The attempt to work together in the war made it very apparent how
dependent the nation is upon all its parts, and how dependent each
part is upon all the others. It was often said that "the farmers
would win the war." At other times it was said to be ships, or
fuel, or airplanes, or railroad transportation, or trained
scientists and technical workers. The truth is, of course, that
all these things and many more were absolutely necessary, and that
no one of them would have been of much value without all the
others.

It is true that the winning of the war depended upon the farmers,
because they are the producers of the food and of the raw
materials for textiles without which the nation and every group
and person in it would have been helpless. But the farmer could
not supply food to the nation without machinery for its
production, and without city markets and railroads and ships for
its distribution. Machinery could not be made, nor ships and
locomotives built, without steel. For the manufacture of steel
there must be iron and fuel and tungsten and other materials. And
for all these things there must be inventors and skilled
mechanics, and to produce these there must be schools. And so we
could go on indefinitely to show how the war made us feel our
interdependence. What we need to understand, however, is that THIS
INTERDEPENDENCE IS CHARACTERISTIC OF OUR NATIONAL LIFE AT ALL
TIMES; the war only made us feel it more keenly.

NATION-BUILDING IN WAR TIME

During the war, strange as it may seem, while we were devoting our