In the days and in the years that are to come we shall work for a just
and honorable peace, a durable peace, as today we work and fight for
total victory in war.
We can and we will achieve such a peace.
We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately--but
we still shall strive. We may make mistakes--but they must never be
mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral
principle.
I remember that my old schoolmaster, Dr. Peabody, said, in days that
seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled: "Things in life will not
always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the
heights--then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The
great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is
forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and
the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend."
Our Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect
yet. But it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men, of all
races and colors and creeds, could build our solid structure of
democracy.
And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons--at a
fearful cost--and we shall profit by them.
We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own
well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We
have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in
the manger.
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