What We Are Fighting For

Home     Photo Gallery     Classroom     Documents Selected Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt What We Are Fighting For Eleanor Roosevelt Publishing Information Originally published in The American Magazine 134 (July 1942): 16-17, 60-62. A young officer said to me the other day, "If I asked my men why they are fighting, the answer probably would be, 'Because those are our orders.'" A great many people think in much the same terms—in fact, the great mass of people in our country, if asked why they are fighting, would answer, "Because we have to." No great conviction seems to have come as yet to the people of the nation to make them feel that they fight for something so precious that any price is worth paying. To me, it seems we fight for two things. First, for freedom. Under that we list: Freedom to live under the government of our choice. Freedom from economic want. Freedom from racial and religious discrimination. Second, for a permanent basis for peace in the world. Under this we list: A world economy guaranteeing to all people free trade and access to raw materials. A recognition of the rights and the dignity of the individual. Machinery through which international difficulties may be settled without recourse to war. This necessitates international machinery as well as an international police force. Gradually our people have accepted the fact that we are fighting for freedom, but I am constantly told that they are not really conscious of what freedom has been lost or endangered. They still feel safe. War is still remote, save for the families who have men in the Armed Forces. The individual civilian's place in this war is still not well defined. Groups of people, especially young people, talk a great deal about post-war aims. They say the war is worth fighting only if, by fighting it, we are going to create a brave new world. But what kind of a new world? We'd better be fairly sure of the kind of new world we want. When we look over the past few years, we discover that the war, as we know it now, is only a phase of something which has been going on ever since the last war—a kind of world revolution. It is a worldwide uprising by the people which manifested itself first in those countries where the pressure was greatest. It is a determination to accept whatever offered the promise of giving them and their families, their parents and their children, a better way of life. Russia, Germany, and Italy had felt the pinch of material hardship. In addition, Germany felt spiritual humiliation because of the conditions laid down in the Versailles Treaty. This alone might not have been enough to galvanize the German people into action, but a strong personality appeared who offered them the type of organization they could understand. He promised them a life that provided them with the necessities of daily living in return for hard work. At the same time, he offered them an ideal which proclaimed them the super race of the world. He assured the German people they would dominate the world. This dream of power restored a lost self-respect and gave them a hope of eventually removing all the material difficulties under which they labored. In Russia, in addition to material desires, the revolution was furthered by the ideal of a people's government. These revolutionary movements, of course, could have developed in one of two ways—the democratic way or the totalitarian way. They began in the totalitarian way but came at a time when the same type of revolution was brewing in many other countries—democratic countries. I think the Russian results have sometimes been very different from those originally envisioned. Russia hoped for a world revolution. Hitler, on the other hand, thought of revolution perhaps for his own people, but he did not realize that this was a world revolution. Nor did he see that in this world upheaval there would be only one point at issue—whether it would be carried out his way or the democratic way represented by the United States of America. Once we recognize this basic issue between the two opposed types of revolutions, all the other things going on in the world are easier to understand. We know the conquered countries have never been really conquered. Czechoslovakia, Norway, Greece, the Balkan countries, the Free French, all are still fighting the totalitarian way of revolution in spite of persecution, hunger, and hardship. No one of them is resigned to accept the revolution on the basis of Hitler's totalitarianism. Some people have questioned the wisdom of this. They ask, "What is the use of fighting against Germany? We might better accept the philosophy of Fascism." We fight Germany simply because there are two methods of winning the revolution, and Hitler's way is not our way. His is a method by which you obtain certain material things, but by which you do not obtain the spiritual things. You accept bondage even though your masters may give you material things, such as better housing, a little more to eat and drink. The State will be paramount—the individual a controlled cog in the wheel. Our way permits the freedom of the individual.   Today we in the United States find ourselves a nation involved in this revolution, and the war is only its outward and visible sign. We are a part, our people are a part, of a worldwide desire for something better than has been had heretofore. The same seeds have been germinating here that germinated and burst through the ground in Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. That they were still only germinating in Great Britain and in the United States when the war began is because we have been a little better off and have had people among us with sufficient wisdom to recognize some of the aspirations of human beings and to try to meet them. However, neither in Great Britain nor in the United States were they really being fully met. Time and again I have heard the claim: "But what we have had has been good. Oh, to be sure, during the depression some of our people were hungry, some of our people went without shelter and clothing, but look at what we did for them! Our government began to feed them. We provided them with work which, though not very remunerative, kept them alive. Then they always had the hope that things would be better. We might get back to those good old days of the 20s, when all but some five million people actually had jobs, and some people really had more material things than they knew what to do with." But we were not getting back to "those good old days" as quickly as some people hoped. The five million had been added to, and there was a question in a great many people's minds whether the good old days were good enough for the vast majority of people.   I think most of us will agree that we cannot and do not want to go back to the economy of chance—the inequalities of the 20s. At the end of that period we entered an era of social and economic readjustment. The change in our society came about through the needs and the will of society. Democracy, in its truest sense, began to be fulfilled. We are fighting today to continue this democratic process. Before the war came, all the peoples of the world were striving for the same thing, in one way or another. Only if we recognize this general rising of the peoples of the world can we understand the real reason why we are in the war into which we were precipitated by the Japanese attack. Only if we realize that we in the United States are part of the world struggle of ordinary people for a better way of life can we understand the basic errors in the thinking of the America First people. A few short months ago the America First people were saying that they would defend their own country, but that there was no menace to this country in the war going on in Europe and Asia. Why could we not stay within our own borders and leave the rest of the world to fight out its difficulties and reap the benefit ourselves of being strong from the material standpoint when others were exhausted? We would make money out of other nations. We would lose nothing, we would only gain materially, and we would be safe. Why stick our necks out? This sounded like an attractive picture to many people, but unfortunately it wasn't a true one. One phase of the world revolt from which we could not escape concerns something which people do not like to talk about very much—namely, our attitude toward other races of the world. Perhaps one of the things we cannot have any longer is what Kipling called "The White Man's Burden." The other races of the world may be becoming conscious of the fact that they wish to carry their own burdens. The job which the white race may have had to carry alone in the past, may become a cooperative job. One of the major results of this revolution may be a general acceptance of the fact that all people, regardless of race, creed, or color, rate as individual human beings. They have a right to develop, to carry the burdens which they are capable of carrying, and to enjoy such economic, spiritual, and mental growth as they can achieve. In this connection, a problem which we Americans face now at home is the activity of the Japanese and Germans in sowing seeds of dissension among the ten percent of our population comprising the Negro race. The Negroes have been loyal Americans ever since they were brought here as slaves. They have worked here and they have fought for our country, and our county fought a bloody war to make them citizens and to insist that we remain a united nation. They have really had equality only in name, however. Therefore, they are fertile ground for the seeds of dissension. They want a better life, an equality of opportunity, a chance to be treated like the rest of us before the law. They want a chance to hold jobs according to their ability, and not to be paid less because their skins are black. They want an equal break with the men and women whose skins happen to be white. They must have a sense of economic equality, because without it their children cannot profit by equal education. Moreover, how can they have equal education if they haven't enough to eat, or if their home surroundings are such that they automatically sink to the level of the beasts? They must have, too, a sense that in living in a Democracy, they have the same opportunity to express themselves through their government and the same opportunity as other citizens for representation. They aspire to the same things as the yellow and brown races of the world. They want recognition of themselves as human beings, equal to the other human beings of the world. Of course, they are a part of this revolution—a very active part because they have so much to gain and so little to lose. Their aspirations, like those of other races seeking recognition and rights as human beings, are among the things we are fighting for. This revolution will, I think, establish that the human beings of the world, regardless of race or creed or color, are to be looked upon with respect and treated as equals. We may prefer our white brothers, but we will not look down on yellow, black, or brown people.   Another of our aims undoubtedly is to assure that among our natural resources manpower is recognized as our real wealth. No future economic system will be satisfactory which does not give every man and woman who desires to work, an opportunity to work. Our people want to be able to earn, according to their abilities, not only what this generation considers the decencies of life, but whatever else they can gain by their labors. Standards of living may vary with the years, but we must see to it that all our men and women have the opportunity to meet them. The world we live in will not be the same after this war is over, but no one who travels through the length and breadth of the country will believe we need accept a low standard of living. We are still an undeveloped country. We still have untold natural resources. All we have to do is to face the fact that real wealth lies in the resources of a country and in the ability of its people to work. You may lose everything you have put away in the safe-deposit box, but if you can work and produce with your hands or with your head, you will have wealth. For the wealth of a people lies in the land and in its people and not in the gold buried somewhere in vaults!   The economists can work out the details of our adjustments, but, in a broad way, this war will establish certain economic procedures. We will no longer cling to any type of economic system which leaves any human beings who are willing to work, without food and shelter and an opportunity for development. The people themselves are going to run their own affairs; they are not going to delegate them to a few people and become slaves to those few. Having established that, we will still be carrying out the revolution, the revolution of people all over the world. Lastly, we are fighting, along with many other people, in other countries, for a method of world cooperation which will not force us to kill each other whenever we face new situations. From time to time we may have other world revolutions, but it is stupid that they should bring about wars in which our populations will increasingly be destroyed. If we destroy human beings fast enough, we destroy civilization. For many years after the war we will be finding ways to accomplish things which the people want to accomplish without destroying human beings in baffle. We must set up some machinery, a police force, even an international court, but there must be a way by which nations can work out their difficulties peacefully. The totalitarian way of revolution being abhorrent to us, we, in the United States, are dedicating all we have to the revolution which will make it possible for us to go forward in the ways of freedom. We cannot stand still for the pleasure of a few of our citizens who may grow weary of the forward march. We accept the will of the majority of our citizens. We fight this war in about the same spirit in which our first Revolution was carried on. We will have to part with many things we enjoy, but if we determine to preserve real values, the essentials of decent living for the people as a whole, and give up trying to keep them in the hands of a few, we will win the war in the democratic way. The ways of Fascism and Nazism will be defeated and the way of democracy will triumph. Most of our present-day ideals were present in the last war twenty-five years ago. President Wilson's Fourteen Points really dealt with these same questions. The men who fought the war to end war—the war to establish democracy—were not as realistic as we are today, however. They had not been tried as we have been tried in the past few years. They had never been obliged to define the specific things for which they fought. Most of us today who have a clear picture of what we think is happening in the world are sure of the objectives for which we are going to sacrifice, but we are not willing to sacrifice for anything less than the attainment of these objectives.   Once the people as a whole understand that these are the objectives of the leaders of the United Nations, there will be sorrow at the young lives that are being sacrificed, but not bitterness. All will be willing to accept civilian hardships and sacrifice, for there will be full understanding that failure to win the revolution in the way of democracy would bring only unbearable disaster. The war is but a step in the revolution. After the war we must come to the realization of the things for which we have fought—the dream of a new world.