The Pittsburgh Press (November 25, 1942)
Editorial: We give thanks
On last Thanksgiving Day, we were grateful that America was still at peace. If we had known then what was to occur a few days later at Pearl Harbor, our sentiments would have been, to say the least, different.
As another Thanksgiving comes around, there is much to mourn, and much future grief and travail to expect. But there is much indeed for which to feel gratitude.
The war is very, very far from being won. But all of us owe thanks for the great victories in the Pacific by our fleets and aircraft, for the dexterous acquisition of Morocco and Algeria and now, prospectively, of Dakar, for the formidable expansion of our armed services, for the almost magical conversion and enlargement of American industry. Also, and eminently, for the stonewall resistance of the Russians, for the RAF’s devastating assaults on Germany and Italy, for the staunch endurance of the Chinese, and the growing solidarity of the Americas.
But there is another thing that will be foremost in many minds as the events of a turbulent year are reviewed on Thanksgiving Day. We mean the cool bravery, the grudgeless shouldering of hardship, the splendid discipline and audacious leadership with which our young men – and many not so young – have repudiated in action those now almost forgotten lamentations that this country had gone soft, flabby, decadent.
For men like Adm. Halsey and Mark Clark, Eisenhower and Rickenbacker, Stilwell and Chennault, Bulkeley and his “expendables” MacArthur and Wainwright, Doolittle and Buzz Wagner, Callaghan and Colin Kelly, for unnumbered nameless heroes both living and dead at Wake Island and off Midway, in the Coral Sea and the Aleutians, on and around the Solomons and New Guinea, in bombers plaguing Europe and submarines plaguing Japan, in the impatient garrisons of Iceland and Panama and Britain, aboard close-hunted convoys and on the eerie beaches of the dark continent – for such men, in all admiration and humility, we give thanks.