Fortunately for us, the European has never ceased to believe in America, in us. Not as a military race, not as a race at all; but as people of incredible good fortune in the world. And we can say to every man who has bowed his head, but kept his heart bitter against Hitler, that we have the proof of the equal dignity of every man's soul, a proof which Hitlerism can never destroy. We can say to the Greeks who see the swastika over the Parthenon and the Norwegian whose bed is stripped of its comforters, and to the Serb still fighting in the mountain passes, the one thing Hitler dares not let them believe--that they are as good as other men. We have the proof that under liberty Croats and Finns and Catalans and Norwegians are as good as Germans--because they are men, because under liberty there is no end to what they and their children may accomplish. If we ever again think that this is oratory, we shall lose our greatest hope of a free world. The orators were too often promising too much because they were betraying America on the side; still they could not falsify the truth which the practical men and the poets both had discovered: _America means opportunity_. Now we can see the vast implications of the simple assertion. Because America meant opportunity, we can incite riot against Hitler in the streets of Oslo and Prague and even in Vienna; we have proved that given opportunity, freed of artificial impediments, men walk erect, do their work, collaborate to rule over and be ruled by their fellowmen; and that there is no master race, no master class. This is our address to the people of Europe--that we believe in them, because we know them. We know they can free themselves because they have shown the instincts of free men here; we know they are destined to create a free Europe. The people of Europe have to know that we are their friends. It will be hard for us to make some of them believe it--as the French did not believe it when we failed to break the British blockade in their favor. But we must persuade them--we have their brothers and mothers and sons here to speak for us. It was not easy for Woodrow Wilson to speak to the Germans and the Austrians. He had no radio; his facilities for pamphleteering were limited. But he succeeded. Our task is formidable enough; because the radio is so guarded, it may be harder for us to reach the captured populations. But it can be done and will be, as soon as we see how necessary the job is. _Our First Effective Front_