FDR

Our first job then is to build up production--uninterrupted production--so that the United Nations can maintain control of the seas and attain control of the air--not merely a slight superiority, but an overwhelming superiority.

All of the people of Asia know that if there is to be an honorable and decent future for any of them or any of us, that future depends on victory by the United Nations over the forces of Axis enslavement.

And the people of Korea and of Manchuria know in their flesh the harsh despotism of Japan.

Soon, we and not our enemies, will have the offensive; we, not they, will win the final battles; and we, not they, will make the final peace.

But, speaking for the United States of America, let me say once and for all to the people of the world: We Americans have been compelled to yield ground, but we will regain it.

We have most certainly suffered losses--from Hitler's U-Boats in the Atlantic as well as from the Japanese in the Pacific--and we shall suffer more of them before the turn of the tide.

But I can say that to date--and including Pearl Harbor-- we have destroyed considerably more Japanese planes than they have destroyed of ours.

The Japanese do not know just how many planes they destroyed that day, and I am not going to tell them.

The report that we lost more than a thousand planes at Pearl Harbor is as baseless as the other weird rumors.

And when those repairs are completed, the ships will be more efficient fighting machines than they were before.

You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us.

Every Japanese transport sunk off Java is one less transport that they can use to carry reinforcements to their army opposing General MacArthur in Luzon.

They are making Japan pay an increasingly terrible price for her ambitious attempts to seize control of the whole Asiatic world.

Now nothing that has occurred in the past two months has caused us to revise this basic strategy of necessity--except that the defense put up by General MacArthur has magnificently exceeded the previous estimates of endurance, and he and…

We knew all along that, with our greater resources, we could ultimately out-build Japan and ultimately overwhelm her on sea, and on land and in the air.

We knew that the war as a whole would have to be fought and won by a process of attrition against Japan itself.

For forty years it has always been our strategy--a strategy born of necessity--that in the event of a full-scale attack on the Islands by Japan, we should fight a delaying action, attempting to retire slowly into Bataan Peninsula and…

But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is--flying high and striking hard.

Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle.

Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich.

At the same time, she could immediately extend her conquests in the other direction toward India, and through the Indian Ocean to Africa, to the Near East, and try to join forces with Germany and Italy.

Japan in such a case could release great numbers of ships and men to launch attacks on a large scale against the coasts of the Western Hemisphere--South America and Central America, and North America--including Alaska.

Second, if we lost communication with the southwest Pacific, all of that area, including Australia and New Zealand and the Dutch Indies, would fall under Japanese domination.

It is essential that we help China in her magnificent defense and in her inevitable counteroffensive--for that is one important element in the ultimate defeat of Japan.

First, in such a case, we could no longer send aid of any kind to China--to the brave people who, for nearly five years, have withstood Japanese assault, destroyed hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and vast quantities of Japanese…