EXCERPTS OF SPEECHES TO GRADUATES

Following are excerpts from the speeches of Assistant Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, Samuel Cross '12, professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, William Y. Elliott, professor of Government, and Bruce C. Hopper '18, associate professor of Government at the meeting of the alumni Saturday.

Secretary Patterson

In numbers the army in the field is to grow from 17000 to 1,400,000. In weapons there is a range from handgrenades to 28-ton bombing planes. In the World War we would have taken 24 months to produce complete armament for our forces. The war was over before the work was finished.

The urgent demands and needs of Great Britain will postpone acquisition by us of some things--and we are glad of it. . .

We have many fundamental factors in our favor as to armament. Our stock piles of raw materials are ample. Our production facilities are greater than these of any possible combination of hestile powers. Our inventive genius in unsurpassed. With such resources we shall have no excuse if our army is not completely motorized, if it does not have the arms of the greatest fire-power, if it does not have planes of the greatest performance and in the greatest numbers.

Professor Cross

Hence it is that our whole political philosophy is on the defensive. It is confronted by systems which silence competent criticism by violence and make utopian promises to precisely that section of the population which is least qualified to assess such promises at their proper value. The leaders of these systems have joined in a concerted attack upon those European nations, great and small, which had realized an ideal of personal and political freedom comparable with our own. They have demonstrated their intention to treat subject nations as servile inferiors, and have not hidden their contempt for the democratic processes to which we adhere. Their ambitions are not limited to Europe, and they view with covetous eyes the raw materials and the industrial wealth of the American continent.

Professor Elliott

"What is the best possible strategy that we can follow to defend the Americas?

Why not extend the Monroe Doctrine to Ireland and send convoyed ships that far? I think the British can take care of them the rest of the way. If we showed that we were in this war by such a step, not only the Irish but everyone else would take notice. Turkey's attitude would be changed. Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Spain would remain stiffened in opposition to Hitler.

Let us underwrite England's war efforts by mobilizing her assets and by accepting an economic partnership in the resources of that Empire without which the world cannot be adequately reconstructed. This will give us the means of dictating peace terms of whatever character we see fit.

Above all, let us give the most immediate and visible sign of our own determination to the world. Let us kick out every Nazi and every Fascist consul in the country and clean out the central nests from which saboteurs and spies move with impunity against our whole defense effort.

Professor Hopper

My judgment is: No declaration of war; keep control of our time table; move closer and closer to Britain; and without declaring war, gear the country to war by maximum speed in production, training, and supply. . . .

If we service the British air offensive, and service the blockade, these two mighty weapons will crack the hard core of Nazi industrial war power. . . .

We must lengthen the working day, and add to the inducements by increase of overtime wages. We must go into high gear. . . .

Let us notify Tokye through diplomatic channels (without publicity) that an attack on Singapore or the Dutch Indies means war. . . .

There will probably never be another A. E. F. to Europe. That would be just as well for history.