[White House news release.]
I am speaking tonight from the White House in the
presence of the Governing Board of the Pan-American Union, the Canadian
Minister, and their families. The members of this Board are the Ambassadors
and Ministers of the American Republics in Washington. It is appropriate
that I do this. Now, as never before, the unity of the American Republics
is of supreme importance to each and every one of us and to the cause
of freedom throughout the world. Our future independence is bound up
with the future independence of all of our sister Republics.
The pressing problems that confront us are military
problems. We cannot afford to approach them from the point of view of
wishful thinkers or sentimentalists. What we face is cold, hard fact.
The first and fundamental fact is that what started
as a European war has developed, as the Nazis always intended it should
develop, into a world war for world domination.
Adolf
Hitler never considered the domination of Europe as an end in itself.
European conquest was but a step toward ultimate goals in all the other
continents. It is unmistakably apparent to all of us that, unless the
advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the Western Hemisphere
will be within range of the Nazi weapons of destruction.
For our own defense we have accordingly undertaken
certain obviously necessary measures.
First, we joined in concluding a series of agreements
with all the other American Republics. This further solidified our hemisphere
against the common danger.
And then, a year ago, we launched, and are successfully
carrying out, the largest armament production program we have ever undertaken.
We have added substantially to our splendid Navy,
and we have mustered our manpower to build up a new Army which is already
worthy of the highest traditions of our military service.
We instituted a policy of aid for the democracies
— the nations which have fought for the continuation of human
liberties.
This policy had its origin in the first month of the
war, when I urged upon the Congress repeal of the arms embargo provisions
in the Neutrality Law. In that message of September, 1939, I said, "I
should like to be able to offer the hope that the shadow over the world
might swiftly pass. I cannot. The facts compel my stating, with candor,
that darker periods may lie ahead."
In the subsequent months, the shadows deepened and
lengthened. And the night spread over Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland,
Belgium, Luxemburg, and France.
In June, 1940, Britain stood alone, faced by the same
machine of terror which had overwhelmed her allies. Our Government rushed
arms to meet her desperate needs.
In September, 1940, an agreement was completed with
Great Britain for the trade of fifty destroyers for eight important
offshore bases.
In March, 1941, the Congress passed the Lend-Lease
Bill and an appropriation of seven billion dollars to implement it.
This law realistically provided for material aid "for the government
of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense
of the United States."
Our whole program of aid for the democracies has been
based on hard-headed concern for our own security and for the kind of
safe and civilized world in which we wish to live. Every dollar of material
we send helps to keep the dictators away from our own hemisphere. Every
day that they are held off gives us time to build more guns and tanks
and planes and ships.
We have made no pretense about our own self-interest
in this aid. Great Britain understands it--and so does Nazi Germany.
And now — after a year — Britain still
fights gallantly, on a "far-flung battle line." We have doubled
and redoubled our vast production, increasing, month by month, our material
supply of tools of war for ourselves and Britain and China--and eventually
for all the democracies.
The supply of these tools will not fail--it will increase.
With greatly augmented strength, the United States
and the other American Republics now chart their course in the situation
of today.
Your Government knows what terms Hitler, if victorious,
would impose. They are, indeed, the only terms on which he would accept
a so-called "negotiated" peace.
Under those terms, Germany would literally parcel
out the world--hoisting the swastika itself over vast territories and
populations, and setting up puppet governments of its own choosing,
wholly subject to the will and the policy of a conqueror.
To the people of the Americas, a triumphant Hitler
would say, as he said after the seizure of Austria, and after Munich,
and after the seizure of Czechoslovakia: "I am now completely satisfied.
This is the last territorial readjustment I will seek" And he would
of course add: "All we want is peace, friendship, and profitable
trade relations with you in the New World."
And were any of us in the Americas so incredibly simple
and forgetful as to accept those honeyed words, what would then happen?
Those in the New World who were seeking profits would
be urging that all that the dictatorships desired was "peace."
They would oppose toil and taxes for more American armament. Meanwhile,
the dictatorships would be forcing the enslaved peoples of their Old
World conquests into a system they are even now organizing-to build
a naval and air force intended to gain and hold and be master of the
Atlantic and the Pacific as well.
They would fasten an economic stranglehold upon our
several nations. Quislings would be found to subvert the governments
in our Republics; and the Nazis would back their fifth columns with
invasion, if necessary.
I am not speculating about all this. I merely repeat
what is already in the Nazi book of world conquest. They plan to treat
the Latin American nations as they are now treating the Balkans. They
plan then to strangle the United States of America and the Dominion
of Canada.
The American laborer would have to compete with slave
labor in the rest of the world. Minimum wages, maximum hours? Nonsense!
Wages and hours would be fixed by Hitler. The dignity and power and
standard of living of the American worker and farmer would be gone.
Trade unions would become historical relics, and collective bargaining
a joke.
Farm income? What happens to all farm surpluses without
any foreign trade? The American farmer would get for his products exactly
what Hitler wanted to give. He would face obvious disaster and complete
regimentation.
Tariff walls-Chinese walls of isolation-would be futile.
Freedom to trade is essential to our economic life. We do not eat all
the food we can produce; we do not burn all the oil we can pump; we
do not use all the goods we can manufacture. It would not be an American
wall to keep Nazi goods out; it would be a Nazi wall to keep us in.
The whole fabric of working life as we know it-business,
manufacturing, mining, agriculture-all would be mangled and crippled
under such a system. Yet to maintain even that crippled independence
would require permanent conscription of our manpower; it would curtail
the funds we could spend on education, on housing, on public works,
on flood control, on health. Instead, we should be permanently pouring
our resources into armaments; and, year in and year out, standing day
and night watch against the destruction of our cities.
Even our right of worship would be threatened. The
Nazi world does not recognize any God except Hitler; for the Nazis are
as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God. What place has religion
which preaches the dignity of the human being, of the majesty of the
human soul, in a world where moral standards are measured by treachery
and bribery and Fifth Columnists? Will our children, too, wander off,
goose-stepping in search of new gods?
We do not accept, and will not permit, this Nazi "shape
of things to come." It will never be forced upon us, if we act
in this present crisis with the wisdom and the courage which have distinguished
our country in all the crises of the past.
The Nazis have taken military possession of the greater
part of Europe. In Africa they have occupied Tripoli and Libya, and
they are threatening Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Near East. But their
plans do not stop there, for the Indian Ocean is the gateway to the
East.
They also have the armed power at any moment to occupy
Spain and Portugal; and that threat extends not only to French North
Africa and the western end of the Mediterranean, but also to the Atlantic
fortress of Dakar, and to the island outposts of the New World-the Azores
and Cape Verde Islands.
The Cape Verde Islands are only seven hours distance
from Brazil by bomber or troop-carrying planes. They dominate shipping
routes to and from the South Atlantic.
The war is approaching the brink of the Western Hemisphere
itself. It is coming very close to home.
Control or occupation by Nazi forces of any of the
islands of the Atlantic would jeopardize the immediate safety of portions
of North and South America, and of the island possessions of the United
States, and of the ultimate safety of the continental United States
itself.
Hitler's plan of world domination would be near its
accomplishment today, were it not for two factors: One is the epic resistance
of Britain, her colonies, and the great Dominions, fighting not only
to maintain the existence of the Island of Britain, but also to hold
the Near East and Africa. The other is the magnificent defense of China,
which will, I have reason to believe, increase in strength. All of these,
together, prevent the Axis from winning control of the seas by ships
and aircraft.
The Axis Powers can never achieve their objective
of world domination unless they first obtain control of the seas. This
is their supreme purpose today; and to achieve it, they must capture
Great Britain.
They would then have the power to dictate to the Western
Hemisphere. No spurious argument, no appeal to sentiment, and no false
pledges like those given by Hitler at Munich, can deceive the American
people into believing that he and his Axis partners would not, with
Britain defeated, close in relentlessly on this hemisphere.
But if the Axis Powers fail to gain control of the
seas, they are certainly defeated. Their dreams of world domination
will then go by the board; and the criminal leaders who started this
war will suffer inevitable disaster.
Both they and their people know this-and they are
afraid. That is why they are risking everything they have, conducting
desperate attempts to break through to the command of the ocean. Once
they are limited to a continuing land war, their cruel forces of occupation
will be unable to keep their heel on the necks of the millions of innocent,
oppressed peoples on the Continent of Europe; and in the end, their
whole structure will break into little pieces. And the wider the Nazi
land effort, the greater the danger.
We do not forget the silenced peoples. The masters
of Germany-those, at least, who have not been assassinated or escaped
to free soil-have marked these peoples and their children's children
for slavery. But those people-spiritually unconquered: Austrians, Czechs,
Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, Frenchmen, Greeks, Southern Slavs-yes,
even those Italians and Germans who themselves have been enslaved-will
prove to be a powerful force in disrupting the Nazi system.
Yes, all freedom-meaning freedom to live, and not
freedom to conquer and subjugate other peoples-depends on freedom of
the seas. All of American history-North, Central and South American
history-has been inevitably tied up with those words, "freedom
of the seas."
Since 1799, when our infant Navy made the West Indies
and the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico safe for American ships, since
1804 and 1805 when we made all peaceful commerce safe from the depredations
of the Barbary pirates; since the War of 1812, which was fought for
the preservation of sailors' rights; since 1867, when our sea power
made it possible for the Mexicans to expel the French Army of Louis
Napoleon, we have striven and fought in defense of freedom of the seas-for
our own shipping, for the commerce of our sister Republics, for the
right of all nations to use the highways of world trade-and for our
own safety.
During the first World War we were able to escort
merchant ships by the use of small cruisers, gunboats and destroyers;
and this type of convoy was effective against submarines. In this second
World War, however, the problem is greater, because the attack on the
freedom of the seas is now fourfold: first-the improved submarine; second-the
much greater use of the heavily armed raiding cruiser or hit-and-run
battleship; third-the bombing airplane, which is capable of destroying
merchant ships seven or eight hundred miles from its nearest base; and
fourth-the destruction of merchant ships in those ports of the world
which are accessible to bombing attack.
The battle of the Atlantic now extends from the icy
waters of the North Pole to the frozen continent of the Antarctic. Throughout
this huge area, there have been sinkings of merchant ships in alarming
and increasing numbers by Nazi raiders or submarines. There have been
sinkings even of ships carrying neutral flags. There have been sinkings
in the South Atlantic, off West Africa and the Cape Verde Islands; between
the Azores and the islands off the American coast; and between Greenland
and Iceland. Great numbers of these sinkings have been actually within
the waters of the Western Hemisphere.
The blunt truth is this-and I reveal this with the
full knowledge of the British government: the present rate of Nazi sinkings
of merchant ships is more than three times as high as the capacity of
British shipyards to replace them; it is more than twice the combined
British and American output of merchant ships today.
We can answer this peril by two simultaneous measures:
first, by speeding up and increasing our great shipbuilding program;
and second, by helping to cut down the losses on the high seas.
Attacks on shipping off the very shores of land which
we are determined to protect, present an actual military danger to the
Americas. And that danger has recently been heavily underlined by the
presence in Western Hemisphere waters of Nazi battleships of great striking
power.
Most of the supplies for Britain go by a northerly
route, which comes close to Greenland and the nearby island of Iceland.
Germany's heaviest attack is on that route. Nazi occupation of Iceland
or bases in Greenland would bring the war close to our continental shores;
because they are stepping-stones to Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,
and the northern United States, including the great industrial centers
of the north, east and the middle west.
Equally, the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, if
occupied or controlled by Germany, would directly endanger the freedom
of the Atlantic and our own physical safety. Under German domination
they would become bases for submarines, warships, and air planes raiding
the waters which lie immediately off our own coasts and attacking the
shipping in the South Atlantic. They would provide a springboard for
actual attack against the integrity and independence of Brazil and her
neighboring Republics.
I have said on many occasions that the United States
is mustering its men and its resources only for purposes of defense-only
to repel attack. I repeat that statement now. But we must be realistic
when we use the word "attack"; we have to relate it to the
lightning speed of modern warfare.
Some people seem to think that we are not attacked
until bombs actually drop on New York or San Francisco or New Orleans
or Chicago. But they are simply shutting their eyes to the lesson we
must learn from the fate of every nation that the Nazis have conquered.
The attack on Czechoslovakia began with the conquest
of Austria. The attack on Norway began with the occupation of Denmark.
The attack on Greece began with occupation of Albania and Bulgaria.
The attack on the Suez Canal began with the invasion of the Balkans
and North Africa. The attack on the United States can begin with the
domination of any base which menaces our security-north or south.
Nobody can foretell tonight just when the acts of
the dictators will ripen into attack on this hemisphere and us. But
we know enough by now to realize that it would be suicide to wait until
they are in our front yard.
When your enemy comes at you in a tank or a bombing
plane if you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you
will never know what hit you. Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several
thousand miles from Boston.
Anyone with an Atlas and a reasonable knowledge of
the sudden striking force of modern war, knows that it is stupid to
wait until a probable enemy has gained a foothold from which to attack.
Old-fashioned common sense calls for the use of strategy which will
prevent such an enemy from gaining a foothold in the first place.
We have, accordingly, extended our patrol in north
and south Atlantic waters. We are steadily adding more and more ships
and planes to that patrol. It is well known that the strength of the
Atlantic Fleet has been greatly increased during the past year, and
is constantly being built up.
These ships and planes warn of the presence of attacking
raiders, on the sea, under the sea, and above the sea. The danger from
these raiders is greatly lessened if their location is definitely known.
We are thus being forewarned; and we shall be on our guard against efforts
to establish Nazi bases closer to our Hemisphere.
The deadly facts of war compel nations, for simple
self-preservation, to make stern choices. It does not make sense, for
instance, to say, "I believe in the defense of all the Western
Hemisphere," and in the next breath to say, "I will not fight
for that defense until the enemy has landed on our shores." And
if we believe in the independence and integrity of the Americas, we
must be willing to fight to defend them just as much as we would to
fight for the safety of our own homes.
It is time for us to realize that the safety of American
homes even in the center of our country has a definite relationship
to the continued safety of homes in Nova Scotia or Trinidad or Brazil.
Our national policy today, therefore, is this:
First, we shall actively resist wherever necessary,
and with all our resources, every attempt by Hitler to extend his Nazi
domination to the Western Hemisphere, or to threaten it. We shall actively
resist his every attempt to gain control of the seas. We insist upon
the vital importance of keeping Hitlerism away from any point in the
world which could be used and would be used as a base of attack against
the Americas.
Second, from the point of view of strict naval and
military necessity, we shall give every possible assistance to Britain
and to all who, with Britain, are resisting Hitlerism or its equivalent
with force of arms. Our patrols are helping now to insure delivery of
the needed supplies to Britain. All additional measures necessary to
deliver the goods will be taken. Any and all further methods or combination
of methods, which can or should be utilized, are being devised by our
military and naval technicians, who, with me, will work out and put
into effect such new and additional safeguards as may be needed.
The delivery of needed supplies to Britain is imperative.
This can be done; it must be done; it will be done.
To the other American nations-twenty Republics and
the Dominion of Canada-I say this: the United States does not merely
propose these purposes, but is actively engaged today in carrying them
out.
I say to them further: you may disregard those few
citizens of the United States who contend that we are disunited and
cannot act.
There are some timid ones among us who say that we
must preserve peace at any price-lest we lose our liberties forever.
To them I say: never in the history of the world has a nation lost its
democracy by a successful struggle to defend its democracy. We must
not be defeated by the fear of the very danger which we are preparing
to resist. Our freedom has shown its ability to survive war, but it
would never survive surrender. "The only thing we have to fear
is fear itself."
There is, of course, a small group of sincere, patriotic
men and women whose real passion for peace has shut their eyes to the
ugly realities of international banditry and to the need to resist it
at all costs. I am sure they are embarrassed by the sinister support
they are receiving from the enemies of democracy in our midst-the Bundists,
and Fascists, and Communists, and every group devoted to bigotry and
racial and religious intolerance. It is no mere coincidence that all
the arguments put forward by these enemies of democracy-all their attempts
to confuse and divide our people and to destroy public confidence in
our Government-all their defeatist forebodings that Britain and democracy
are already beaten-all their selfish promises that we can "do business"
with Hitler-all of these are but echoes of the words that have been
poured out from the Axis bureaus of propaganda. Those same words have
been used before in other countries-to scare them, to divide them, to
soften them up. Invariably, those same words have formed the advance
guard of physical attack.
Your Government has the right to expect of all citizens
that they take loyal part in the common work of our common defense-take
loyal part from this moment forward.
I have recently set up the machinery for civilian
defence. It will rapidly organize, locality by locality. It will depend
on the organized effort of men and women everywhere. All will have responsibilities
to fulfill.
Defense today means more than merely fighting. It
means morale, civilian as well as military; it means using every available
resource; it means enlarging every useful plant. It means the use of
a greater American common sense in discarding rumor and distorted statement.
It means recognizing, for what they are, racketeers and fifth columnists,
who are the incendiary bombs of the moment.
All of us know that we have made very great social
progress in recent years. We propose to maintain that progress and strengthen
it. When the nation is threatened from without, however, as it is today,
the actual production and transportation of the machinery of defense
must not be interrupted by disputes between capital and capital, labor
and labor, or capital and labor. The future of all free enterprise-of
capital and labor alike-is at stake.
This is no time for capital to make, or be allowed
to retain, excess profits. Articles of defense must have undisputed
right of way in every industrial plant in the country.
A nation-wide machinery for conciliation and mediation
of industrial disputes has been set up. That machinery must be used
promptly-and without stoppage of work. Collective bargaining will be
retained, but the American people expect that impartial recommendations
of our Government services will be followed both by capital and by labor.
The overwhelming majority of our citizens expect their
Government to see that the tools of defense are built; and for the very
purpose of preserving the democratic safeguards of both labor and management,
this Government is determined to use all of its power to express the
will of its people, and to prevent interference with the production
of materials essential to our nation's security.
Today the whole world is divided between human slavery
and human freedom-between pagan brutality and the Christian ideal.
We choose human freedom-which is the Christian ideal.
No one of us can waver for a moment in his courage
or his faith.
We will not accept a Hitler dominated world. And we
will not accept a world, dike the post-war world of the 1920's, in which
the seeds of Hitlerism can again be planted and allowed to grow.
We will accept only a world consecrated to freedom
of speech and expression-freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way-freedom from want-and freedom from terrorism.
Is such a world impossible of attainment?
Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution of the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation and
every other milestone in human progress-all were ideals which seemed
impossible of attainment-yet they were attained.
As a military force, we were weak when we established
our independence, but we successfully stood off tyrants, powerful in
their day, who are now lost in the dust of history.
Odds meant nothing to us then. Shall we now, with
all our potential strength, hesitate to take every single measure necessary
to maintain our American liberties?
Our people and our Government will not hesitate to
meet that challenge.
As the President of a united and determined people,
I say solemnly:
We reassert the ancient American doctrine of freedom
of the seas.
We reassert the solidarity of the twenty-one American
Republics and the Dominion of Canada in the preservation of the independence
of the hemisphere.
We have pledged material support to the other democracies
of the world-and we will fulfill that pledge.
We in the Americas will decide for ourselves whether,
and when, and where, our American interests are attacked or our security
threatened.
We are placing our armed forces in strategic military
position.
We will not hesitate to use our armed forces to repel
attack.
We reassert our abiding faith in the vitality of our
constitutional republic as a perpetual home of freedom, of tolerance,
and of devotion to the word of God.
Therefore, with profound consciousness of my responsibilities
to my countrymen and to my country's cause, I have tonight issued a
proclamation that an unlimited national emergency exists and requires
the strengthening of our defense to the extreme limit of our national
power and authority.
The nation will expect all individuals and all groups
to play their full parts, without stint, and without selfishness, and
without doubt that our democracy will triumphantly survive.
I repeat the words of the Signers of the Declaration
of Independence-that little band of patriots, fighting long ago against
overwhelming odds, but certain, as are we, of ultimate victory: "With
a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually
pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."