I shrink with a horror that I cannot express in words, at this continuous slaughter of men in Korea. The battle casualties in Korea today probably have passed the million-man mark: Our own casualties, American casualties, have passed 65,000. The Koreans have lost about 140,000. Our losses, on our side, are a quarter of a million men.

I am not talking of the civilian populations who must have lost many, many, many times that. The enemy probably has lost 750,000 casualties. There are 145,000 of them that are now in our prison bullpens, prisoners, so they might be excepted from that figure because they live; but a million men in less than 11 months of fighting, in less than 11 months of this conflict, have already gone, and it grows more savage every day.

I just cannot brush that off as a Korean skirmish. I believe that is something of such tremendous importance that it must be solved, and it cannot be solved by the nebulous process of saying ‘give us time, and we will be prepared; or we will be in better shape two years from now,’ which is argumentative. I don’t know whether we will or not; and neither do you. …

But I say there is no chance in Korea, because it is a fact — you have lost a million men now. You will lose more than a million if you go on another year; if you go on until 1953, you will lose another million. What are you trying to protect? The war in Korea has already almost destroyed the nation of 20,000,000 people.