A. Not to my way of thinking, but the average liberal argued there should be a statement of war aims in order first of all to impress the good German people that we are kindly disposed toward them and if they knew how well we intended to treat them after they were defeated they would give up now. What is the sense of the Atlantic Charter? Its chief meaning is that the main war aim and peace aim is to make the world safe against Germany. It names two ways of accomplishing this aim: A. By destruction of the Nazi power and disarmament of Germany and her allies. B. By restoration of the nations now enslaved. Does this constitute an encouragement for the Germans to give up? Hardly. Churchill and Roosevelt were too clear-sighted and too candid to fall in with the argument that the German people could be fooled by a dishonest statement of war aims. They knew that the Germans are bound to realize if they lose this war they will be worse off than if they win. War is Hell, but much more hellish for the defeated side. It is untrue that war never settles anything. It always settles something, whether for a short time, as for the twenty years following the uncompleted war of 1914-1918, or forever as the Third Punic War. The Germans know this better than almost any other people. But now they have had a crushingly frank statement of basic British-American war aims: abolition of German military power. This time they cannot complain they have been deceived. Q. _Wasn’t that true of Wilson’s Fourteen Points? Weren’t they a frank statement to the Germans of the terms they could expect if they surrendered?_