedom of speech - means that I can go to a ball game and
call the umpire a bum. If I think any public figure is a nit-wit,
I can say so without dying the next day.

Freedom of worship - means that my rel igion is my own business,
and as personal as my choice in ties or underwear. I am a Jew, but
if I choose to ignore the orthodox teachings and do not attend the
synagogue regularly, no rabbi in the land has the right to compel
me to do otherwise. If I don't approve of any of the established
religions, I can create one of my own.

Freedom from want - means that as long as I want to work, I
can always get a Job. The tradesmen testify to that, because they
will sell me anything for a small down payment, confident that my
opportunities to earn money are certain and many.

Freedom from fear- means that I can leave'my home in the morn-
ing without being afraid that I may never return alive, or that I
will come home at night and find my wife murdered and my home con-
fiscated. It means that I can bring children into the world with
the sure knowledge that I can raise them, and watch them go out
into a life full of opportunities for advancement.

15I tun fighting Hitler because he wants to kill that American
way of life...my way of life. There is no ambiguity. He and his
mob have stated that as their objective time and time again. They
will tell us whether we may go to a symphony concert, and what we
will be permitted to hear there. They will tell us when we may eat
apple pie, and whether we may listen to Harry James. They will
destroy conscience, and the crook will be king. True, we have in
America some crooked politicians, capitalists and labor leaders,
but they know that they operate at their own risk. Once exposed,
they pay the full penalty of the law. Insull was as powerful as
Thyssen, but all his influence couldn't keep him from jail when he
exceeded the law. Roosevelt is as powerful as Goering, yet let him
try and confiscate any public art treasures, and he will find him-
self subject to the same process of law as the holdup man who takes
your wallet.

HITLER'S SCAPEGOATS. - .

I do not believe with many of my co-religionists that Hitler
is predominantly a Jewish menace. The Jews were chosen as his
scapegoat merely because they happened to be the most convenient
minority for persecution. Time has shown us that no religion can
expect any better treatment at his hands. Hitler scorns God, yet
in all his bombastic vocabulary he could find no better slogan for
his people than the words of the Book "Thou shalt have no other
Gods before me". He has already destroyed our freedom from fear,
and the other three would vanish under the tramping feet of the
Wehrmacht. Yes, we must fight him now, and let some of us lose our
lives, so that thousands will not have to rot to a slow death in
American concentration camps.

We must fight him now because there can be no peace in the
world while the Nazi philosophy lives. "Lay down your arms" he
tells us, "and you will have Peace". That, with a nation for a
partner whose "divine" mission in life is the subjugation of the
entire white race. Can Hitler be naive enough to believe that Tojo
will exempt the white Nazis from this holy war of his? A peace
with Hitler would just be the signal for the beginning of a world
blood-bath between the Supermen of the New Order and the Chosen
People of the Rising Sun. Munich has shown us that a compromise
with Hitler is Just a military expedient for him to regroup his
armed forces.

TOJOVS TOP-HATTED DIPLOMATS. . .

I am fighting Japan, because if they win, my life won't be
worth a nickel. Tojo has told us we can expect no mercy at his
hands. The implication is that he expects none either^ Under
Japan there would not even be existence for us. A Japanese soldier,
passing casually by, could slice off my head as I grovelled in the

16garbage of the gutter for a crust of bread, with no more concern
than you would show at killing a fly. Does this sound improbable?
Alas, too many improbable things have become reaJities for us these
past few years. -The qualities that we most abhor are held sacred
by the Japs, and our experiences with them from Pearl Harbor on
have shown us that our fight with them is for life itself.

Can we arrive at a peace or arrangement with these half-civi-
lized people? Have we forgotten so soon those two top-hatted diplo-
mats, peace proposals in hand, bowing and smiling in Cordell Hull's
office while their government was printing Philippine currency for
the planned invasion? Any such peace would continue only as long
as Nippon found it convenient to do so. We would have to live in
a state of armed alert, and that constant apprehension would make
our freedom from fear a fond memory.

Yes, there is no middle road - we must fight or die, spirit-
ually or physically. Hitler has said, "There are two worlds -
theirs and nine, and one must perish". 0. K., Mr. Schickelgruber,
I'm going to fight like hell for mine!

* * *

"I WAS AN ISOLATIONIST. .
by Pvt. Stanley L. Jones

The first few flakes of snow were beginning to fall slowly
from the dark sky. As I walked through the cold street running a-
long the bottom of the hill, I heard from above, where the frater-
nities were located, the shouts of a mob. Heard indistinctly in
the distance, the voices seemed to carry a note of rejoicing; the
whole tumult carried a note of intense excitement. I knew what it
was about; for as I had sat listening to the beautiful strains of
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony deep in the peace and comfort of the
music room at the Student Memorial Union, a friend had come and
whispered into my ear the news of Pearl Harbor. At first it had
not struck me so keenly. I sat with shreds of the Pastoral still
whipping through my brain, reluctantly watching the music flee be-
fore the nightmare of a treacherous attack and a new order of guns,
gas masks, and hand grenades.

Yes, I knew what the noise on Fraternity Hill was all about.
It was the reaction of a small group of American college students
to a new war. Why were they there in a yelling laughing mob? And
why was I here in the dark street, walking fast trying to escape
myself, while with every step the tragic reality of what, had hap-
pened forced itself more clearly upon me? I was irritated with the
mob, irritated with myself.

17"Shut up, you fools!" hurled Itself upon the Ice, the snow,
and the wind from an Inner recess of my mind. "You fools, you
fools, this is no tine to rejoice; it is a tine for tearing of hair
and beating of breast inthe isolation of a padded cell."

OUR INDIVIDUAL TRAGEDIES. . .

Then I was In our Cooperative House. Here there was no re-
joicing; here there were no wild dreams of heroism and adventure.
Here In the eyes of my friends I saw the remains of shattered hopes.
These were the sons of poor men. They were working their way thru
college, sacrificing much, working hard, hoping that in a-profes-
sional career they could escape the poverty of their parents. But
now it was done for sure, and who would know what chances would de-
velop after the war to capture that precious degree which fate was
wrenching from them? All of us were living our individual trage-
dies that day and night—a Sunday it was—boys and men in their
imaginations saying farewell to careers, to parents, to sweethearts,
to wives, to children recently born.

Gradually the sense of tragedy was dissipated and into its
place grew a new resolution to fight hard and win. Most of us had
fought hard to keep the war away from our doors. Some of us had
seen the war creeping upon us in the Japanese attack upon China, in
the Franco victory over democracy and decency in the Spanish Revo-
lution, then in Abyssinia, and later in Austria and Czechoslova-
kia. This group believed that the democratic nations should inter-
vene to curb the rapacity of the fascist enemy and so cut off his
strength at its source. When the denocratic nations failed to act,
many of these people had become disillusioned and had joined the
other side of American public opinion which posed under the name of
isolationism. The isolationists, too, had been fighting to keep
the new world conflict away from our doors. It was the belief of
the isolationists that we should turn our backs upon Europe and
Asia and allow the intractable villains whom the people allowed to
hound their nations to war fight to the death among themselves.

OLD BELIEFS EXPLODED. . .

More than two years earlier the society that was Europe had
plunged into war again; and these two contending groups, isolation-
ists and interventionists, had carried on their debate against a
new and more vivid background. Under the stress of war old beliefs
and philosophies were exploded. Not only did new facts and new
meanings become evident but the emotional crisis created by the
demonstration of German mechanized might in Denmark, Norway, France
Yugoslavia, and Greece in the Springs of 1940 and 1941 changed view
points overnight. Americans actually began to think of the possi-
bilities of an armed invasion of their own continent, began to look
in the dark corners of their political and economic structure for
fifth columnists.

18I was a typical college student who is working his way through
college; very serious, thoroughly persuaded that my intelligence
and training should be an important factor in public decisions (and
so persuaded that my attitude toward isolationism vs. intervention-
ism should be informed, then formed, and volubly expressed). Also
I was prone to decide that nothing, including war, could possibly
be more important than the career I had planned and now had within
my grasp.

HUMAN DIGNITY IN BALANCE. . -

I was an isolationist and emotional enough about it, though I
believed as well that the facts of the case proved the Justice of
my position. I had devoured a great deal of the literature which
followed the last war and which had realistically portrayed the de-
vastation of conflict in hope that men would become so nauseated
that they would destroy the forces and agents of its creation. (Now
that I have personally seen the ghastly business and all its incon-
sistencies I think that a pen such as Voltaire's, pointing the caus-
tic finger of irony, might as well cause us to purge war from our
society by laughter). I hated war with an emotional intensity, Just
as I hated poverty, disease, prejudice, injustice and suffering in
any form. I feared the new onslaughts of poverty, disease, and
hatred which seemed the inevitable concomitants of war. I dis-
trusted the leadership of the statesmen in those governments which
the interventionists believed we should Join in war. The interven-
tionists might very well argue that democracy and human dignity
were in the balance; but I doubted that either party to the strug-
gle were sincerely fighting for any democratic or human ideal.

"Yes," I said, "democracy and human dignity are certainly in
the balance; but they do not hang between either of the sides fight-
ing on the European continent. They merely fight an old-fashioned
balance-of-power war. Democracy and human dignity hang in the bal-
ance between the peace we can preserve here and the conflict over
there, for the latter will inevitably destroy whatever it touches.
We must stay out, preserve our decency, preserve the new social
gains made under the New Deal, make new advances, and demonstrate
the social, humanitarian advantages of peace.■

OUR NORLD HAD CHANGED. . .

I had a girl friend whom I was planning to marry at the first
opportunity. We were in agreement about the isolation-intervention
debate, and our Intellectual stand on such questions as this had
become an intimate part of our relationship. Our relationship was
like that; we planned our careers together, argued our political
and social issues together. Perhaps they assumed an extraordinary
importance in our lives; but we believed that everyone should have
the same concern about such problems as that which animated us.

19Now Pearl Harbor was staring us In the face, scattering like
dust our old Isolation and its arguments. We isolationists had
said we would never be attacked, and our words had been thrown back
in our teeth. In a day our world had been completely changed, and
in a way that affected us not intellectually alone but personally
as well; for it was inevitable that in a few weeks I would be a
soldier. My girl friend was at another university, three hundred
miles away, and we had no opportunity to think out the new crisis
together. I spent bitter hours thinking alone and finally composed
a letter to her which became to me the symbol of the reasons why my
nation and I must fight, not only the attacker, Japan, but the
other two members of the triangular fascist alliance. It is almost
two years since I wrote that letter, and I cannot remember exactly
what I said, but this is the essence:

HERE IS MY ANSWER. . .

"I will not attempt to express how greatly I am shocked and
depressed by what has Just happened. I can realize the state of
your feelings as well, and that is why I have delayed writing you.

I had to try to think this out sanely. Now that I have an answer
that is true for me, I wonder if it will be true for you. I hope
you will find it so.

"That we who.called ourselves isolationists should be so great-
ly shocked by the attack and our present belligerency, is a measure
and revelation of how blind we were to current reality and histori-
cal reality. It was our pacifism that blinded us. We hated war so
intensely and wanted to keep ourselves so pure of it that we be-
lieved we in our minority had outlawed war as a national policy.
We know now that we had not, and we should have known that we could
not. Try as we might to outlaw war as a national policy we could
not, for internationally war was still very much accepted as an ar-
biter of disputes. When other nations armed for war, we could not
afford to blind ourselves to that fact and say that war would never
occur. Furthermore, in the international scene we, or our ances-
tors, had made certain commitments, including the acquisition of
the Philippine Islands. The majority of our nation has accepted
these commitments, and we must sustain them by any method or policy
which is forced upon us, even war.

SUDDENLY THE MAR IS HERE. . .

"Our desire to remain peaceful and prosperous also blinded us
to the horrors of the fascist and Nazi regimes. We tried to Justi-
fy non-interference in their crimes by saying they they must be
favored by the people to remain so strong, or we said that what a
country did was its own business. Some of us even praised the Ger-
mans for trying to destroy the radical political parties; others

20praised them for allegedly destroying differences between rich and
poor. "I hear Mussolini made the trains run on tine," people among
us said; and If news of the murder of a Matteotl filtered through
to us, we Imagined the speeding) efficient trains and refused to
think about freedom of representation or freedom of speech In Italy.
And then when the Anschluss, the putsches, and the war camef we
said that we would never be attacked; our position was too Isolat-
ed. Maybe fascism did make slaves of people, destroying living
standards, labor unions, free speech, free press, free movement;
but If we got Into war, the same things would happen In our own
country. We were very rich; we were enjoying unparalleled freedom.
Best of all, we were isolated safely and need not imperil our free-
dom or prosperity in a foreign war. But suddenly the war is here.
We cannot understand. We call It a treacherous attack, but It Is
more than that.

THE NAY OF INSANE MEN. . .

"Yes, it is more than a treacherous attack; it Is as well a
result of myopia and dilatory action on our own part. For a number
of years we watched a group of Insane men, leading their maddened
mobs, toss about the world and the people of the world as whim dic-
tated. A lot of us said: "Those men and their countries are jus-
tified in their madness, because we made them that way. Me did it
by Versailles, by our high tariff barriers, by reparations, and by
a multiplicity of other political and economic injustices.“ But
there is a parallel to this which demonstrates our responsibility
as a democracy in a society of nations. Sociologists and psycholo-
gists tell us that Insane men are frequently made that way by their
social environment, that Is by men and the Institutions created by
men. That does not mean that when a man becomes Insane on the
street and begins to commit mayhem that we allow him to murder or
destroy without using force to stop him. The insane man Is a dan-
ger to society; and if we have to use force to quell that danger,
we use it. At the same time, of course, we try to destroy the con-
ditions which were responsible for the insanity. We allowed Insane
men to move about freely In Europe and Asia. They destroyed lives
and they destroyed countries while we sat passively by. Eventually
they would have destroyed us, for that is the way of Insane men. We
have been attacked; the horrible truth has forced Itself upon us.
And now we begin—so very late—to fight for sanity."

Though In those first few days the world seemed to have come
to an end, life flowed on; and we adjusted ourselves to a wartime
world. A few weeks after Pearl Harbor I became a soldier In the
Ifrilted States Army; a few weeks after that I was married; soon now
my wife and I will become parents of a child. Paralleling this
private drama of mine has been the development of World War II,
from a stage in which we were everywhere critically on the defen-
sive to the present rampant offensive on every fighting front.

21THE SANITY OF THE WORLD

As these things have transpired the reason that I fight has
become clarified. It is not enough, I know now, to take a merely
negative stand that we fight to destroy a few insane leaders and
their ideas; we are fighting as well for freedom to build a world
in which insanity will be impossible. It has become apparent that
our own sanity and safety depend upon the rest of the world. If
the people of other nations are unfree, our freedom is unsafe. If
the people of other countries are hungry, our prosperity is imper-
illed. On the other hand, injustice and disorder in our own land
affects the well-being of other peoples. The world has become a
very small community of nations, in which even the gossip in the
furthest outlying hamlet effects everyone else. The challenge is
to rebuild this community so that fewer people will be hungry or
diseased, so that more people will be free, so that my children and
their children's children will not go to war again. I cannot lay
down the blueprint for the achievement of this; I am not fighting
for any particular blueprint, but one. That one is the blueprint
of freedom. With freedom as a background the peoples of the world
can build for themselves a blueprint of action. The free people of
the world have begun to shape that blueprint; I fight that they may
freely continue their work. Only we—yes, we soldiers too are the
people, some of the free people--must work quickly with our guns
destroying those who are insane, while with our minds and our good-
will we drain those cesspools which are the breeding grounds of in-
sanity itself.

WWW

"IT IS MY FIGHT. . ."
by Put, Robert E. Park

I fight for Democracy. That is to say, I fight for myself.

In opposition to a dictatorship the founders of our Country
declared: "All men are created equal and endowed with certain in-
alienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." This is directly opposed to the Axis" ideals.

To be free, man must of course, be governed. The individual
must be subordinate to the whole population. But who is better
able to determine the limits of that subordination than the indivi-
duals, collectively, themselves?

Democracy is not a static system or fixed method. Rather, I
think, Democracy is the Privilege of men, and their determination
to initiate measures designed to keep themselves adjusted to en-
lightenment and changing conditions.

22To every man then who enjoys, and wishes to keep, this privi-
lege, this war Is a personal fight, for the Axis have declared
their Intention to destroy Democracy.

SELFISHNESS HATES DEMOCRACY. . .

The universal clash of armies, It seems to me, Is more Impor-
tant In Its Implications than It is as a present fact, for It sig-
nifies the continuation of the fight that Abraham Lincoln referred
to when he said, "We are now engaged in a great war to determine
whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived can long endure."

However, victory In the present war, although assured, will
not mean that we have gained our end which Is perpetual freedom and
peace.

Victory will mean merely that we have again repulsed selfish-
ness in its eternal determination to walk roughshod over our rights.

Selfishness than Is our real enemy. And selfishness hates
true Democracy.

So when I return home, I expect to find the fight for freedom
still going on. However, against troops that are different and far
more difficult of defeat.

They are hypocracy, suspicion, hate, greed, ignorance, poverty
and disease. And their fight is wholly insiduous rather than open.

The only forces we can send against such an Army are vigilence,
honesty, confidence, love, justice, education and health.

Their battlefields will continue to be the church, school,
politics, press, labor and material markets.

Along with everyone else, it is my fight. That is why I fight.

* * *

■I BELIEVE FIRMLY IN THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE. .
by Pfc. Benjamin E. Karn

In answer to the question, "Why I fight", I believe that I
could convincingly state my answer in a very few concise words but
in the unfolding of my convictions, I may go to some lengths in
their elucidation.

Primarily and my paramount reason for my individual, personal
sacrifice In this present global conflict is due to my absolutely
firm conviction and belief in *the four fundamental and essential
freedoms of which our President has been a foremost exponent: Those
freedoms which we enjoy in such abundant measure but which are de-
nied to so many million others.

23I fight because I see lurking behind the Nazi swastika and the
Japanese emblem the sinister and venemous hand and the deadly virus
of tyranny, oppression and racial hatred. I am engaged In this war-
fare because I believe in the principles expressed in our own magni-
ficient Declaration of Independence as not only revealing the soul
cry of my own America, but deep down underneath the skin of every
individual regardless of nationality, I believe the same longings
and hopes lie concealed penned up beneath the heal of the oppressor.

HUMAN DIGNITY. . .

I fight because I believe in the dignity and sovereignty of
each human regardless of race or creed and because I see this sover-
eignty violated by the dictators who seek to use their fellowmen as
mere pawns on the chess-tables of their own perspnal ambitions thus
reducing them to a state of absolute vassaldom or despotism.

I fight because I believe firmly in the self evident truth as
set forth in our own Declaration of Independence which states, "that
all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Cre-
ator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This fact is made a
mockery of by those whom we oppose in this unrelenting struggle.

I fight because as an American I have an inherent sense of
justice and a desire for fair play. These virtues are character-
istically American no doubt being bred into our moral structure be-
cause our forefathers.themselves, seeking relief from oppression,
with fortitude, determination and a firm reliance on Almighty God,
crossed the turbulent Atlantic and set foot on this new continent
at Plymouth Rock to establish a new nation, "conceived in liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

In setting forth the essence of the first freedom, namely that
of freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world, I see
a fundamental God-given right declared which not only applies to me
as an American citizen and soldier but which, I believe, should
apply with equal force to every individual sojourning on this mundane
sphere regardless of racial determination. Once again reassent my
opinion and conviction i*n the sacredness of human life and the
individual dignity of every man. I don't believe nor would I con-
cur with anyone nor any group of autocrats that they have the right
to invade the sanctity and the cltadal of a manjs will. Not even
our God will violate a man's will and how can mere man attempt to
exceed the prerogatives of the Almighty, for we are his by right of
creation and redemption, and yet he regards us still as the con-
trolling factor and the master of our own destiny. I also in accord
with the declaration of our late President Wilson, who stated, "that
no authority anywhere exists to hand men about from sovereignty to
sovereignty as though they were mere property" and we can see de-
monstrated right before our eyes at the present time this intrusion

24and violation of mankind by the so-called "new order of tyranny"
which they are endeavoring to establish vividly portrayed by the
prostrate bleeding forms of a stricken Europe.

DOHNTRODDEN MILLIONS. . .

This outstanding right, namely freedom of speech, which is the
birthright and possession of every American is absolutely denied to
the downtrodden millions of Europe and the Far East. They have no
voice in their governments and are rendered speechless by the iron
hand of the power crazed dictators. In fact to express their per-
sonal convictions would undoubtedly bring on their banishment to a
concentration camp or cause them to fall before the rifles of the
firing squad. Thus it is not the will of the people that is con-
sidered but merely the wish or whim of an irresponsible but power-
ful despot. Because under the American form of government the
right of the individual to freely express his wish by electing
representatives who will carry out his desires in the formulation
of his policies is one of our most cherished freedoms and contra-
wise because this right is denied to those who languished under
Axis domination. I have another very logical reason to fight in
order that the same privileges I enjoy as a free American may be
equally shared by others who have been forcibly deprived of the
some right.

INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE. . .

I see in the suppression of the masses the stulifying and ero-
sive influence which stifles enterprise and practically kills indi-
vidual initiative. This initiative which is essential to all human
progress thus in this suppression many worthwhile and humane ac-
complishments which are now fertile seed in the minds of many fail
to germinate and flower into achievement.

Another and perhaps the most important personal reason why I
fight is because I believe in the right of every individual to
worship God in his own way. This right has been withheld, if not
completely denied, to the nations of Europe in chains and enslaved
by their cruel conquerors. Speaking from the American viewpoint I
consider our freedom of religion as just about our most previous
possession. In the first Article of the Bill of Rights from our
Constitution our legislators are again the Instruments of the people
because the article specifically states "that Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof." In our American form of Government the
common ordinary individual who makes up the bulk of our population
is the controlling factor and every one of us can decide as to just
which particular way we choose to worship and there is no one to
hinder or prevent us from following the righteous dictates of our

25own conscience. In other words every American can call his soul his
own. We are free and unshackled both in soul, mind and spirit. I
fight in our righteous and holy cause because this fundamental and
priceless privilege has been denied to so many millions who are en-
titled to enjoy it just as much as I do.

A JUST AND LASTING PEACE. . .

Another outstanding freedom and possibly the chief reason for
our involvement in this present world conflict is to banish from
the world the haunting and ever present spectre of fear, which
dominates the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of this so-called
"Hitlerian Festung Europe." Just as long as nations like Nazi Ger-
many and Japan are permitted to go about free and unrestricted In
the building up of huge armaments Just that long will fear continue
to be a fetter which will bind their neighbors hearts and minds and
which will continue to make Europe and the far East a seething cen-
ter of distrust and rebellion. I fight not only to win a decisive
and overwhelming victory over ours and humanities' enemies but
to likewise win a just and lasting peace, a peace which takes into
consideration the rights of all nations. I also believe that all
the strife and bloodshed and al] the sacrifices which are being
freely made today will prove of no avail unless we also win the
peace. I absolutely believe in the total disarmament of our ene-
mies, those who are responsible for this world wide blood bath but
I would, in true Christian charity., endeavor to suppress the feel-
ing of revenge which is common to most of us.

THE ATLANTIC CHARTER. . .

I believe that the principle stated in the four freedoms as
expressed by our President embodies the fundamental reason and con-
tains a basic fact for a sound post-war dealing among the nations
of the world. The fourth freedom which the President has reference
to expressed the idea as follows: "The fourth is freedom from fear
which translated into world terms means a world wide reduction of
armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no
nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression
against any neighbor anywhere in the world."

We also know it as it is defined in the Atlantic Charter thus:

"that no future peace can be maintained in land, sea or air arma-
ments continue to be employed by nations which threaten or may
threaten an aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe
that pending the establishment of a wide and permanent system of
general security that the disarmament of such nations is essential."

The thought of furthering the enjoyment by all states great or
small, victor or vanquished, of access on equal terms to the trade
and raw materials of the world not for the purpose of building up a

26great war machine to unleash against the world but for the purpose
of acquiring the essentials needed for their economic prosperity I
believe is a step in the right direction to sound relations between
the nations of the earth and this too I believe is an objective
worth fighting for.

THE TERRIBLE EFFECTS OF FASCISM. . .

I, too, am about convinced that the accomplishing of a purpose
which has as its main motive the objective of freeing the peoples of
the world from want, is a laudatory ideal and one which is worthy
of the support of our full economic power and all of our physical
fighting capacities. Since coming overseas nearly one year ago I
have seen the terrible effects of Fascism and the blistering re-
sults of the Nazi Socialistic philosophy. I have seen the plight of
the common people, I have observed the final fruition of these evil
Policies and I realize that in order to give these peace loving
people an opportunity to again breathe the pure air of freedom, the
total military destruction of our enemy is essential. The military
machines and the regimes of the world oppressors must be brought to
naught before the pure light of freedom can again beam brightly to
bless and guide the people of earth and lead them into an era of a
real and lasting peace to the realization of a world in which Just
and amicable relations will again exist among the commonwealth of
nations.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF NATIONS. . .

I fight because I believe in the sovereignty of every nation
that each nation shall have a free hand, of course, consistent with
peaceful purposes, to the determination of their own policies and
government and that there shall be a discontinuing of the plan of
the dictators who would forcibly cram their policies down the throats
of weaker and less economically favored peoples. Here is another
very good reason why I oppose the Axis forces not only because the
sovereignty of the individual has been violated but that the sover-
eignty of nations has been completely disregarded.

I fight because I am convinced of the righteousness of our
cause. At one time I was a conscientious objector but since I have
debated the issue with my own conscience I find that in many re-
spects the strife in which we are engaged is a holy warfare and
that we are on a Christian crusade that shall eventually bring
about the final triumph of Justice. The dictators have violated
every Just and righteous principle, those principles which I re-
spect as a free American and which have been safeguarded and con-
tinued in our own land because Americans in every generation have
defended their perpetuity by the sacrifice of even their very lives
in order that freedom may be enjoyed by each succeeding generation.
We fought in the defense of principles which we knew to be right

27when we broke the bonds of a foreign power to establish our own in-
dependence in the days of our infancy as a nation. We even fought
one of the bloodiest of Civil wars in the world's history in order
that oppression, injustice and racial discrimination be dethroned
and abolished and this same spirit, the American spirit which con-
siders ourselves as our brother's keeper has led us to once again
intervene and to hurl our invincible might against the enemy.

ROCKLIKE OPINION. . .

The grounds upon which I stand are not the shifting sands of
indecision or ignorance but are the firm solid rocklike opinions
which are the results formulated from a studied, intelligent, im-
partial survey of the whole underlying structure of the present
world dilemma. In other words we are not simply waging a war in
which the issues are so plain and unmistakable that no one should
have any doubt as to the rightness of our cause nor should there be
any question of its ultimate outcome as a great victory for justice
and righteousness.

I believe firmly in the American way of life as representing
thus far the best achievements that the mind of man has yet con-
ceived from the standpoint of representative government. I believe
that the liberties and freedoms which we enjoy so unrestrictedly in
America and serve as a future pattern for the relationship which
can exist between a government and its constituents.

I believe that history will bear me out when I say that any
nation is far happier and more progressive when its citizens have
a hand in the functions of government. As a concrete, worthwhile
accomplishment of this war I would like to see established in many
lands something which would at least resemble the type of self-
government which has been phrased in those immortal words of Lin-
coln when in reference to our own new birth of freedom he declared
his fervent prayer (you might say) in his hope “that Government of
the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the
earth.”

I

GOODWILL TOWARD HEN. . .

I fight therefore to see the establishment of a righteous
peace between all nations a peace in a world that has been un-
fettered and set free, a world where poverty has been banished,
freedom of religion established, and fear dethroned.

I fight because I desire to see in reality the fulfillment of
that policy stated so very long ago at a little town called Beth-
lehem, that shrine which cradled the Prince of Peace and the place
which brought hope to a benighted world where the angels, the am-
bassadors from heaven,appeared to a group of lowly shepherds as
they watched their flocks by night amid the star-lit hills of Judea
and announced the birth of the King and declared the heavenly poli-
cy of peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

28We have strayed far from the counsel of these wise words but
If we can, through our efforts, bring In the day of a glad world
peace, a day and a world in which will be heard the happy laughter
of care and fear free children, and the rejoicing of men and women
liberated and breathing the pure air of freedom once again, then
our fight will have been worthwhile and the sacrifices of those of
us who live and the supreme sacrifice of those of our comrades who
gave the last full measure of devotion for the realization of this
ideal, will not have been in vain.

Thus I have declared the principles for which I fight and for
the defense of which, If need be, I would gladly die.

* * *

"WHAT IF GERMANY WOULD WIN? .
by S/Sgt. George P. Scharf

So, you want to know why I fight, eh?? 0.K. mister. I be-
lieve I can tell you. If you're looking for a lot of high sounding
phrases and big words though, you may as well forget It. Just a
plain G. I. Joe, that's me. I'll let the politicians back home
dream up the big Ideals and spread the malarky. All I want to do
Is put down on paper a few little things I've kind of figured out as
the reasons I enlisted In this man's army and why I fight. A few
little things a man can think of when the going gets tough and he
needs a little something to keep him pushing Instead of backing up.

On both sides of the family I have German ancestors. I figure
they belonged to the smart German type though, because as soon as
they could, they got out of Germany and came to America. It even
makes me sort of proud to know old grandpa Scharf got out just one
jump ahead of the police because he’d complained too loud about
things in general, and freedom of speech wasn't exactly legal In
those days. In America he met the girl who became his wife and
made his home and I'm proud to be the only grandson to bear both
his first and last name.

On my mother's side it was a great-grandfather who left the
Rhineland, with my great-grandmother, that they might raise their
children In a land where they could worship God as they pleased and
not be forced to profess a faith in which neither believed. A land
where one's religious beliefs wouldn't cause his home to mysteri-
ously burn down at night, or himself or wife attacked, beaten, and
left for dead on the city's streets.

29HOME AND CHURCH

So, when I think of those two men, how they gave up their
homes, their friends, everything they had to come to America, I be-
gin to get an idea of what the winning of this little fracas really
means to me. I think itmeans I'm fighting to preserve three things,
freedom, and two of the greatest institutions that ever existed on
this earth, the home, and the church. These are the three things
Hitler and all he means have tried hardest to destroy.

Home!! What does a conversation, whether in the States or
overseas, whether in pup tent or barracks, eventually get around
to?? It's home. What do they think about when the chow is bad and
the ground to sleep on is rocky or wet?? It's "when I get hone".
Whether a soldier's from bustling New York or sleepy Podunk, "Hone"
is where you'll find his thoughts constantly wandering. It's the
American home I and millions of others, whether we realize it or
not, are fighting for. For what has Hitler nade of the hone? Noth-
ing. He has tried to destroy it as the mold for future citizens in
favor of the state. He has tried to down the individual characters
and personalities of Germany's children by reducing hone life to a
nininun. The state has become a substitute for the family and has
set a pattern for each child. A boy is judged and graded on one
thing? how good a soldier will he make? A girl is judged and graded
on one thing, how good a soldier will she produce?

FAMILY BASKETBALL TEAM. . .

In my billfold, along with the pictures of my father and mother,
I carry the picture of a girl. Someday we plan to. marry, settle
down, and raise a family of our own. I like to kid her and-tell
her I want five boys because I've always hankered to have a basket-
ball team of my own. Then we'll have a girl too, who'll be as
pretty as her mother, the Joy of her father, the pride of her broth-
ers, and the belle of every boy on the block. But I want these
theoretical kids of mine to have a hone. An American home where
they can laugh, have fun, and grow up in an atmosphere of live and
let live, a desire to know and speak the truth, and an understanding
and appreciation of the American Government, that they might pro-
tect it both from without and within against those who would take
from us our precious freedom. I'n fighting for the right to raise
those kids in the Anerican way of life. To let those boys grow up
playing football, to go to school, the right to take them swimming
in the creek in the summer, and to go sledding in the winter. I'm
fighting for the right to buy that girl of mine a doll with real
hair, the right to disapprove of her first long dress and her first
date, the right to give her an education to fit her for a Job or a
career as an equal of any American.

30IF GERMANY WOULD WIN. .

For what if I wouldn't fight? What if Germany would win? If
the state approved I might be allowed to marry, and if I did I would
be urged by bonuses and favors to have those boys. For the armies
of the New Germany would still need soldiers. Soldiers to conquer
and enslave the rest of the world. From the age of seven these boys
would be strangers to me. Not happy-go-lucky kids hitting their
old man up for a dime to buy marbles with, but stern faced, still
little men. Their's not a life to live as their own, their's not a
life for all the things you and I liked to d,o so well before we got
in the army, but a life of drilling, which destroys instead of
creates, bullies and browbeats, condemns and hangs those who would
have mind and strength enough to rebel for freedom of the individu-
al. Slaves to a "super race". Slaves to a man who says the weak
must die that the strong may live.

And what would be the fate of that daughter of mine? What fu-
ture could she look forward to? We have gotten a hint of•some
possible answers from the stories of the German youth camps, the
vast increase in illegitimate births, and the so-called "Ratural
Process of Regeneration of the Race". Hitler, in his own book,
"Mein Kampf", says the main stress in a girl's education should be
on physical training and ranks intellectual values as the third and
last requirement. He sums it all up with the statement, "The goal
of female education has invariably to be the future mother." No
provisions for higher education or training. No chance for a ca-
reer, an independent life. A woman is Just a production cogwheel
in the machine of the state. I'm fighting overseas today that the
mothers of my future grandchildren might be normal, decent, intelli-
gent American girls, not Amazonian, uneducated, Aryan robots.

FOR ALL CHURCHES. . .

Closely linked.to the home comes the second point for which
I fight, the church. Not only my church, all the churches, not
only in America, but of the whole world. Many people see no need
for the church in their lives or the life of the world about them.
Yet no other part of our modern living teaches or shows the way for
a universal brotherhood of man and alasting peace except the church,
and it is as necessary as the home in the lives of our children.

Besides his extermination of the Jewish faith for political
reasons, Hitler also fights the Catholic and Protestant churches in
every way. One of his reasons is because to the church the indi-
vidual is what matters. Under Hitler, the Individuals and his
feelings mean nothing, the state is all. The church asks for tol-
erance. Hitler preaches hate. The church asks for peace and under-
standing. Hitler calls for war and world domination.

31The church is a part of the American way of life. The back-
bone of any community is always of church-going people. We need
the church in our lives today and the church needs us. Laws alone
do not eliminate the ills men suffer at one another’s hands. A
religious outlook prompts us to organize our various impulses,
inherited and acquired, into a moral unity. It teaches honesty,
tolerance, forgiveness, moderation in all things. A man's religion
is the pillar of hope when the hour is darkest and a comfort in
times of sorrow, and, as Emerson once said, "It offers faith in the
ultimate decency of all things."

I believe in God, I believe in the church and the things it
teaches. Like the home, to me the church is a necessary part of my
life. Hitler's system has tried to destroy this part of my life.
I fight to preserve it.

NO THEORETICAL FREEDOM. . .

Then comes the third reason why I fight, Freedoiri. When I talk
of freedom here I am not speaking of the theoretical freedoms we
have been promised, freedom from want, freedom from fear, etc.
They are nice to think about but I just want to write of freedoms
we have had in America since our country's beginning, and freedoms
we have acquired since and are fighting to keep.

Freedom of Speech. The right to say what we think, what we
mean, what we feel. The right to public discussion and criticism
of politics, policies, and politicians without fear of retribution.
Can our Aryan friends argue with Eitler?

Freedom of the Press. The right to publish and present to the
people any and all sides of any argument on any affairs, whether
civil, political, or military. Where is your freedom of the press
in Germany?

Freedom of Religion. The right to worship as one pleases.

Freedom in Politics. The right to belong to any political
party regardless of the party in power. The right to run for pub-
lic office. The right to vote and choose who is to govern and
control. Where in Japan or Germany can one belong to any party
except the one conceived, supervised, and controlled by the state,
and allows the individual no voice on any question.

A LOT OF LITTLE THINGS. . .

Freedom of Enterprise. The freedom which has led our country
to greatness and the freedom that will insure her future greatness.
The right to work as hard as one pleases at any job one pleases,
and to enjoy the results of this work as one's own. The right to
go as far in this life as our individual abilities, initiative, and
ambition will take us.

32Freedom of America. That's what we're fighting for. The right
to eat ice cream, to drive a car, to eat hamburgers, all the million
and one little things that go to make up our own America. A govern-
ment by, of, and. for the people. To go back to a free country
where self-enterprise, hard work, and the individual man count for
something. The right to go home as a free man and not as a slave.
It's a lot of little things like that we're fighting for.

No new world order for me if I can help it. This army life
has sort of sobered me up. I see things I once took for granted in
a little different light and appreciate them more. I'm more settled
I know what I have and I know what I want. I also know what the
other side has to offer. That's why I fight.

33