Vice President Wallace structured his entire commencement address around a single young man — 'George,' a close friend who had been a pacifist, a Quaker college student, and ultimately a Marine dive bomber pilot killed in a training accident two weeks before the speech. Wallace had personally convinced George of the necessity of fighting Nazism, and George had accepted the argument completely — but with a devastating caveat. George's words, quoted from a letter written shortly before his death, placed the burden of peace squarely on the older generation: 'This war is our job and we are going to win it on the battlefronts, come hell or high water. The really tough job is going to begin after the war when the same forces that got us into this one will be pitted against the men who've got the guts to fight for a world in which everybody can have a chance to do useful work.' The speech was Wallace's attempt to honor that charge — and to warn the graduates against repeating the mistakes that followed World War I.