If an enemy power is bent on conquering you, and proposes to turn all of his resources to that end, he is at war with you; and you--unless you contemplate surrender--are at war with him. Moreover--unless you contemplate treason--your objective, like his, will be victory. Not “peace,” but victory. Now, while traitors (and perhaps cowards) have at times occupied key positions in our government, it is clear that our national leadership over the past fourteen years has favored neither surrender nor treason. It is equally clear, however, that our leaders have not made _victory_ the goal of American policy. And the reason that they have not done so, I am saying, is that they have never believed deeply that the Communists are in earnest. Our avowed national objective is “peace.” We have, with great sincerity, “waged” peace, while the Communists wage war. We have sought “settlements,” while the Communists seek victories. We have tried to pacify the world. The Communists mean to own it. Here is why the contest has been an unequal one, and why, essentially, we are losing it. Peace, to be sure, is a proper goal for American policy--as long as it is understood that peace is not all we seek. For we do not want the peace of surrender. We want a peace in which freedom and justice will prevail, and that--given the nature of Communism--is a peace in which Soviet power will no longer be in a position to threaten us and the rest of the world. A tolerable peace, in other words, must _follow_ victory over Communism. We have been fourteen years trying to bury that unpleasant fact. It cannot be buried and any foreign policy that ignores it will lead to our extinction as a nation. We do not, of course, want to achieve victory by force of arms. If possible, overt hostilities should always be avoided; especially is this so when a shooting war may cause the death of many millions of people, including our own. But we cannot, for that reason, make the avoidance of a shooting war our chief objective. If we do that--if we tell ourselves that it is more important to avoid shooting than to keep our freedom--we are committed to a course that has only one terminal point: surrender. We cannot, by proclamation, make war “unthinkable.” For it is not unthinkable to the Communists: naturally, they would prefer to avoid war, but they are prepared to risk it, in the last analysis, to achieve their objectives. We must, in our hearts, be equally dedicated to our objectives. If war is unthinkable to us but not to them, the famous “balance of terror” is not a balance at all, but an instrument of blackmail. U. S.-Soviet power may be in balance; but if we, and not they, rule out the possibility of using that power, the Kremlin can create crisis after crisis, and force the U. S., because of our greater fear of war, to back down every time. And it cannot be long before a universal Communist Empire sits astride the globe.