A. No, we were not suckers in the last war. By fighting and beating Germany in the last war, side by side with our Allies, we won twenty-three years of national independence. Q. _But didn’t we fight the last war to “make the world safe for democracy” and to “end all war”? We certainly failed to do either. Weren’t we suckers to have tried and failed?_ A. Don’t you think it was worth while for us to gain the right to live in peace and freedom from 1918 to 1939 even if we failed to achieve our whole program? We did not fight the last war just “to make the world safe for democracy” or to “end all war.” We fought the last war primarily to make the world safe for the United States, and we succeeded in that for a good many years. The world has not been safe for democracy everywhere for a score of years, but only now do we find it necessary to fight again because only now has it become plain that the world is again no longer safe for the United States. In the last war we fought first to preserve America, second to make the world safe for democracy, and to end war. In this war we are fighting first to preserve America, second to establish the Four Freedoms everywhere we can, but we modestly refrain this time from announcing that we expect to end war. Instead we have much more practically declared that when we win we will disarm the nations that made this war. Q. _But what difference would it have made to us if we had not entered the last war at all?_ A. It would have meant that the Germans probably would have won the war. The Commander in Chief of the Allies, Foch, and the actual Commander in Chief of the Germans, Ludendorff, both admitted that the American entry into the war was decisive. It was not that America “won the war,” but that without us the Allies could not have won. Q. _Suppose the Germans had won the last war; what difference would that have made to us?_ A. If the Germans had won, we should certainly have had to fight them thereafter and fight them alone. We may have had a few years respite, long enough for the German Navy to become strong enough to challenge ours. The general situation today is parallel with the one in 1914-1918, except that Hitler’s Germany is much more powerful and evil than Hohenzollern Germany. Nevertheless Kaiser Wilhelm had the same ambition Hitler has. He believed also that the Germans were a master race, with a divine mission to rule the world. The Germans came late to nationhood, too late to receive “their share” of the colonies. This helped give them a bitter sense of resentment against a world which refused to recognize their superiority. This German belief that they are superior to everyone on earth is unfortunately strengthened by the fact that in this industrial age they are among the most talented of all peoples, and in the natural sciences superior to most others. They have proved themselves incorrigible except by force.