. They tutor men in treason. They feed upon the hunger of others.
Whatever defies them, they torture, especially the truth.

Here, then, is joined no argument between slightly differing
philosophies. This conflict strikes directly at the faith of our fathers
and the lives of our sons. No principle or treasure that we hold, from
the spiritual knowledge of our free schools and churches to the creative
magic of free labor and capital, nothing lies safely beyond the reach of
this struggle.

Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark.

The faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to the free of all the
world. This common bond binds the grower of rice in Burma and the
planter of wheat in Iowa, the shepherd in southern Italy and the
mountaineer in the Andes. It confers a common dignity upon the French
soldier who dies in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in Malaya,
the American life given in Korea.

We know, beyond this, that we are linked to all free peoples not merely
by a noble idea but by a simple need. No free people can for long cling
to any privilege or enjoy any safety in economic solitude. For all our
own material might, even we need markets in the world for the surpluses
of our farms and our factories. Equally, we need for these same farms
and factories vital materials and products of distant lands. This basic
law of interdependence, so manifest in the commerce of peace, applies
with thousand-fold intensity in the event of war.

So we are persuaded by necessity and by belief that the strength of all
free peoples lies in unity; their danger, in discord.

To produce this unity, to meet the challenge of our time, destiny has
laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world's leadership.

So it is proper that we assure our friends once again that, in the
discharge of this responsibility, we Americans know and we observe the
difference between world leadership and imperialism; between firmness
and truculence; between a thoughtfully calculated goal and spasmodic
reaction to the stimulus of emergencies.

We wish our friends the world over to know this above all: we face the
threat--not with dread and confusion--but with confidence and
conviction.

We feel this moral strength because we know that we are not helpless
prisoners of history. We are free men. We shall remain free, never to be
proven guilty of the one capital offense against freedom, a lack of
stanch faith.

In pleadi