(Neither the American people nor their leaders have believed that a responsible peaceable government can be erected _now_ in Japan. Toward the Japanese our unclarified intentions are simple: annihilation of the power, to such an extent that it cannot rise again--as a military or a commercial rival. The average citizen would probably be glad to hand over to the Chinese the job of governing Japan.) Fortunately, the purposes of any war alter as the war goes on; as we fight we discover the reasons for fighting and the intensity of our effort, the cost of victory, the danger of defeat, all compel us to think desperately about the kind of peace for which we are fighting. The vengeful articles of the treaty of Versailles were written after the Armistice by politicians; the constructive ones were created during the war, and it is quite possible that they would have been accepted by Americans if the United States had fought longer and therefore thought longer about them. We shall probably have time to think out a good peace in this war. But we will not create peace of any kind unless we know why an Axis peace means annihilation for us; and why, at the risk of defeat in the field and revolution at home, the Axis powers had to go to war on the United States. If we impose our moral ideas upon the future, the attack on Pearl Harbor will stand as the infamous immediate cause of the war; by Axis standards, Pearl Harbor was the final incident of one series of events, the first incident of another, all having the same purpose, the destruction of American democracy--which, so long as it endured, undermined the strength of the totalitarian powers. Why? Why are Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo insecure if we survive? Why were we in danger so long as they were victorious? The answer lies in the character of the two groups of nations; in all great tragedy, the _reason_ has to be found in the character of those involved; the war is tragic, in noble proportions, and we have to know the character of our enemy, the character of our own people, too, to understand why it was inevitable--and how we will win. Our character, molded by our past, upholds or betrays us in our present crisis, and so creates our future. That is the sense in which character is Destiny. We know everything hateful about our enemies; long before the war began we knew the treachery of the Japanese military caste, the jackal aggression of Mussolini, the brutality and falseness of Hitler; and the enthusiastic subservience of millions of people to each of these leaders. But these things do not explain why we are a danger to the Axis, and the Axis to us. "_Historic Necessity_"