" There can be no doubt in the minds of thinking people," said Mr. Alfred E. (Al) Smith, the well-known Catholic and former Governor of New York, in a recent broadcast, " that we are committed to a policy of full aid to countries resisting invasion by the Totalitarian Powers.
" There is no conceivable ground on which any truce can be made or any lasting peace founded with Hitler until the German people and their allies have learned that their gospel of force, hate, domination and destruction will not be tolerated by the free peoples of this world.
" The British to-day stand between us and the total war which the dictators promise. . . The dictators want world supremacy and nothing less, and our only hope Of staying out of the actual fighting is to furnish the British with every instrument we can make lust as fast as we are able to make it.
WAR WILL BE SHORTER THAN WE THINK " Will this be a long war? My hunch is that the war will be shorter than most people think and that if we give full aid to Britain the empire of Hitler will fail to pieces as
fast as it was pot together. . . There aro evidences, in spite of all the tremendous power of suppression by the secret police, that the decent people of Germany will not in the long run substitute Nese barbarism for religion and democratic ideals. Hitler is not the first would-be world conqueror. History shows that all the others spread themselves too thin, could not keep on winning victories, could not suppress the insurrections and troubles which cropped up in one place or another and in the end were victims of their own madness.
" The British are slow, courageous and terribly stubborn people. It takes them quite a while to get started, but once they are under way they gather momentum and nothing stops them. Every American with an ounce of sporting blood must admire the extraordinary fight that they are making_ Even if we had no direct stake in the outcome our sympathies would be with them in this case.
" However, they are bearing the heat of the battle against the common enemy. They are fighting for principles without which we believe life is not worth living. Every redblooded American will support the President in his purpose to give full support to Britain,"