China and the West

Dewey, John. Message to the Chinese people. (1942). In : Dewey, John. Lectures in China, 1919-1920 [ID D28360]. [The Chinese text was a propaganda leaflet distributed over Chinese cities by the U.S. Army Air Force, 1942].
Your country and my country, China and the United States, are alike in being countries that love peace and have no designs on other nations. We are alike in having been attacked without reason and without warning by a rapacious and treacherous enemy. We are alike, your country and mine, in having a common end in this war we have been forced to enter in order to preserve our independence and freedom. We both want to see a world in which nations can devote themselves to the constructive tasks of industry, education, science, and art without fear of molestation by nations that think they can build themselves up by destroying the lives and the work of the men, women, and children of other peoples. We are alike, your country and mine, in being resolved to see this fight through to the end.
In one important respect we are unlike. You have borne the burden, heat, and tragedy of the struggle much longer than we have. We are deeply indebted to you for the enduring and heroic struggle you have put up. Our task is severe but it is much easier than it would have been were it not for what you have done in holding a powerful enemy at bay through these long years of suffering. We are now comrades in a common fight and in defending our-selves ; all our energies are pledged to your defense and your triumph.
The United Nations will win the whole war, and the United States and China will win against Japan. Of that there can be no more doubt than that the sun will rise tomorrow. Because we are a peaceful nation, we, like you, were taken at a disadvantage at the outset. I assure you that the early disaster has been a stimulus that has evoked the united energies and the unalterable resolve of the people of this county. We are in it with you and with the other peoples near you, and we shall carry on till complete victory is ours, and till you and they are forever relieved of the menace under which you have lived for so many years. For the twenty-one demands Japan made upon you a quarter of a century ago is an enduring memorial of how many years you have lived under a threat from which you shall not suffer in future years, and you are able to return to the peaceable task of building up you own culture in peaceful cooperation with other nations of goodwill.
You have assumed by your heroic struggle a new position in the family of nations. You have won the undying respect and admiration of all nations that care for freedom. As the result of the victorious outcome of the war all inequalities to which you have been subject will be completely swept away. Our gratitude to you, our respect for you, our common struggle and sacrifice in the common cause, guarantee to China an equal place in the comity of nations when the light of victory dawns. Both of our nations, even in the midst of the sufferings we undergo and the sacrifices we make, can be of good cheer as we make a reality out of our vision of a world in which we can live without constant dread, and where we have taken a step forward toward a world of friendship and goodwill. In this new world you are assured the position of spiritual leadership, of Eastern Asia to which your enduring tradition of culture as well as your present heroic struggle so richly entitle you. We cannot forget that a Japan got her technical and mechanical resources, industry, and war from Western nations, so she got her literature, her art, and all that is best in her religion from you. The coming victory will restore to China her old and proper leadership in all that makes for the development of the human spirit.