462 POSTSCRIPT TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

home to them of the need for greater and greater efforts, they accepted
the inevitable war-footing reorganization of the country's life with
characteristic calmness and determination.

Probably no other factor has contributed more heavily to the
preliminary victories achieved by the Japanese in this war than the
offensive spirit which permeates all of the armed forces of the Empire.
This spirit, recognized by competent military men as the most
vital intangible factor in achieving victory, has been nourished and
perpetuated since the foundation of the modern Japanese Army.
The Japanese High Command has counted heavily upon the advan-
tages this would give them over less aggressive enemies. They have
put great store in what they consider to be the white man's flabbiness.
They look upon us Americans as constitutional weaklings, demand-
ing our daily comforts and unwilling to make the sacrifices demanded
for victory in a war against a military machine which has prepared
and trained itself in Spartan simplicity and the hardness and tough-
ness demanded by war. They attach great importance to the former
disunity in the United States over the war issue and they still count
on an appreciable interval before an aroused nation can find itself
and develop a fighting spirit of its own. By that time, they feel,
Japan will be in complete control of all East Asia. When they struck,
they made no provision for failure ; they left no road open for retreat.
They struck with all the force and power at their command. And
they will continue to fight in the same manner until they are utterly
crushed.

We shall crush that machine and caste and system in due course,
but if we Americans think that, collectively and individually, we
can continue to lead our normal lives, leaving the spirit of self-
sacrifice to our soldiers and sailors, letting the intensification of our
production programme take care of itself, we shall unquestionably
risk the danger of a stalemate in this war of ours with Japan. I say
this in the light of my ten years' experience in Japan, my knowledge
of the power of the Japanese Army and Navy and of the hardness
and fighting spirit of the Japanese. I feel it my bounden duty to
say this to my feUow-countrymen. I know my own country even
better than I know Japan and I have not the slightest shadow of
doubt of our eventual victory. But I do not wish to see the period
of our blood, sweat, and tears indefinitely and unnecessarily prolonged.
That period will t>e prolonged only if our people fail to realize the
truth of what I have just said, that we are up against a powerful
fighting machine, a people whose morale cannot and will not be
broken even by successive defeats, who will certainly not be broken
by economic hardships, a people who individually and collectively
will gladly sacrifice their lives for their Emperor and their nation,
and who can be brought to earth only by physical defeat, by being
ejected physically from the areas which they have temporarily con-
quered or by a progressive attrition of their naval power and merchant
marine which will finally result in cutting off their homeland from