Камрады!
The time for campaigning is short! Hence, I shall go to the point immediately. If you vote for me, I promise I will help your souls from dying and/or will give them CPR if necessary. Then again, I'll do that anyway, so you won't lose anything in marking me number one on your ticket!
Anyway.
When, a week ago today, I set myself up for campaigning, I aimed to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement. I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest political disaster in our long history. I thought -and some good judges agreed with me - that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the Party and the whole of the Zocalo north of the Government area would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition.
These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon my campaign and the region to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain of the Taijitu community, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great Taijitu society in the later years of its existence, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.
That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to fall upon us. There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that
Every morn brought forth a noble chance
And every chance brought forth a noble knight,
deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for their native land.
I return to the debates. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three people against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well - in these battles our losses in brain cells have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the Executive to all who have suffered bereavement or who are still anxious.
The President of the Board of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has been killed, and many in the Senate have felt the pangs of affliction in the sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing: We have had a large number of wounded come home safely to this region, but I would say about the missing that there may be very many reported missing who will come back home, some day, in one way or another. In the confusion of this fight it is inevitable that many have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from them.
Against this loss of over 30,000 neurons, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the brain cells we lost in the opening days of Taijitu, but we have lost nearly as many "guns" -- nearly one thousand - and all our transport, all the armored vehicles that were with Taco in the north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our global strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had gone to the Taijituan Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the numbers of septic tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped pirate crew. They had the first-fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone.
And now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this region. An effort the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Work is proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and week days. Capital and Labor have cast aside their interests, rights, and customs and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us, without retarding the development of our general program.
Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Pirates and so many brain cells, whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in IRC and other debates is a colossal disaster. The Viking ship has been weakened, the Ninja clan has been lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy's possession, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us.
We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone. "There are bitter weeds in England." There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned.
The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this Taijitu incomparably more powerful intellectual forces than we have ever had at any moment in this region or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive and passive existence. We have to reconstitute and build up the Taijitu Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant Commander-in-Chief, Cap'n Khab. All this is in train; but in the interval we must put our defenses in this Region into such a high state of organization that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive effort may be realized.
On this we are now engaged. It will be very convenient, if it be the desire of the Senate, to enter upon this subject in a secret Session. Not that the government would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of the Senate by Senators with their knowledge of so many different parts of the region. I understand that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Vampireness' Government.
We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against Taijituan subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the forums. I know there are a great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attendant upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way, for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I feel not the slightest sympathy.
Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants.
Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised.
I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our internet home, to ride out the storm of soul-death, and to outlive the menace of bigotry and excess glorification of security, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Vampireness' Government - every man and woman of them. That is the will of Senate and the region. Taijitu and her Allies, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of NS and many old and famous NationStates have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Lexiconians and all the odious apparatus of their Nazi-esque rule, we shall not flag or fail.
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in IRC, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our region, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this forum or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then the Empire who lives beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the European Taijituans, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the Party, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the others.
Advance Taijitu! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the cookies!
