New 'Pearl Harbour' is possible
"Americans must not be lulled into sleep by indifference nor be beguiled by the prospect of peaceful co-existence with Communists," Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, told thousands of men of the national convention of the American Legion in Washington.
The Cardinal spoke immediately after President Eisenhower. On the platform, the President stepped aside to shake the Cardinal's hand.
The Cardinal warned that "the danger of another Pearl Harbour embracing the whole American people is definitely possible and possibly imminent."
He remarked on signs of an "alarming deterioration in things of the spirit" in America. and called for an intensification of the nation's religious life.
"How," asked the Cardinal, can there be peaceful co-existence between two parties if one of them is continually clawing at the throat of the other, continually threatening, continually committing actions which are designed to destroy life in the other party?
"How does one peacefully coexist with men who mouth words of peace while waging treacherous war; men who wear the trappings of civilisation while they indulge in the techniques of barbarism?
"It is ignorance of a fatal kind which prompts the illusion that free men can peacefully co-exist with Communists."