White House news release.
MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW-AMERICANS:
Tonight a mighty Community Mobilization begins, a
voluntary mobilization of the forces of human kindness and decency.
In more than 600 American cities, gifts for foreign war relief and for
community services will be gathered by the experienced hands of community
chests and war chests. The two great labor organizations of the country
will give full cooperation to this work. Hundreds of thousands of citizens
will give freely of their time and talents for the success of these
campaigns.
You have been accustomed for many years to showing
your concern for the welfare of your own neighbors through contributions
to your community chest; and also we must stretch a handclasp of hope
and courage across the seas.
We must transform some of our new buying power into
giving power as we face redoubled needs on every hand at home and abroad;
and prepare to pull our belts tighter for the hard fight ahead.
For most of us this year, giving will not be easy.
War needs exact a heavy toll, not only on the fighting front but in
the personal lives and fortunes of every one of us. But your giving
will provide not alone strength for our nation at war; but proof, in
a world of violence and greed, that the American people keep faith with
democracy, that we hold inviolate our belief in the infinite worth of
the individual human being.
Your gift may give new heart to courageous families
bombed out of their homes in many places; it may add to the precious
store of medicines in a distant hospital or speed a shipload of food
to a little nation, whose people are dropping in the streets from starvation.
It may strengthen the hands of brave allies fighting our common foe.
It may help a busy mother, working in war industry in your own town,
to take proper care of her family. It may speed on her rounds a visiting
nurse who is carrying a double load because so many of her profession
are now with the armed forces. It will help your community to give hospitality
to soldiers, sailors and marines on a precious few-days leave, or on
their way to some distant battle line.
Your gift must take account, also, of the continuing
needs of the sick, the crippled child, the boys and girls whose homes
are not adequate to their needs, the dependent and unfortunate in your
own neighborhoods whose troubles have not lessened with the new worries
and needs which war has brought.
Upon each one of you who listens tonight-upon you
as an individual-in your own cities and towns throughout this vast country,
rests the success or failure of these campaigns.
In generous giving, we will affirm before the world
our nation's faith in the inalienable right of every man to a life of
freedom, justice and decent security. Every successful community chest
and war chest campaign will be another step toward the eventual victory
of humanity and civilization.