Henry Wallace Estimates the Price of Free World Victory in WWII
May 8, 1942

      WE, who in a formal or an informal way represent most of the free peoples of the world, are met here tonight in the interests of the millions in all the nations who have freedom in their souls. To my mind this meeting has just one purpose - to let those millions in other countries know that here in the United States are 130 million men, women and children who are in this war to the finish. Our American people are utterly resolved to go on until they can strike the relentless blows that will assure a complete victory and with it win a new day for the lovers of freedom everywhere on this earth.

      This is a fight between a slave world and a free world. Just as the United States in 1862 could not remain half slave and half free, so in 1942 the world must make its decision for a complete victory one way or the other.

      As we begin the final stages of this fight to the death between the free world and the slave world, it is worth while to refresh our minds about the march of freedom for the common man. The idea of freedom - the freedom that we in the United States know and love so well - is derived from the Bible, with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true expression of Christianity.

      The prophets of the Old Testament were the first to preach social justice. But that which was sensed by the prophets many centuries before Christ was not given complete and powerful political expression until our nation was formed as a Federal Union a century and a half ago. Even then, the march of the common people had just begun. Most of them did not yet know how to read and write. There were no public schools to which all children could go. Men and women cannot be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to talk things move. Down the years, the people of the United States have moved steadily forward in the practice of democracy. Through universal education, they now can read and write and form opinions of their own. They have learned, and are still learning -- that is, how to make a living. They have learned, and are still learning, the art of self-government.

      If we were to measure freedom by standards of nutrition, education, and self-government, we might rank the United States and certain nations of Western Europe very high. But this would not fair to other nations where education has become widespread only in the last twenty years. In many nations, a generation ago, nine out of ten people were illiterate to a literate nation in within one generation, and, in the process, Russia's appreciation of freedom was enormously enhanced. In China, the increase during the past thirty years in the ability of the people to read and write had been matched by their increased interest in real liberty.

      Everywhere, reading and writing are accompanied by industrial progress, and industrial progress sooner or later inevitably brings a strong labor movement. From a long-time and fundamental point of view, there are no backward peoples which are lacking in a mechanical sense. Russians, Chinese, and the Indians both of India and the Americas all learn to read and write and operate machines just as well as your children and my children. Everywhere the common people are on the march. These people are learning to think and work together in labor movements, some of which may be impractical at first, but which eventually will settle down effectively the interests of the common man.

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