Matching our casual uncertainty was the dead-shot clear-minded intention of our enemies--to conquer, to subjugate, to rule; by forgetting all other aims, eliminating all private purposes; by putting aside whatever the war did not require and omitting nothing necessary for victory; by making war itself the great social experiment, using war to destroy morals, habits and enterprises which did not help the war, destroying, above all, the prejudices, the rights, the character of civilized humanity as we have known them. Have we a source of unity which can oppose this totality? According to Hitler, we have not: we are a nation of many races and people; we are a capitalist country divided between the rich and the poor; we break into political parties; we reject leadership; we are given up to private satisfactions and do not understand the sacrifices which unity demands. Therefore, in the Hitlerian prophecy, America needs only to be put under the slightest tension and it will fall apart. The strains under which people live account for their strength as well as their weakness; we are strong in another direction precisely because we are not "unified" in the Nazi sense. Actually the Nazis have no conception of unity; their purpose is totality, which is not the same thing at all. A picture or a motor has unity when all the _different_ parts are arranged and combined to produce a specific effect; but a canvas all painted the same shade of blue has no unity--it is a totality, a total blank; there is no unity in a thousand ball-bearings; they are _totally_ alike. If the Nazi argument is not valid, why did we first thank Japan for unity, and then discover that we had no unity? Why were we pulling against one another, so that in the first year of the war we were distracted and ineffective, as France had been? If outright pacifism was our only disruptive element, why didn't we, after we were attacked, embrace one another in mutual forgiveness, high devotion to our country, and complete harmony of purpose? Months of disaster in the Pacific and the grinding process of reorganizing for production at home left us unaware of the sacrifices we had still to make, and at the mercy of demagogues waiting only for the right moment to start a new appeasement. Perhaps next summer, when the American people won't get their motor trips to the mountains and the lakes; perhaps next winter when coal and oil may not be delivered promptly; perhaps when the first casualty lists come in....