The Pittsburgh Press (October 13, 1940)
DICTATORS CAN’T STOP U.S. AID TO BRITAIN, ROOSEVELT WARNS
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Affirms Right of All Americas To Use of Both Oceans in Answer to Axis
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By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press Staff Writer
Dayton, Ohio, Oct. 12 –
No combination of dictators can prevent the United States from continuing aid to Great Britain, President Roosevelt said tonight in an address affirming the right of Western Hemisphere nations to the peaceful use of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
That has been our traditional policy, he said, and that is what defense of the Western Hemisphere means.
In an obvious reply to the recently-conducted mutual assistance pact among Germany, Italy and Japan, Mr. Roosevelt assured the Americas that a united new world could withstand attack from east to west.
He charged hostile European interests with attacking us – all the Americas with an “underground warfare” of fifth column activities. And he promised that it would be counteracted and repelled.
Hopes, Prays for Peace
That propaganda repeats and repeats that democracy is a decadent form of government. They tell us that our old democratic ideals, our old traditions of civil liberties, are things of the past. We reject this thought.
Mr. Roosevelt directed his address toward peace. He said he had expended every ounce of energy to assure it for the United States and our sister republics and the rest of the world.
That is what continues uppermost in my mind today – the objective for which I hope and work and pray.
His speech was beamed directly to South and Central America in English and was translated for immediate rebroadcast in six languages. It was regarded as one of the primary and vital statements of administration foreign policy.
Warns of Dangers
After completing his address, Mr. Roosevelt left by special train. He is due to return to the White House shortly after noon Tuesday.
Mr. Roosevelt warned the New World against unprecedented dangers. He rejected “appeasement” as a weapon of aggressor states. But he told his Western Hemisphere listeners that we and they were strong and that the United States is building a navy and air force “sufficient to defend all the coasts of the Americas from any combination of hostile powers.”
Arm to Defend Selves
Total defense on land and sea and in the air" was the way Mr. Roosevelt described the objectives of this nation’s might rearmament effort.
This country wants no war with any nation.
We arm to defend ourselves. The strongest reason for that is that it is the strongest guarantee of peace.
Let no American in any part of the Americas question the possibility of danger from overseas. Why should we accept assurances that we are immune? History records that not long ago, those same assurances were given to the people of Holland and Belgium.
On this side of the ocean there is no desire, there will be no effort on the part of any race, or people, or nation, to control any other. Bound together, we are able to withstand any attack from the East or from the West.
Definite Pledge to Britain
When we speak of defending this Western Hemisphere, we are speaking not only of the territory of North, Central and South America and the immediate adjacent islands. We include the right to the peaceful use of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. That has been our traditional policy.
We of the Americas still consider that this defense of these oceans of the Western Hemisphere against acts of aggression is the first factor in defense and protection of our own territorial integrity. We reaffirm that policy, lest there be any doubt of our intention to maintain it.
President Roosevelt spoke to the Western Hemisphere from a Pennsylvania Railroad dining car at the rear of the special train on which he has swung through Pennsylvania and Ohio on a national defense inspection tour.
Microphones of the three national radio networks were set up inside and the President spoke in the company of the White House staff. Most other passengers aboard the Presidential Special head the address by radio – as did millions of others from the Arctic Circles to Cape Horn.
The train was parked in the Dayton Union Station.
The broadcast diner was not attached to the train but the President had only to return a few feet to his own car at the train end to be ready for the return journey to Washington.
Mr. Roosevelt said our “total defense” on land, sea and air was being prepared to “repel total attack from any part of the world.” His pledge of continue aid to Great Britain was definite and unequivocal.
Decision Is Made
No combination of dictator countries of Europe and Asia will halt us in the path we see ahead for ourselves and for democracy.
No combination of dictator countries in Europe or Asia will stop the help we are giving to almost the last free people fighting to hold them at bay. Our course is clear. Our decision is made. We will continue to pile up our defense and armaments.
We will continue to help those who resist aggression, and who now hold the aggressors from our shores.
The men and women of Britain have shown how free people defend what they know to be right. Their heroic defense will be recorded for all time. It will be perpetual proof that democracy, when put to the test, can show the stuff of which it is made.
Denounces Fifth Column
He said the “Americas will not be scared or threatened into the ways the dictators want us to follow.”
Denouncing “fifth column” activities which have developed in this hemisphere, Mr. Roosevelt said attempts had been made to divide racial groups in the Americas – that they will continue to be made – but that they would fail.
There are those in the Old World who persist in believing that here in this New Hemisphere, the Americas can be torn by the hatreds and fears which have drenched the battlegrounds of Europe for so many centuries.
Americans as individuals, American republics as nations, remain on guard against those who seek to break up our unity by preaching ancient race hatreds, by working on old fears, or by holding out glittering promises which they know to be false.
Pledges Fight on Plots
Divide and conquer has been the battle cry of the totalitarian powers in their wars against the democracies. It has succeeded on the continent of Europe. On our continent it will fail.
He pledged energies and resources to repelling “foreign plots and propaganda” and in smashing the whole “underground warfare originating in Europe and now clearly directed against all the republics on this side of the ocean.”
Mr. Roosevelt said the “forces of evil” were bent on world conquest and destruction of everything they could destroy but that the nations of this hemisphere had learned a lesson from what had happened overseas.
Resent Appeasement
We know now that if we seek to appease them by withholding and from those who stand in their way, we only hasten the day of their attack upon us.
The people of the United States, the people of all the Americas, reject the doctrine of appeasement. They recognized it for what it was – a major weapon of the aggressor nations.
He said his hemispheric defense policy had its beginnings in the policy of “the good neighbor who knew how to mind his own business, but was always willing to lend a friendly hand to a friendly nation which sought it – the neighbor who was willing to discuss in all friendship the problems which will always arise between neighbors.”
‘All for One, One for All’
“We shall be all for one and one for all,” Mr. Roosevelt told the Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian and German-speaking listeners of the Western Hemisphere in a speech which ended a two-day national defense inspection tour in which he constantly urged that mill workers and the nation as a whole, speed up rearmament.
The occasion of tonight’s address was Columbus Day and it provided opportunity for reference to the contribution of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian and other cultures to the New World along with constant emphasis that the “first and final allegiance” of those American citizens from the Old World is “almost without exception” to the republic in which they live and more and have their being.
Hopes and Prays For Peace
There are persons in each of the 21 American republics, the President said, who believe our policies are drawing one or all of us into war, but he added:
The American republics are determined to work in unity to defend ourselves from attack.
For many years, every ounce of energy I have had has been devoted to keeping this nation and the other republics at peace with the rest of the world. That is what continues uppermost in my mind today – the objective for which I hope and work and pray.
Pennsylvania and industrial Eastern Ohio gave Mr. Roosevelt a whooping salute as he passed through on a two-day journey that led through steel plants, housing projects and military areas.
Crowds Enthusiastic
There was a blaze of campaign enthusiasm among the crowds which lined streets five to fifty deep in such cities as Pittsburgh and Homestead, Pa., and in Youngstown and Akron, Ohio, massed upwards of 25,000 yelling welcomers around the station, where his train paused for 10 minutes, partly to give Representative Dow Harter (D-OH), who is seeking re-election, a helping hand.
Politicians have scrambled on and off the train and there seemed to be confidence among the politically sensitive that Mr. Roosevelt’s stock was high in the great industrial centers.
Columbus, Ohio, the state capital, where the President inspected Fort Hayes and a Negro housing project, turned its citizens out on the streets by tens of thousands, for a receptive welcome. Columbus, however, did not display the semi-hysterical enthusiasm which marked his arrival in the industrial areas further cast.
Tribute to Columbus
Pausing five minutes in the heart of downtown Columbus, Mr. Roosevelt had his military aide, Maj. Gen. Edwin M. Watson, lay a wreath at the base of a statue of Christopher Columbus on the Capitol lawn.
The gesture emphasized Mr. Roosevelt’s statement calling for revitalization of national courage by recollection of Columbus’ courage in “the estate to which the world has been brought by destructive forces with lawlessness and wanton power ravaging an older civilization and with our own republic girding itself for the defense of its institutions.”
Mr. Roosevelt’s 90-minute visit to Ohio’s capital developed a political tug of war between former Democratic Gov. Martin Davey and Republican Gov. John W. Bricker, whomMr. Davey is trying to unseat.
Bricker Goes Along
Gov. Bricker rode with Mr. Roosevelt for his defense and housing inspection, Mr. Davey, with other Democratic leaders, boarded Mr. Roosevelt’s special train for a brief conference before the inspection began.
Arriving to visit the Army’s great aeronautical research center at Dayton’s Wright Field, Mr. Roosevelt was met at the station by former Gov. James M. Cox and by his son, Elliott Roosevelt, who has just arrived at Wright Field after accepting a controversial commission as a captain in the Army Air Corps for specialists’ work.
Mr. Cox was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for President and Mr. Roosevelt his running for Vice President in the campaign of 1920.
After greeting his father, Elliott, who was wearing civilian clothes, found a place far back in the presidential entourage. Mr. Roosevelt took into his own car Mr. Cox and Orville Wright, the aviation pioneer for whom the great air base here is named. During a 34-mile swing through Dayton and its environs, Mr. Roosevelt again was cheered by thousands.
Along Main St. at Dayton’s center, crowds were banked solidly five to ten deep. The remainder of his route through the downtown section also was lined solidly with applauding spectators.
Mr. Roosevelt halted first at Dayton’s Soldiers’ Home, a major veterans’ facility for a brief inspection.