War Aims – Sunday, January 14, 1945
Nations at war are repeatedly called upon for a definition of their war aims. In our own history, of course, the most frequent answer to the question “What are we fighting for?” is that we are fighting for freedom, for democracy, for the American way of life, for the rights of man, for security, for peace. These are good words, it is true, and they have deep meaning for each of us; but certainly they don’t mean the same thing to all people.
And they have been so carelessly used that sometimes, and in some places, they may have stood in danger of becoming mere words. And so, suppose for a moment we try to simplify the answer—the answer to the question “What are we fighting against and what are we fighting for?” To reduce it to its simplest terms, there is only one enemy in the world that any man has, and that enemy is evil. Evil plays many roles and assumes many disguises and makes its way sometimes into the most unexpected places. It isn’t always an easy thing to put your finger on it, because sometimes evil appears to be so utterly respectable.
Perhaps this isn’t, simplifying the question at all. Perhaps it is complicating it—but the fact remains that our fight must be against evil, and for a world and a way of life that will be free from evil—the evil that opposes truth; the evil that causes a man or a nation to covet what another has; the evil that beckons to indulgence in forbidden things; the evil that causes a nation or a people to forget its principles and ideals, and to disregard the commandments of God. Global war, so called, is even more global than we suspect, for, while there are objectives to be won in well-defined geographic areas, evil is no respecter of geography, no respecter of boundaries.
It recognizes no neutrality. It is the same evil that the world has always had to fight—since the beginning of time, and before—the evil that has written on the pages of history concerning nations that could win a war on a distant front and lose it in their own hearts, in their own lives, and in their own homes. And so, in answer to the question “What are we fighting for?”—we are fighting for the destruction of evil. Wherever we find it, and we must no more tolerate it among ourselves than we do among our enemies.
* Revised.
From “The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Jan. 14, 1945. Copyright – 1945.
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January 14, 1945
Broadcast Number 0,804