few months, I suppose it may <= at least, the war against Germany.
But in that connection, I should like to ask you two questions.
How many of you here were sure, in September of 1940, that the
British would be licked and out of the war in a few months? And
how many of you were sure, in the summer of 1941, that the Russians
would be licked and out of the war in a few months?

And there is another angle to this end-of-the-war business.
We are getting nearer to Berlin=-yes--but we are still a mighty
long way from Tokyoe

We ure doing well in the Pacific, we are taking one island
after another, and we have licked the Japanese navy whenever
it gives us a chences But it hasn't given us much chance lately,
it still exists, and it is a big powerful navy.

4s for the Japanese army, we have scarcely met it. We have
fought against a few comparatively small parts of the Japanese
Army =~ but we all know that we have had almost no ccntact at all
with the main Japanese army of several million well-trained
experienced fighters with a fanatic belief in their cause. Our
Army says thet until we have beaten that Japanese army we will
not have beaten Japanese

Our army points cut, in additicn, that we shall have to fight
five thousand miles or more from our bases of sunplies, and fight
against an Army that is on its own ground, close to its bases of
supplies. We've been so excited by the victories in France and
the victories in Russia that we've forgotten, I think, the defeat
in China, and just whet the fall of Hengyang means. It means that
the Japs have ct last got what they've been after for nearly three
years -- a4 real line of land communicaticns between their stolen
raw material areas in southeast Asia and their industrial areas in
the north of Cnhinae

I don't say for one moment that we aren't going to beat Japan.
But I do say that we aren't gcing to beat Japan by deciding the
war is over, and that we dcn't need to give every thing we have to
beating them. Football teams don't score touchdowns by slowing
up on the other team's 10-yard line -- and don't win games by
forgetting that even & beaten team can throw forward passes. Did
any of you ever see a supposedly beaten team win the game with a
flock of forwards in the last quarter because the other team's
secondary had thought the game was over?

So, as I said before, we have got a job to do in this community.
What can we do? We can do a lot. Committees are being formed

= 14. =