War Aims – Sunday, June 27, 1943
Scarcely a day passes but what someone, publicly and in high places, calls for a definition of our war aims. 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 what we are fighting against is evil, and what we are fighting for is 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 gives one man an insufferable conceit in his own superiority and an intolerable assurance of the inferiority of his fellows; 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.
The fact of the matter is that this global war is even more global than we suspect. While there are objectives to be won in well-defined geographic areas—evil is no respecter of geography. If it is driven to cover by frontal attack, it moves in from the flank and from the rear, and is a past master at infiltration. 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 of nations that could win a war on a distant front and lose it in their own hearts, in their own lives, in their own homes. It doesn’t matter who or what would destroy us or our freedom, if it would destroy us it represents evil, and is, therefore, our enemy. 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 must no more tolerate it among ourselves than we do among our enemies.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, June 27, 1943, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1943.
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June 27, 1943
Broadcast Program 0,723