I do not intend to be responsible for any suggestion that the war is won or will soon be over. That it will be won by us I am sure. But how or when cannot be foreseen, still less foretold. I was driving the other day not far from the field of Gettysburg, which I know well, like most of your battlefields. It was the decisive battle of the Civil War. No one after Gettysburg doubted which way the dread balance of war would incline. Yet far more blood was shed after the Union victory at Gettysburg than in all the fighting which went before. It behooves us, therefore, to search our hearts and brace our sinews and to take the most earnest counsel one with another in order that the favorable position which has already been reached, both against Japan and against Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, shall not be let slip. If we wish to abridge the slaughter and ruin which this war is spreading to so many lands and to which we must ourselves contribute so grievous a measure of suffering and sacrifice, we cannot afford to relax a single fiber of our being or to tolerate the slightest abatement of our effort. The enemy is still proud and powerful. He is hard to get at. He still possesses enormous armies, vast resources, and invaluable strategic territories. War is full of mysteries and surprises. A false step, a wrong direction of strategic effort, discord, or lassitude among the Allies might soon give the common enemy the power to confront us with new and hideous facts. We have surmounted many serious dangers. But there is one grave danger which will go along with us until the end. That danger is the undue prolongation of the war. No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in 4 or 5 more years of war. And it is in the dragging out of war at enormous expense till the democracies are tired, or bored, or split that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must now reside.
We must destroy this hope, as we have destroyed so many others; and for that purpose, we must beware of every topic, however attractive, and every tendency, however natural, which divert our minds or energies from the supreme objective of the general victory of the United Nations. By singleness of purpose, by steadfastness of conduct, by tenacity and endurance, such as we have so far displayed, by these, and only by these, can we discharge our duty to the future of the world and to the destiny of man.