"What Are We Fighting For?"

London's thoughtful Sunday Observer thought the time had come to be blunt. "What are we fighting for?" it asked out loud. Then, in answer to years of official "win-the-war-first-and-find-out-after-wards" propaganda, the Observer eloquently observed:

"This is the first age in which it has been openly regarded as wrong for a nation, a Government, a party, or even a newspaper, to have a policy. . . . Field Marshal Smuts, Lord Halifax and Mr. Lippmann are rebuked for saying, with more or less frankness, that a nation without a policy may perish. . . .

"War is politics. We fight for principles or war is madness. If we deny this, we deny all that the war has cost us and our Allies; we ought never to have begun.... We chose the long, hard road because it was right, as well as expedient for our safety; because we could not tolerate, coming slowly nearer, the denial and destruction of decent living. We went to war for political reasons; and we cannot weaken so long as the 'evil things'--brute force, bad faith and intolerance -have still to be broken, or so long as 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' have still to be secured for all who put trust in us. ...

"We should no longer be afraid of old pledges which became stale because they were dishonored, not because they could not have been kept. We are fighting to make the world safe for Democracy. We are fighting for homes fit for heroes. We are fighting for 'freedom and progress.' And it is precisely by our victories in politics that our victories in war shall be judged."

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