The American people want peace. They have long since ceased to talk of a hard or a soft peace for Germany.

We have learned that peace and well-being are indivisible and that our peace and well-being cannot be purchased at the price of peace or the well-being of any other country.

What we want is a lasting peace. We will oppose soft measures which invite the breaking of the peace.

Offering hope to the German people, I said that freedom from militarism would give them the opportunity, if they would but seize it, "to apply their great energies and abilities to the works of peace — and in time to take an honorable place among the members of the United Nations.

Most of the victims of Nazi aggression were before the war less well off than Germany. They should not be expected by Germany to bear, unaided, the major costs of Nazi aggression.

The German people were not denied, however, the possibility of improving their lot by hard work over the years. Industrial growth and progress were not denied them.

The conditions which now exist in Germany make it impossible for industrial production to reach the levels which the occupying powers agreed were essential for a minimum German peacetime economy.