These are the thing we are really talking about when we speak of our way of life; and these are precisely the things that are at stake in this war. For the Germans have denied every democratic and Christian principle that has been handed down to us and preserved and developed in this great republic. The Greeks gave us the idea of intellectual liberalism, Plato the conception of reason, yet the Nazis deny their right to exist. Christ gave us the doctrine of love and mercy, but the Germans scorn Christ as a Jew and scoff at love and mercy. The French confirmed our faith in democracy with their cry of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, yet the Germans dismiss this as a hypocritical slogan to be opposed, as Hitler's pal Hans von Bülow has said, by their Prussian realities of Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery. The Romans and British gave us our conception of the rule of law and the sanctity of treaties, and we have known for years what the totalitarians thought of these fundamental virtues. We in the United States have given all these honorable things a worthy home and have proved to the world what can be done by heroic men whose minds are free to question and experiment, to seek truth according to their own conscience, and to listen sympathetically to the most unorthodox views.

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About James Reston

James Reston was a 20th-century American journalist and newspaper editor. James "Scotty" Barrett Reston was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid-1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years with The New York Times. Read more on Wikipedia →

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