Armistice Day 1941 (11-11-41)

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President Roosevelt’s address at the Amphitheatre, Arlington National Cemetery
November 11, 1941, 11:06 a.m. EST

72-18-7

Among the great days of national remembrance, none is more deeply moving to Americans of our generation than the 11th of November, the anniversary of the Armistice of 1918, the day sacred to the memory of those who gave their lives in the war which that day ended.

Our observance of this anniversary has a particular significance in the year 1941.

For we are able today as we were not always able in the past to measure our indebtedness to those who died.

A few years ago, even a few months, we questioned, some of us, the sacrifice they had made. Standing near to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Sergeant York of Tennessee, on a recent day spoke to such questioners. Sergeant York said:

There are those in this country today who ask me and other veterans of World War I:

What did it get you?

Today we know the answer – all of us. All who search their hearts in honesty and candor know it.

We know that these men died to save their country from a terrible danger of that day. We know, because we face that danger once again on this day.

What did it get you?

People who asked that question of Sergeant York and his comrades forgot the one essential fact which every man who looks can see today.

They forgot that the danger which threatened this country in 1917 was real – and that the sacrifice of those who died averted that danger.

Because the danger was overcome, they were unable to remember that the danger had been present.

Because our armies were victorious, they demanded why our armies had fought.

Because our freedom was secure, they took the security of our freedom for granted and asked why those who died to save it should have died at all.

What did it get you?

What was there in it for you?

If our armies of 1917 and 1918 had lost, there would not have been a man or woman in America who would have wondered why the war was fought. The reasons would have faced us everywhere. We would have known why liberty is worth defending as those alone whose liberty is lost can know it. We would have known why tyranny is worth defeating as only those whom tyrants rule can know.

But because the war had been won, we forgot, some of us, that the war might have been lost.

Whatever we knew or thought we knew a few years or months ago, we know now that the danger of brutality and tyranny and slavery to freedom-loving peoples can be real and terrible.

We know why these men fought to keep our freedom – and why the wars that save a people’s liberties are wars worth fighting and worth winning – and at any price.

What did it get you?

The men of France, prisoners in their cities, victims of searches and of seizures without law, hostages for the safety of their masters’ lives, robbed of their harvests, murdered in their prisons – the men of France would know the answer to that question. They know now what a former victory of freedom against tyranny was worth.

The Czechs too know the answer. The Poles. The Danes. The Dutch. The Serbs. The Belgians. The Norwegians. The Greeks.

We know it now.

We know that it was, in literal truth, to make the world safe for democracy that we took up arms in 1917. It was, in simple truth and in literal fact, to make the world habitable for decent and self-respecting men that those whom we now remember gave their lives. They died to prevent then the very thing that now, a quarter century later, has happened from one end of Europe to the other.

Now that it has happened, we know in full the reason why they died.

We know also what obligation and duty their sacrifice imposes upon us. They did not die to make the world safe for decency and self-respect for five years or ten or maybe twenty. They died to make it safe. And if, by some fault of ours who lived beyond the war, its safety has again been threatened then the obligation and the duty are ours. It is in our charge now, as it was America’s charge after the Civil War, to see to it “that these dead shall not have died in vain.” Sergeant York spoke thus of the cynics and doubters:

The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.

The people of America agree with that. They believe that liberty is worth fighting for. And if they are obliged to fight, they will fight eternally to hold it.

This duty we owe, not to ourselves alone, but to the many dead who died to gain our freedom for us – to make the world a place where freedom can live and grow into the ages.

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The Pittsburgh Press (November 11, 1941)

U.S. AGAIN FACES TERRIBLE DANGER, ROOSEVELT WARNS
Armistice Day address cites ‘duty of dead’

‘Liberty worth fighting for,’ President says at Tomb of Unknown Soldier

Washington, Nov. 11 (UP) –
President Roosevelt, calling upon the nation to repay the World War I dead by making the earth “a place where freedom can live and grow into the ages,” declared today that the nation again, as in 1917, faces a “terrible danger.”

In a speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the end of World War I, Mr. Roosevelt said that the dead of the first world conflict had died to make the world “safe for decency and self-respect,” and that:

…liberty was worth fighting for.

The President spoke in the marble amphitheatre which fronts the tomb bearing the epitaph:

Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.

The nation, he said, must pay its duty to:

…the many who died to gain our freedom for us.

Wreath placed on tomb

Flanked by his ranking military and naval leaders, the President looked on somberly as Capt. John A. Beardall, his naval aide, placed a wreath at the foot of the tomb. The President’s head was bared to the chilly autumn wind, and Army drummers played a muffled roll.

Mr. Roosevelt stressed that the World War I dead had sacrificed their lives to better this nation’s security and that of the entire world.

The President said:

And if, by some fault of ours who lived beyond the war, its safety has again been threatened then the obligation and the duty are ours.

Text of address

The text of Mr. Roosevelt’s address follows:

Among the great days of national remembrance, none is more deeply moving to Americans of our generation than the 11th of November, the anniversary of the Armistice of 1918, the day sacred to the memory of those who gave their lives in the war which that day ended.

Our observance of this anniversary has a particular significance in the year 1941.

For we are able today as we were not always able in the past to measure our indebtedness to those who died.

A few years ago, even a few months, we questioned, some of us, the sacrifice they had made. Standing near to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Sergeant York of Tennessee, on a recent day spoke to such questioners. Sergeant York said:

There are those in this country today who ask me and other veterans of World War I:

What did it get you?

Today we know the answer – all of us. All who search their hearts in honesty and candor know it.

We know that these men died to save their country from a terrible danger of that day. We know, because we face that danger once again on this day.

They averted danger

What did it get you?

People who asked that question of Sergeant York and his comrades forgot the one essential fact which every man who looks can see today.

They forgot that the danger which threatened this country in 1917 was real – and that the sacrifice of those who died averted that danger.

Because the danger was overcome, they were unable to remember that the danger had been present.

Because our armies were victorious, they demanded why our armies had fought.

Because our freedom was secure, they took the security of our freedom for granted and asked why those who died to save it should have died at all.

What did it get you?
What was there in it for you?

Some of us forgot

If our armies of 1917 and 1918 had lost, there would not have been a man or woman in America who would have wondered why the war was fought. The reasons would have faced us everywhere. We would have known why liberty is worth defending as those alone whose liberty is lost can know it. We would have known why tyranny is worth defeating as only those whom tyrants rule can know.

But because the war had been won, we forgot, some of us, that the war might have been lost.

Whatever we knew or thought we knew a few years or months ago, we know now that the danger of brutality and tyranny and slavery to freedom-loving peoples can be real and terrible.

Frenchmen know now

We know why these men fought to keep our freedom – and why the wars that save a people’s liberties are wars worth fighting and worth winning – and at any price.

What did it get you?

The men of France, prisoners in their cities, victims of searches and of seizures without law, hostages for the safety of their masters’ lives, robbed of their harvests, murdered in their prisons – the men of France would know the answer to that question. They know now what a former victory of freedom against tyranny was worth.

The Czechs too know the answer. The Poles. The Danes. The Dutch. The Serbs. The Belgians. The Norwegians. The Greeks.

We know it now.

In our charge now

We know that it was, in literal truth, to make the world safe for democracy that we took up arms in 1917. It was, in simple truth and in literal fact, to make the world habitable for decent and self-respecting men that those whom we now remember gave their lives. They died to prevent then the very thing that now, a quarter century later, has happened from one end of Europe to the other.

Now that it has happened, we know in full the reason why they died.

We know also what obligation and duty their sacrifice imposes upon us. They did not die to make the world safe for decency and self-respect for five years or ten or maybe twenty. They died to make it safe. And if, by some fault of ours who lived beyond the war, its safety has again been threatened then the obligation and the duty are ours. It is in our charge now, as it was America’s charge after the Civil War, to see to it “that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

Worth fighting for

Sergeant York spoke thus of the cynics and doubters:

The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.

The people of America agree with that. They believe that liberty is worth fighting for. And if they are obliged to fight, they will fight eternally to hold it.

This duty we owe, not to ourselves alone, but to the many dead who died to gain our freedom for us – to make the world a place where freedom can live and grow into the ages.

Legion chief speaks

The President was accompanied by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, the President’s military aide, Maj. Gen. E. M. Watson and his naval aide, Capt. John R. Beardall.

Lynn U. Stambaugh, national commander of the American Legion, speaking on the program with Mr. Roosevelt, reaffirmed the organization’s pledge to support the government’s foreign policy:

…to the end that the American way of life may survive in a world of free men.

He called on Americans to consecrate themselves to hard work, discipline, truth, courage and character to meet the task ahead which, in war or peace:

…will not be easy.

The Army and Navy plan no organized ceremonies to mark the day but Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, will broadcast at 6:30-6:45 p.m. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox will speak at 9:30 p.m. from Providence, RI.

The mood of the ceremony was even more grave than last year when Mr. Roosevelt spoke of:

…a need for the elimination of aggressive armaments – a need for the breaking down of barriers in a more closely knitted world.

The few casualties of 1941 which have been buried in Arlington are men who died in outposts and bases, such as Iceland. The bodies of victims of naval engagements on the North Atlantic have not had time to reach the United States.

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1918-1941

23 years ago, we came out of a war. Today we are going into a war. Our Navy is already in an undeclared war in the Atlantic. The President put us in, and Congress by the delivery-and-convoy vote is in process of ratifying the accomplished fact. So history is repeating, at least to the extent of drawing us into the shooting against a ruthlessly aggressive Germany.

Potentially we are the mightiest nation on earth. But our fundamental weakness is that we don’t know what we want. We insist on the impossible of eating our cake and having it.

That is why we never really got going in the last war. That is why we lost the peace 23 years ago. That is why we are now halfway into another war without adequate preparedness, without even a definite policy.

We want to go into the water, but we don’t want to get wet. We want victory without paying the price of victory. We want all-out preparedness, but without sacrificing business as usual, strikes as usual, comforts as usual. We want no inflation, but don’t want the restraints that would prevent it.

We want to give our defense production to Britain, Russia, China, and others, but at the same time we want to give those guns and tanks and planes to our own under-armed forces.

So we make many boasts and threats to cover our confusion. We organize and reorganize, and coordinate the coordinators, to make up for the indecision.

The President is not alone to blame. Nor Congress. They only reflect the childish irresponsibility which sometimes afflicts us as a people. Until we Americans are mature enough to face the fact that we cannot have peace and war at the same time, that we cannot have security without sacrifice, that we cannot wield world power without accepting commensurate responsibilities, our official policies will continue as confused as they are ineffective.

This seems to us the most important thing to remember on the 23rd anniversary of the Armistice that failed, of the peace that was no peace. It is easier to remember that German militarists can’t be trusted, that our allies sold our democracy after the last victory, that the conflicts of Europe are old conflicts which do not end with military defeat.

We should be foolish to forget those costly lessons of our last ill-fated crusade. But we should be even worse hypocrites if we failed to count our own contributions to the chaos.

Now that we are in the Atlantic naval war by indecision and indirection, will we likewise drift into a Pacific war and finally into sending American Expeditionary Forces to Europe and Africa and Asia?

The men who have led the country step by step down the same old road have assured us there will be no more AEFs. We hope they know what they are talking about.

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Background of news –
At the armistice 23 years ago

23 years ago today, President Wilson in person announced the Armistice and the Armistice terms to a joint session of Congress, attended by the nine justices of the Supreme Court. One Representative was present in the uniform of an Army aviator – Fiorello H. La Guardia of New York. About half of the members were absent, not having yet returned from the Congressional elections in their states. Those elections had gone against the Democrats despite, perhaps because of, a plea to the voters by President Wilson to vote Democratic. Alfred E. Smith had just been elected Governor of New York for the first time.

In Europe, the Kaiser and the Crown Prince had fled to Holland. Germany was in incipient revolution, and sailors at Kiel had revolted. The new premier, Ebert, a socialist, appealed to his countrymen not to go Bolshevist or communist. He asked President Wilson for shipments of food to prevent starvation and anarchy.

The British announced for the first time the loss of their battleship Audacious, sunk by mine off Ireland more than four years before. Premier Lloyd George called for a peace of justice, not revenge; within a month he was to be campaigning on a slogan of making Germany pay for the war and hanging the Kaiser. As a straw showing how the wind would blow at the Peace Conference, the Premier of Australia announced that the Wilsonian peace principles were unfair to Australia. Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana asked that Germany be admitted to the projected League of Nations at once, so as to make the League effective and to make disarmament practicable.

At the time of the Armistice, the United States Army strength was 3,764,677, of whom about 2,200,000 were overseas. Orders for 300,000 new draftees to report by Nov. 30 were canceled. A poll of representative newspapers showed them 2 to 1 opposed to President Wilson going to the Peace Conference.

Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo predicted that the estimated government expenditures of $24 billion in 1919-20 could now be cut to $18 billion, but warned that taxes would have to remain high. Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania retorted that the new taxes would be decided by the Republicans, who would reduce taxes by dint of increasing protective tariff duties.

Senator Norris attacked the seniority principle in Congress as undemocratic. The Senate was considering whether to expel Senator La Follette Sr. for disloyalty. Henry Ford declared that he had been beaten in his race for the Senate (as a Democrat) only by the lavish use of money against him.

President Gompers of the AFL demanded that Labor retain all its wartime gains. Food Administrator Herbert Hoover warned that a drop in food prices was not to be expected immediately. Grade A milk was selling in New York City at 18¢ a quart. On the farm, wheat was selling at $2.05, cotton at 28.5¢, corn at $1.38.

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Armistice Day

By Raymond Clapper

Washington –
This Armistice Day finds the United States engaged in an undeclared naval war with Germany. It is anybody’s guess whether we will soon go to war with Japan or whether this will be averted by the conferences to begin here within a few days as soon as Japan’s special ambassador arrives. But whether it is to be peace or war in the Pacific, American lives are being lost in the Atlantic naval war.

Is it going to be in vain again? Are we going to throw security away after this war is won, as we did the last time?

Those are the questions that stare America accusingly in the face on Armistice Day 1941. They are questions for us and for the British. And they would be better answered now than over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Second World War.

Peace bankrupted war’s victory

On the Monday morning of Nov. 11, 23 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson, in announcing the Armistice, said:

Everything for which America fought has been accomplished.

History has already written how wrong Woodrow Wilson was. The job was not finished at all with the defeat of Germany. Everything for which America fought was lost – after the Armistice. War brought victory. The peace bankrupted it.

The military victory was complete. The Kaiser had fled. The German armies had surrendered and accepted disarmament. The German Navy was taken over by the British – although scuttled in the delivery. France, England and the United States had the whole world at their feet.

The victory was frittered away. Inter-Allied controls which had enabled these three winning powers to cooperate in military, economic, financial and shipping activities were abandoned. Wilson had never won the real acquiescence of the British and French leaders in his peace aims, and his failure to obtain binding commitments before the war was over could never be fully repaired. Our country went into the war on a wave of hate against Germany. When Germany was beaten, the American people considered the job done, and this government was encouraged to pull out. The Kaiser was gone, and we had no further interest.

We are in much danger of repeating that tragic mistake. President Roosevelt has echoed some of the generalities of the Atlantic Charter about economic justice to all nations after the war, about insuring that they have fair access to raw materials. But many of those raw materials are now under British and Dutch monopoly, some of the most important ones being located in the East Indies which we may go to war to defend.

They say, don’t annoy British now

Even without declaring war, we have put into operation the most intimate kind of collaboration with Great Britain, Russia and China. This partnership covers military weapons, pooling of raw materials, pooling of shipping, and financing. When the Neutrality Act is repealed, American ships will be going into all belligerent ports and our Merchant Marine as well as our Navy will be fused into the common effort against the Axis.

We are deeply entangled under the Lend-Lease policy. Congress has given President Roosevelt power to determine which countries are to help themselves to our arsenal, to our shipping, or financial and industrial resources. Through Lend-Lease, Mr. Roosevelt probably has more power to affect the shaping of the world than any other man has ever held – including Hitler, because Mr. Roosevelt has control in his own discretion over decisive aid to Britain, Russia and China and to any other country large or small. No man and no country ever before had such steering power as is provided by Lend-Lease.

Is this to be used only to defeat Hitler? Or will the American people insist this time that our power be used to bring some kind of order into world affairs? Mr. Roosevelt is doing little about it. Some officials see the need of it, but others closest to him are holding back. They say, don’t annoy the British by bringing up such questions now. The result is that we are slipping into war on the same old blank-check basis that made the last Armistice a mockery and the prelude to another war.

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France silent and sorrowful

Work goes on as usual on Armistice Day

Vichy, Nov. 11 –
Armistice Day for France is another Nov. 11 and the only ceremonies allowed today anywhere in France are those in commemoration of the dead of both wars.

Work goes on as usual here. Flags are not permitted at windows. None of the newspapers recalls the past.

The theme voiced by virtually all unoccupied zone papers today is:

Why should our defeat be more definite than our victory?

At 11 a.m., Chief of State Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, accompanied by Vice Premier Admiral F. Jean Darlan, attended mass and promptly returned to his desk. That was all for Vichy’s Armistice Day.

In Paris, the atmosphere was even sadder. Under orders of General Otto von Stülpnagel, head of the German occupation forces, the population was forbidden to lay wreaths on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and warned that because of last year’s incidents all gatherings and manifestations were forbidden.

General von Stülpnagel clearly made it known that any such incidents would not be tolerated. His verboten was embodied in the following communiqué issued by Pierre Pucheu, Vichy’s Minister of the Interior:

It is in silence and sorrow that France will celebrate the souvenir of the dead.

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Big Ben tolls 11 o’clock but British doesn’t pause

London, Nov. 11 (UP) –
When Big Ben tolled 11 o’clock today, nowhere in Britain did the whirr of the drills or the crump of the steel presses in the war factories fall silent.

The 23rd anniversary of the armistice which ended World War I was for Britain a day of labor to supply the fighting machines of another war.

But on the continent of Europe, the call was out to make of the day a “dead march” – a day of walking slow and of working slow to slow the German war effort. The appeal was carried to the continent by Col. V. Britton, the radio leader of the “V” army.

Britain’s traditional pause for two minutes of solemn silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month was omitted.

But as always, there was a cluster of folk standing before the “Field of Remembrance” of Westminster Abbey as Big Ben struck the hour. They were there to plant little wooden crosses in the plot of ground in tribute to their war dead.

Waiting her turn with the others today was a gray-haired woman who leaned on a pair of crutches. In her hand she had two crosses, one for her husband and one for her son.

Her husband was a minesweeper in World War I. He went down with his ship before his son was born in February 1918. Two months ago, the son, a sergeant-pilot in the Royal Air Force, was killed.

A bomb hit the house which the woman had taken near the airdrome to be near her son, costing her leg. But today, as she waited to plant the crosses, she had no tears for her losses.

She asked:

I’m not the only one, am I?

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Parry

I DARE SAY —
As it was then

By Florence Fisher Parry

It wasn’t peace then; peace was never declared. It was merely armistice; the temporary cessation of fighting, pending negotiations…

We know that now. But the world was so weary of war then that respite of any kind was enough… and anyway, no one had the strength or will left to take up arms again…

War was over. For all time, we said to one another, between sobs.

There will come another armistice. It will be called the end of the Second World War. And who will be left on earth so naive as to believe that there will not be a third… and a fourth… and so on down the ages?

I think of us today, and then, and we are a different breed of mortals. There has been bred in us a deep mistrust and cynicism which we did not have in the last war. We went into that one with shining eyes and shining armor.

Why, long before war was declared, all our boys were “in it,” in their dreams, in their plans. They’d gather around at our house up home, all the boys of the family, passionate with intention. Some did not wait for the signal; none waited for the draft. They volunteered, they got to France, by some means or another. The American Ambulance Corps was the popular way. The cry was:

Join up with the American Ambulance!

I can’t remember, looking back on a boy who was an “isolationist” then. I can’t remember one conscientious objector on any grounds whatsoever. Our boys were out to get the Kaiser and lick the Hun and they couldn’t get to it fast enough. There wasn’t an American boy who wasn’t “mad” at President Wilson for:

…keeping us out of war.

Remember the day?

Looking back at it all now, it seems incredible that we could have gone into a World War so innocently. We waved and cheered the transports. Those boys were green – greener than any soldiers ever to be pushed up to the front. Compared with them, our boys in camp today are seasoned veterans. We loaded them with cookies and chewing gum, and waved them goodbye, and wept sacrificially; but we hadn’t the remotest idea what they – or we – were in for.

Even later, when word came, here and there, word that put Main Street in mourning almost in every town, our emotions were moist and fervent, and war was a dramatic thing. And at the last, when armistice came, we still were innocents.

I remember that day. The whistles began blowing, people flocked into Main Street. Everybody cried and cheered. Everybody? Well, nearly everybody. As yet Circle Hill held no bodies of the war dead. That came later. And those to whom the notice had come that their sons would not return, closed themselves in with their grief.

It wasn’t until long afterward that the returns began to come in. The returns of war; the filling hospitals, the incapacitated men, the graves that started crowding the veterans’ lot, the many new flags and crosses! But for, oh, a long time, we remained still innocent, even with all this testimony. These boys had died for the cause of justice, and their sacrifice had not been in vain…

Even much later, even when it became the fashion to be cynical; even when the men of the American Legion liked to curl their lips and say to each other:

Never again! We were suckers once, but just let anyone try to rope us in another European mess!

…even then we were still innocents. We just thought we were tough and wise. We still weren’t on to ourselves, we still didn’t know that we are the incurables of this earth; that we’re doomed to be crusaders; that we can be had.

Old story

We’re in it again. We’ll always be in it. It’s the fate, it’s the penalty, of Americans. We’re born dupes, fall guys, whatever they like to call us, over there, the warlords of Europe. We’ll always be donning a shining armor and taking up a flaming sword. It’s our curse and our blessing. It’s our everlasting role.

Oh, we can be wise, we can be bitter, we can call ourselves cynics (Look how hard we have acted the role of cynic in this war). And all the while we know that we’re in for it; that we’ll always be the ones who must step in at the last and bring the world to order.

Why yes, we’re in the war. We knew it all along. We hate it, we resent it, we gripe and we curse. In our heart there isn’t a one of us who wouldn’t LIKE to be an isolationist. Who doesn’t resent being interfered with and lent to world causes? We like it here in America. We’ve made a swell life for ourselves and we like it.

Let us alone! We growl to the rest of the world.

But it doesn’t do any good. We’re at the mercy of something within us stronger than ourselves. We’re doomed to deliverance. We’re fated to save. There’ll always be an Armistice Day for us – between crusades. It’s the penalty we pay for loving freedom. It’s the penalty we pay for having in our veins the blood of those who risked all to find this freedom and to keep it.

We can’t get that blood out of our veins. It’s a different blood from any other on earth, a fusion of valor and desperation and independence which moves us, in spite of ourselves, to fight for freedom and echo, whether we will or no, these words:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

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