Quotes

Democracy is a perpetual compromise.

JUSTICE WILEY RUTLEDGE, JR., U. S. Supreme Court

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I admire conscientious objectors in this war so long as they are conscientious, and I admire soldiers. The only ones I never admire are the ones who fight with their mouths: “Kill one for me.”

The late MAJOR ERIC KNIGHT

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We seem to be preparing nationally to tread the exact path of isolation that led to defeat in 1920 of the League of Nations Covenant and to the period of extreme nationalism that followed.

CONGRESSMAN W. R. THOM (D), Ohio

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Our national anemia has been largely cured.

VICE ADMIRAL J. W. GREENSLADE

The Optimist

We must be prepared for the eventuality of the Russian war lasting for years.

FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG

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From beans to bombers — from pickles to pursuit planes — is a long way. But, gentlemen, we have made it. H. J. HEINZ II

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The earliest and most certain symptom of a frightened mind is that it is always reacting against something. For this means that it lacks any sustaining and positive conviction of its own, and has, therefore, no inward strength to face reality and withstand it and be master of circumstances.

Strong and healthy men, like good generals, do not let their opponents rule their minds. They do not look to see what somebody else thinks before they know what they do not think. And whenever you find a public man who never knows what he thinks till he has found someone to disagree with him, you can be reasonably sure that he is frightened.

WALTER LIPPMANN, N. Y. Herald Tribune

Jim Crow Etiquette

There has been a lot of talk here about discrimination against the colored race. I say to you that any man coming from the South knows that a Southerner does not refer to a colored man as “mister.” When I started talking about this man and getting information on him I did not even know he was a colored man. I got in the habit of saying “Mr. Pickens” and made that statement on the floor two or three times, which is evidence to you that I did not even know he was a colored man and did not care about it.

CONGRESSMAN JOE HENDRICKS (D), Florida

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As there is no “1” in Japanese, it is absurd to suggest that a Jap would pronounce “sorry” as “solly.” And in dealing with Orientals a good rough test of nationality is to ask them to pronounce “very jolly.” Chinese uneducated abroad will say “velly jolly”; linguistically untrained Japs will say “very jorry.”

GREGORY MASON, formerly on the Japan Advertiser

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If anyone cares to argue against Lend-Lease as a means to a common victory, he really puts himself in the position of advocating that America win the war by itself. RAYMOND GRAM SWING

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I may be too busy to see a colonel sometimes, but I’ll never turn down a second lieutenant.

LT. GEN. GEORGE C. KENNEY

As soon as this war is over I am coming back here with a pick and shovel and a bunch of strong-backed young men. You can’t dig even a slit trench around here without uncovering some kind of relic.

CAPT. HALLAM MOVIUS,Harvard archaeologist, in Algeria

Liquidity

Free enterprise requires brave living. Self-analysis does not encourage the use of words in had repute; and we are not likely to describe ourselves as cowardly. The words “cautious” and “prudent” lack the distinctly dynamic note. Hence, we have invented a new term, which possesses all the attributes of cowardice except a sense of humiliation, namely, “liquidity.” Somehow we have managed to think of liquidity as brave and constructive and desirable, when all it means is the ability to run away quickly. What good is a system of free enterprise, and how can it work, when everyone wants to be able to run away quickly? Men trained to run away quickly are likely to run at the first smell of risk. Stability and courage are rare indeed, where liquidity is the prevailing economic philosophy.

EDWARD E. CHASE,President, New England Council

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After 150 miles in a jeep it takes you twenty-four hours to stop vibrating. ERNIE PYLEin Algeria

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Many people object to profanity and vulgarity, whereas none of them object to the absence of these items.

BARRON HOWARD,radio station manager, in Variety

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Few consumers, least of all those with low incomes, have been able to send paid spokesmen to Washington to look after their interests. That was why consumers’ counsels were set up in the first place. And that is why consumers’ counsels have been liquidated one by one.

DONALD E. MONTGOMERY,formerly with Consumers’ Counsel Division, U. S. Department of Agriculture

Plasma

Our statistics of wounded from the battle areas of the Southwest Pacific show that the use of sulfanilamides and blood plasma has reduced the mortality of all our wounded from the 7 per cent of the First World War to less than 1 per cent. The mortality of abdominal wounds has been reduced from 60 or 80 per cent to about 5 per cent.

CAPT. REYNOLDS HAYDEN,U. S. N. Medical Corps

Navy women are not allowed to marry Navy men. Army women must not marry Army men, and Coast Guard women must not marry Coast Guard men. Therefore, it would be to a woman’s personal advantage to be a member of the SPARS. She would have the least amount of competition and also the biggest field of matrimonial prospects. A SPAR would be permitted to marry any man in the Army or Navy — and there are lots of them.

JEANNETTE METZGER,Chicago psychology student

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They’ll shoot a Jap and he’ll jump in the air. Before he hits the ground, the boys will be all over him, frisking him for souvenirs. Damnedest bunch of boys you ever saw.

SGT. JOE MELTON,quoted in Yank by Sgt. Mack Morriss

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The average American looks forward to having more human liberty on this continent, not less.

PRESIDENT JAMES B. CONANT of Harvard

Save Every Drop

The term “east coast” doesn’t mean Jersey City or Manhattan or Boston or Philadelphia or Washington. The “east coast” is Dakar and Casablanca and a hidden fuel dump somewhere south of Bizerte. It is every bit of land and water between their doorstep and Hitler’s hide-out at Berchtesgaden.

Every home owner who cannot convert from fuel oil to coal will continue — we hope — to get a basic fuel oil ration that will suffice for healthy if not customarily convenient living. Every necessary motor vehicle — we hope — will be able to travel its necessary mileage.

It must be apparent to all that every drop of fuel oil that goes needlessly through an oil burner — industrial, commercial, or domestic — every drop that could be saved by the conversion of that equipment to the use of coal, is a drop of oil that might have saved a doughboy’s life or knocked a second off the timetable of the certain but distant victory for our arms.

Every gallon of gasoline that is wasted by an extra mile on a salesman’s schedule, on a casual shopping trip, bridge luncheon, or “I owe it to myself” vacation jaunt — every gallon of that gasoline deprives some more essential petroleum products of needed transportation space and equipment from some more essential petroleum product. Conceivably it blocks the on-time shipment of an extra gallon of aviation gasoline that might otherwise have flown a fighter plane and its wounded pilot back to base.

HAROLD L. ICKES