"This war is going to be won on the home front. The home front is all important in total war...We Americans are all-out for Victory on this front. We're all of us determined to keep the raw materials for Victory flowing into our industrial plants and the finished weapons of war streaming from those plants to the fighting zones until Adolf is in the ashcan, and Japan on the junkheap, and the poor, misguided Italians are ready to dunk ll Duce in the Tiber.

Of course, every Victory has its price. Right now we can begin to see clearly what Victory is going to cost the home front and it's plenty, although a small sum to pay for such values as liberty, and the right to pursue happiness and work for a decent sort of world...Victory is going to mean virtual conscription of hundreds of hundreds of industries, grief to management and distress to workers as they shift from the uses of peace to the uses of war...The needs of Army and Navy are going to affect the styling of our clothes, as well as our diets...Change we will have-change in the familiar contents of the kitchen shelves, in the contents of our closets and bureaus, in our living rooms..."


The Hampshire Review, Romney (WV) 1942, courtesy of Hampshire County Public Library.