the cavalcade of America sponsored by DuPont maker of better things for better living through chemistry tonight the DuPont company turns over its regular program time to its affiliated company Remington Arms in order that you may hear in the living cavalcade of America a man who knows more about Japan than perhaps any other American the honorable Joseph Clark Grew, former United States Ambassador to Japan Mr. Grew will speak to you from Bridgeport, Connecticut, home of the Remington Arms Company where he is principal guest of honor at ceremonies marking the award of the joint Army-Navy E for excellence to the workers of Remington Arms for their outstanding achievement in war production because of the interest of every American in hearing at first hand what he has to say DuPont is privileged to devote its regular cavalcade broadcast time this evening to Mr. Grew we take you now to the Hotel Stratfield in Bridgeport, Connecticut where you will hear first Mr. C.K. Davis, president of Remington Arms Company Mr. Davis Ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy to welcome to this occasion tonight both those of you gathered in Bridgeport and those in the radio audience Remington's great army of war workers is being honored tonight for their part in supplying materials for our fighting men we are honored by the presence of our distinguished guest, Ambassador Grew we were honored here in Bridgeport this afternoon as we have been twice before at our plants in Missouri and Colorado by the presentation of the Army and Navy Production Awards such honors could not have come to us were it not for the fine and harmonious relationships between labor and management that have existed in all of our plants we have worked together to men and women of the Remington Peters organization everywhere to the retailers and distributors of our peacetime products to sportsmen and lovers of wildlife and to all the others whose efforts have helped the arms and ammunition industry to live, grow, and be ready for its vital assignment today I extend my congratulations and now it is my very great privilege to present the former senator from Connecticut the honorable Frederick C. Walkett who will introduce to you our distinguished guest, Ambassador Grew ladies and gentlemen, Senator Walker our guest of honor this evening has won his spurs on many fields of statecraft a career man for 38 consecutive years he has served his country in foreign service always on the alert, wise in counsel, clear of vision, quick to detect a hostile attitude he comes here with a message from the far east that every American should hear for he knows whereof he speaks his schedule is overcrowded but this effort he is making to arouse his native land and acquaint us with the difficulties and dangers which lie ahead is his contribution to our all-out war effort his words will serve as a clarion call to all true Americans to spend and be spent that the blight with which our enemies would inoculate civilization may be forever banished their leaders destroyed that we may live in peace and pursue our own course without fear of foreign forces of destruction it is a great privilege therefore to be able to introduce to you a lifelong friend of great distinction recently returned from his last post, Japan Ambassador Joseph C. Groove Senator Walker, ladies and gentlemen yours is the first large group of fellow countrymen that I have had the privilege and pleasure of meeting face to face since returning from Japan for me it is therefore a thoroughly memorable occasion but the real inspiration of this meeting springs from what you are, what you have done and what you are doing you symbolize the backbone of the civilian participation in the war effort of our country and in your contribution to that effort you have achieved outstanding success permit me to express my sincere and hearty congratulations to the workers and the management of the Remington Arms Company on your having won the thanks of our government and country as expressed in the award of the five E's which you received today effort, efficiency and effectiveness whatever those E's may officially and specifically stand for, and I know they stand for excellence those three words seem to me accurately and appropriately to represent your record and your achievement up to date there is still a long road, probably a very long and difficult road ahead you have given concrete evidence that you can and clear indication that you will, to the end, meet the test other speakers will have dealt with the statistics of the expansion and production achieved by you in this time of war I can find myself to the simple statement that this well-merited honor stands as a splendid example to our country and more than that, it stands as a ringing plea, a plea that this great record of yours this record of strike-less effort, efficiency and effectiveness this record of almost unexcelled expansion and progressive intensiveness in production be emulated from end to end of our embattled but still groping land our still groping land groping for what? well, I will try to tell you of my impressions on returning home after long and difficult years abroad for many talks with many different elements of our people, I sensed the most earnest desire of all to contribute individually and collectively their maximum potentialities of service to our national effort towards winning this war but many of those with whom I have talked seem to have no real comprehension of what we are up against no real comprehension that we are not fighting distant enemies merely to preserve our national interests but in fact to preserve our national life, our existence as a free and sovereign people make no mistake about this I know at least one of our enemies intimately, the Japanese and I know beyond pure adventure that the dearest wish and intention of that enemy is so to extend their victories and conquests and power that ultimately they will be in a position to subject us also to the status of the people of the land already conquered that means just one piece of this American heritage disappears yes, that is their dearest wish, to control not only their oriental neighbors but occidental peoples, especially those of America megalomania if you will, but is true Hitler suffers from the same disease and it needs no doctor to diagnose the symptoms it can't happen here, but alas it can Pearl Harbor couldn't happen, but it did and all the rest of it will happen if some of our countrymen continue to grope to grope blindfold for the facts which are clear before them if they will only remove the bandage from their eyes little by little I hope to bring before my fellow countrymen the silent facts concerning the widely misunderstood effectiveness and power and the all out do or die fanatical spirit of the Japanese military machine against which we are fighting today I'm going to speak in Syracuse, New York on September 18th on the Japanese army unless that effectiveness and power and spirit are correctly assessed by the American people as a whole our road to victory will be doubly long and hard and bloody and now another side of the picture many have said to me that the American people are ready, but that our leaders must show us the way show the way? If anyone feels that our leaders have not pointed out the way let him read again and again the statements and declarations of our president of our secretary of state and others of our high officials with the fullest support and cooperation of many other leaders of public thought haven't our leaders month in and month out given us our bearings charted our course, told us what lay ahead what we are now fighting for and what we may expect if we fail in that fight haven't they asked for our maximum efforts in production for our individual and collective self-sacrifice of the non-essentials of life for hard thinking and resolute action on our part not in terms of our daily convenience, but of our daily contribution why waste invaluable time and energy in bickering about tales about non-essentials why not let come to the fore and give full play to our American initiative and resourcefulness and the inherent toughness of earlier difficult days a very great number of our fellow countrymen are imbued with a finest spirit of self-sacrifice and determination who go all out in their war effort they are wide awake and functioning to their full capacities others among our fellow countrymen are similarly eager to serve but are not yet fully awake to the realities of the situation they have failed to analyze the dangers which confront us or to realize the full grimness and potential desperate demands of this war which we are waging actually to preserve our liberty waging to preserve the very principle of liberty others among our fellow countrymen are quite simply still asleep let me merely say to you this since coming to Washington I have seen a closed hand personally and intimately the grim determination and decisiveness of those leaders of ours the problems which they have to face are among the greatest and most difficult in the history of our nation but those problems one by one are being faced and dealt with in that very spirit of determination and decisiveness which fills me with patriotic pride I was in Washington in 1917 the war effort of our country then was amateurish compared with our war effort now I have talked directly with the officers of our Joint Chiefs of Staff with large groups of our Army and Navy officers with the production management, with the members of our strategic services and with many others from the President down some of their problems seem almost insuperable the spirit of their determination to solve those problems is absolutely invincible and they are solving them hour by hour and day by day if only our people, our people as a whole, will realize the dangers which you are up against what we stand to lose by failure, what we must and will gain by victory if only our people as a whole will get in and push to the maximum of their several capacities you know what used to foreign propaganda radio stations are making of this groping of the American people they constantly broadcast our disunity, our domestic bickerings, our strikes and political systems every instance of such disunity that appears in our press is avidly seized upon and amplified and flaunted throughout the enemy countries they believe or pretend to believe those enemies of ours that we are an defeat nation reared in the lap of personal comfort vitiated by luxury, unable to meet the supreme test of war you, the employers and managers and workers of this company are proving the utter futility and falsity of that propaganda your record and accomplishments stand forth for all to see may your example inspire others from end to end of our beloved land and now a word about the Japanese, especially the Japanese workers to you I am sure there is nothing unusual about free workers and free management assembling in a free country Benjamin Franklin once said that we never miss the water until the well runs dry I have spent the last ten years in a country where the well of liberty has always been dry a meeting such as this in Tokyo or Osaka or Nagoya would be unthinkable neither in those cities nor anywhere else in Japan is the worker more than an unresisting pawn of the militarists who are driving his country to destruction indeed I can picture the worker of Japan only in his working clothes bearing upon his back the huge Japanese character, the name of his employer each man bears upon his back this rubber stamp a symbol of his servitude, a symbol of the fact that he is merely an impersonal tool in the hands of those who rule his country's destiny a tool to be used indiscriminately and without regard for his personal and individual well-being the Japanese worker has nothing to say about his wages which before the war were barely enough for his subsistence and still undoubtedly are he has nothing to say about his hours which are long and back-breaking he has any union at all, if they are not left his voice it has been driven underground by the brutal methods of the thought control police in fact there is almost nothing that he has any say about from the moment that he comes into the world until the moment when worn out by unhealthful working conditions long hours and poor diet, he takes his leave of it forever this is what it means to be a worker in Japan this, or far worse, is what it means to be a worker in any country which falls before Japan's armed forces yet we must not be misled by the abject poverty and regimentation of our enemies the conditions I have described would lead free Americans to revolt Japan is a country far different from our own in every conceivable way under these conditions the Japanese workers have dorsally toiled to build a military machine which has swept across eastern Asia like a tidal wave and would sweep still further if allowed to do so the Japanese people have been accustomed to regimentation since the very birth of their nation the Japanese living today were born when their country was still a feudal land and every feudal lord held the power of life and death over the so-called common people we in the West took off feudalism many centuries ago in Japan it existed so recently that it has left a vast heritage of almost prostrate subservience to birth and authority the men who rule Japan today have taken full advantage of the distility of the Japanese people to create a formidable military and economic machine these ruthless architects of aggression have carried out their plans with diabolical cleverness their campaign of propaganda has been long and incessant even Japan's handicaps have been used to strengthen her for war the low standards of living of the Japanese people for example has been used to ignore them to a Spartan life today the Japanese soldier on the fighting front, the Japanese sailor in his cramped ship and the Japanese worker in his gloomy factory can alike live on a diet so meagre that any American on the same diet would soon collapse traditional subservience to authority has been used to lead the Japanese workers to accept a degree of regimentation which in some respects exceeds that of better known Nazi Germany and this regimented industrial machine has been turned to one purpose the production of the tools of war the very failure of Japan's war against China has been used to induce the Japanese people to accept classically severe measures of control and rationing measures of such severity that without the psychology of war they would surely lead to revolt above all the men who ruled Japan have used their efficient propaganda machine to instill in every Japanese a fanatical devotion to his country even those who hate their nations entry into this present war have buried their personal feelings even they have come to accept the belief that the future of their country depends upon the outcome we would be deluding ourselves if we believed that any personal sacrifices which the Japanese people might be called upon to make would lead to any cracking of their morale Yamato Damacy, the spirit of Japan has been stronger during recent months than ever before the undeniable successes of their armies sweeping across Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, the Netherlands, East Indies and many of the islands of the Southwest Pacific have given them tremendous confidence in their ability to win they know that they have a long and difficult fight before them they believe that by grim endurance they will grasp victory this confidence is based not only on the successes of their own forces but on false contempt for the fighting ability of their enemies the Japanese are well aware of the technical achievements of the Western powers so well aware indeed that they have taken many of these achievements and adapted them to their own use they are well aware of the high standard of living of Western peoples but they believe that this high standard has brought a softness, even a degeneracy, to Western civilization they believe that we Americans in our eyes are too complacent, too well fed to be willing to make the sacrifices necessary for victory this is the real challenge to America the challenge of the people who have been hypnotized by their leaders into believing that democracy weakens those who possess it the high standard of living weakens those who enjoy it the peace and the love of peace weaken those who cherish them they come as a shock to some of us to realize how scornful of us are those with whom our relations have been too often governed by a careless sense of superiority too long have we nurtured the illusion that the Japanese is an insignificant person whose achievements are poor imitations of our own achievements the Japanese is physically small but he is sturdy we might say that he is half-starved but he is Spartan he is imitative but he is also capable of adapting himself easily and quickly to new conditions and new weapons he is subservient but his very subserviency is the expression of a fanatical loyalty towards his country and his emperor he is a clever and dangerous enemy one that will compel us to use all the intelligence and all the strength of which we are capable in order to bring about his defeat and as for us what is our answer to this challenge from across the Pacific what is our reply to these little islanders who believe that we are weak and have divided minds in our hour of peril I do not know that I have been back to the United States long enough to have a final answer to this question but I do believe that I have seen enough and talked to enough people to get something of the feel of my native country in this year of crisis no one returning to this country after a long absence can fail to be impressed by the way our great industrial capacity has been converted to the production of munitions no one can fail to be impressed by the vast armies which are being busted around us and the great fleets which are being hammered into shape but we have been by no means near the limits of our achievement what we have done to date we have accomplished through the comparatively easy first stages of transformation of our industrial machinery and our vast store of manpower from the purposes of peace to those of war but an easygoing transformation is not enough it must stop groping let us make no mistake our effort must be an extraordinary one one which exceeds anything that we have undertaken heretofore in winning this broad continent which is our heritage in preserving it from attack within and without the American people in the past have performed the tasks of giants today we face the greatest task in our history a friend of mine recently wrote to me you will find this country sound and feeling but still unable to realize that we are involved in a desperate war I understand very well how difficult it is for the people of this country many thousands of miles from the fronts where the actual fighting is taking place to realize fully just what this war means I myself find it difficult to believe that for a few short weeks ago I was for all practical purposes a prisoner in a country ruled by fanatics determined to destroy the United States and all that she stands for but we must not allow this remoteness from the battlefront to lull us into a sense of false security this is war to the finish the Japanese understand this peasants as well as admirals and generals they have gambled everything on their belief that we are too soft, too divided among ourselves to stand before the fury of their attack this war was bred by fanatical militarism that fanaticism is being met now by the heroism and the righteous fury of our own air forces by dauntless frontal attack by our marines by the ships, the guns and heroic men of our navies and armies I need not recount for you how our men at the firing lines face to face with the enemy and our women behind those lines with their spirit determination, effectiveness and sacrifice are beating back the enemy's will to conquer they at the fighting fronts can handle anything the Japanese can send against them if, and it isn't important if each and every one of us, you and I, gives them his utmost support the ruthless will which is driving the Japanese nation toward conquest knows neither gentleness nor mercy it is utterly ruthless, utterly cruel and utterly blind to any of the values which make up our civilization the only way to stop that will is to destroy it this is our task, the task of our own great country and of our allies in the United Nations let us stop groping it is a task in which you, employers and workers of America, have an immense part, a vital part to play play it well if you fail, please mark my words you pass into slavery and all America passes into slavery with you but you will not fail, we will not fail because we are free men living in a free country able and determined that we, our country, shall remain free that our homes, our traditions, our civilization, our principles, our standards, our humanity shall remain free and that henceforth we shall also be and shall remain secure applause ladies and gentlemen, you have been listening to the Honorable Joseph C. Groove former United States Ambassador to Japan who has spoken to you from Bridgeport, Connecticut where this afternoon the many thousand employees of the Bridgeport Works of the Remington Arms Company a DuPont affiliate, gathered together with their families and friends while high military and naval officers conferred the joint army and navy E for excellence excellence in the production of America's tools of war DuPont is proud of these men and women of Remington because although it can't be told in all its detail now the story of Remington's wartime production is an inspiring one from 1919 to 1939, less than 2% of Remington's business was in military ammunition of the several thousand workers in the Remington plants only a handful kept alive the know-how of making military weapons and ammunition only 60, for example, knew how to make army rifles not 600, 60 then came the war, and for the fifth time in the company's 126 year history Remington was called upon by the government to help our nation through to victory as the great throng of guests who were present this afternoon at the award ceremonies learned a training program was promptly organized, a school was opened men and women were trained not only for the Remington plants but for the government owned Remington operated ammunition plants salesmen and farmers were trained to be machine operators garage mechanics became process engineers as fast as they were qualified these men were sent out by the score to plants across the country Remington's engineering service was expanded to serve not only government plants operated by Remington but those to be operated by other companies as well in less than 18 months Remington Dupont engineers supervised the construction of three huge plants for small arms ammunition bringing each one into production from 3 to 6 months ahead of schedule hundreds of buildings were erected on thousands of acres at one plant ammunition was made and tested on the firing range just 6 months after ground was broken for construction only the fact that Remington was a leader in the manufacture of sporting guns and ammunition made possible such a prompt and efficient change over to all out war production here's a single fact that illustrates the tremendous problems involved in the change to make ammunition a plant must use what are known as perishable tools used intensively they wear out in a few hours Remington alone now uses tens of thousands of these tools a day and there are 2000 different types necessary to manufacture the various calibers of ammunition today with many problems like these successfully solved Remington has a great army of employees the company's production of ammunition for the army and navy is on a scale which 2 years ago was considered impossible in the last 6 months of this year Remington will deliver more small arms ammunition than was manufactured in the entire United States during the whole period of the last world war this in spite of the fact that ammunition for modern weapons must be accurate within one ten thousandth of an inch the pilot of a pursuit plane can't reach the machine guns in his plane's wings to clear them if they jam they must not jam Remington has achieved hair breadth accuracy along with almost unbelievable production figures in fact during the month of July 100% of all ammunition accepted by the government from the Bridgeport plant was classified for aircraft use the most exacting use to which ammunition can be put we know that friends of cavalcade share in the pride felt by each man and woman at Remington who wears tonight the lapel pin that is a symbol of work well done work that has earned the joint army navy award for excellence for Remington has accomplished much indeed to ensure our return to a peacetime world of better things for better living through chemistry ladies and gentlemen a copy of Ambassador Gru's inspiring talk as given on this program will be made available in pamphlet form a free copy will be sent to you if you will address a note or a postcard to the radio section DuPont Wilmington Delaware this is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from DuPont this program came to you from Bridgeport Connecticut and New York this is the national broadcasting company
