Speech of Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson Before the Industrial Session of the 14th Annual New England Conference, New England Council, at Boston, Massachusetts

WAR DEPARTMENT FOTURE RELEASE FOR RELEASE AFTER DELIVERY Address by The Honorable Louis Johnson The Assistant Secretary of Ver Industrial Session of Fourteenth Annuel Nev. England Conference New England Council Boston, Massachusetts November 18, 1938, 11:00. .m. "THIS WE'LL DEFEND" Members and Friends of the New England Conference: You have assembled here in Boston today in the tolerant and friendly spirit of the traditional town meeting of New England to dedicate yourselves to the promotion of its economic life and to the preservation of its ideals of democracy and social well-being. Your lofty purposes, I most heartily commend. For the success of your splendid undertaking, you have the best wishes of the entire nation. I have come here today to discuss with you urgent steps that we must take right now to preserve for ourselves and for the generations that follow the cherished ideals of the town meeting of New England. They are the blessed heritage of all of the American people. Yes, those eternal principles of the New England town meeting, of liberty, of tolerance and of justice, that men since time immemorial have struggled to attain, and for which we, in 1917-1918, so valiantly fought, today are definitely threatened. Ve cannot afford to blind ourselves to the affsirs of the world: The chaotic status of international relations in Europe and Asia are casting their evil shadows upon our peace and upon our American way of life. We must take steps to halt any conceivable advance on their part to these shores. The responsibility to preserve our ideals and our civilization is indeed al grave one and we cannot afford to shirk it. In 1776 it devolved upon your own forefathers, the minute men of Lexington and Concord, and they defended it by blood and sword. In 1917, it fell upon our generation, upon you and your neighbors, the stalwart members of the Yankee Division, and they gave life and treasure to preserve it. Today, it rests upon us of this generation and upon you, who by example and by precept, are upholding it in the fine tradition of the New England town meeting. The tenets of free speech, freedom of religion and tolerance you fondly cherish, proudly exalt and stendfastly maintain. Tomorrow, we or our children e.gain may face 'a challenge, not only of intol- erant ideas but of brute force and ve must be prepared to meet it. Thanks to our heroic dead, many of them resting "Dust to dust in an alien land, Yet still New England's own.", we have a noble heritage. The United States has an interest in the world second to none. With only six percent of the world's area and seven percent of its population, we consume seventy-three percent of the vorld's silk, sixty percent of its petroleum, fifty-six percent of its rubber, more than half of its tin, forty-eight percent of its coffee, forty-seven percent of its copper, forty-two percent of its pig iron and twenty-one percent of to TRUMAD NARA sugar. MORE