Fireside Chat 17: On an unlimited national emergency (5-27-41)

The Pittsburgh Press (May 27, 1941)

CLEAR OUTLINE OF U.S. POLICY DUE IN SPEECH

Early says 45-minute talk will leave no doubt on position

By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington, May 27 –
White House Secretary Stephen Early indicated today that President Roosevelt will outline American foreign policy in detail in his fireside chat tonight. The speech will be extended to 45 minutes, 15 minutes longer than previously anticipated.

Mr. Early said:

On the speech, I think you can say that, by Wednesday morning, there will no longer be any doubt as to what the national policy of this government is.

Mr. Early asked radio networks, which previously had granted the President 30 minutes for tonight’s address, to give him an additional 15 minutes. He explained that as the speech was being completed, the President found that he could not compress what he wants to say into half an hour.

Speech may be decisive

Accordingly, Mr. Early said, the speech will run almost 45 minutes – which would make its wordage approximately 5,000 words.

The President cancelled all engagements today, including his 4 p.m. press conference, to concentrate on final preparation of the address, which all evidence indicates may be historically decisive.

Mr. Early’s disclosures came as Congressional isolationists challenged administration foreign policy with a plan for national “peace or war” referendum. They also addressed a go-slow appeal to Mr. Roosevelt.

Isolationists urged Mr. Roosevelt to give renewed assurances that:

…you will take no step likely to involve this country in war.

A group of seven Congressional isolationists, headed by Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-MT) and appointed by a mass meeting of Senate and House interventionists last night, drafted and sent a letter to the President in an effort to present the views of opponents of administration foreign policy before the speech occurs.

Mr. Roosevelt was being assisted in preparing his speech by Harry L. Hopkins, Judge Samuel I. Rosenman of the New York Supreme Court, and playwright Robert E. Sherwood.

Thousands of letters

On present indications, the address will not be completed before 6 p.m. Mr. Roosevelt goes on the air at 10:30 p.m. EDT.

KDKA, WCAE, WJAS, KQV and WWSW will broadcast President Roosevelt’s address beginning at 10:30 tonight.

Mr. Early said that one factor in the preparation of the address had been Mr. Roosevelt’s effort to study as much as possible the tremendous volume of letters and telegrams pouring into the White House. Mr. Early said there were from 12,000 to 14,000 letters and telegrams, most of them suggesting policy for tonight’s speech, and reflecting a cross-section of American opinion.

Mr. Early said that “naturally” these letters and telegrams […] assured the President on behalf of the sender and his friends full support of any measures, including convoys, he might take to insure the safe delivery of American munitions and supplies to Britain. The telegrams begged Mr. Roosevelt to act at once.

One letter, from Beaumont, Tex., made an urgent plea that Mr. Roosevelt:

…maintain our country’s neutrality in every possible way.

Against convoys

The telegram said:

We are against convoys or any other action involving us in the European conflict. We are native-born American citizens and are members of non-propaganda organization, either for or against war.

The telegram came from Cleveland, Ohio. The sender told Mr. Roosevelt that at 5:30 a.m., today he had airmailed from the Cleveland post office “the second part of your fireside chat.” He added that he had airmailed “the first part” from New York City.

That telegram concluded:

May God’s blessings be upon you and upon America – God’s country.

Isolationists meet

The isolationist “war or peace” referendum challenge, and a warning against “undeclared war,” was decided on at a meeting in the Senate Office Building.

Letter drafted

8 Senators and 22 members of the House met yesterday to discuss those propositions. Mr. Roosevelt is expected vigorously to state United States claims to freedom of the seas regardless of German objections to the North Atlantic patrol and to deal sharply with “defeatists” – at home.

A subcommittee of seven of the Congressional isolationists meets today to draft a letter to the President. The drafting committee includes:

  • Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-MT)
  • Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH)
  • Senator Robert M. La Follette (PR-WI)
  • Rep. Carl T. Curtis (R-NE)
  • Rep. John M. Robison (R-KY)
  • Rep. James F. O’Connor (D-MT)
  • Rep. Frank B. Keefe (R-WI)

To translate opinion

A tentative draft of the letter to Mr. Roosevelt said that it was the desire of all concerned to:

…translate public opinion into constructive action on the basis of what is best for America.

The draft continued:

As you know, however, the American people have had no opportunity to vote on this greatest of all issues. We, therefore, propose to conduct without delay a national referendum on the issue of peace or war.

The question will be worded in the clearest and briefest language so that there can be no misunderstanding. The returns will be audited, insuring a reliable result. In addition, we shall ask or challenge all the daily newspapers in the country to conduct referenda of their own to double-check the results.

Danger of divided will

We undertake the program because we have lately seen the dangers involved in taking a nation into war – particularly an undeclared war – when the will of the people is divided or unknown.

We hope in your radio address to the nation you will give renewed assurance that you will take no step to put this country into war without the approval of the people through their Congressional representatives in the constitutional American way.

Elaborate plans have been announced by broadcasting companies to send the President’s address by shortwave throughout the world in English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, French, Polish and Yugoslavian languages.

Speaks from White House

Tonight’s address was originally scheduled for a fortnight ago before American diplomats at the Pan-American Union but was postponed because of the President’s illness. He will speak tonight from the East Room of the White House before a group which will include the American diplomats and their families, Cabinet members and some of Mrs. Roosevelt’s guests.

The sharpest conflict between the United States’ conception of freedom of the seas and Germany’s blockade program is due to develop in the Red Sea. Mr. Roosevelt intends that American merchant ships shall enter those waters with goods useful to Britain’s Near Eastern forces. Germany promises to sink any ships found on such a mission there.

Long range view

Further complicating German-American relations are Grand Admiral Erich Raeder’s warning that convoys would be acts of war and official German warnings that vessels of our North Atlantic patrol will not be permitted to seek out and accompany German raiders for the purpose of revealing their location to the British. But it was understood that Mr. Roosevelt’s address would not be keyed on day-by-day or merely recent developments such as the foregoing statements of German policy or news of British reverses in Crete.

Instead the President is expected to give a long view summary of the position of the United States with special reference to domestic affairs and isolationist efforts to check the aid-to-Britain program. The President has already compared Charles A. Lindbergh with the “Copperheads” of the Civil War era. It was known that during the preparation of his speech he was being aided by playwright Robert E. Sherwood, who has bitterly denounced the whole non-interventionist movement.

To re-emphasize seriousness

The Presidential address will provide an opportunity some persons believe has been sought by the administration to re-emphasize to the public the seriousness with which the present emergency is viewed in Washington. Cabinet officers recently have been hitting hard at two ideas: first, that the Neutrality Bill should be repealed because it definitely limits the extent to which the United States can claim freedom of maritime movement for her merchant ships and, second, that our aid-to-Britain program is to protect the United States, not London.

The President has not indicated whether he will endorse a Neutrality Act repealer and in any event, weeks or months might be required to get such legislation through Congress. But he is expected to insist that to help Great Britain now is merely a selfish and necessary policy for the protection of the United States.

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SPEECH TO BE HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

Washington, May 27 (UP) –
Elaborate preparations have been made to broadcast President Roosevelt’s speech to the entire world tonight.

All radio networks in the United States will carry the speech starting at 10:30 p.m. EDT.

NBC and CBS have arranged to broadcast by shortwave the President’s remarks around the world in seven languages – German, Italian, French, Spanish, Polish, Yugoslav and Portuguese.

During the address, Spanish and Portuguese translations will be broadcast by shortwave to South America. Canada will be cut in directly.

Translations will be rebroadcast by shortwave to Europe tomorrow during periods at which the largest audiences are available.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D-NY)

My fellow Americans of all the Americas, my friends:

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, for 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 and naval 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 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 have 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 old Neutrality Law, and in that message of September 3, 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, Luxembourg, 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.

And in March 1941, this year, 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 that we send helps to keep the dictators away from our own hemisphere, and 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 the tools of war for ourselves and for Britain and for 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.

And, 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 as he said after Munich, and as he said 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.

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. And 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.

No, 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. The farmer 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; and 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 and manufacturing, mining and 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 and, 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.

Yes, 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, 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, we 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.

Today, 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 farther 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 it extends also to the Atlantic fortress of Dakar, and to the island outposts of the New World – the Azores and Cape Verde Islands.

Yes, these 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, therefore, 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, are preventing 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. That is their supreme purpose today; and to achieve it, they must capture Great Britain.

They could then have the power to dictate to the Western Hemisphere. No spurious argument, no appeal to sentiment, 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 of ours.

But if the Axis Powers fail to gain control of the seas, then 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 and their people 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 let us remember, the wider the Nazi land effort, the greater is their ultimate 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 silenced 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 the final disruption of the Nazi system.

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, 142 years ago, 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 Napoléon, 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 that type, called a convoy, was effective against submarines. In this Second World War, however, the problem is greater. It is different 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 the 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 that 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 itself.

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 own 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 a Nazi battleship of great striking power.

You remember that 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 own continental shores, because those places are stepping-stones to Labrador and Newfoundland, to Nova Scotia, yes, to the northern United States itself, including the great industrial centers of the North, the 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 American physical safety. Under German domination, those islands would become bases for submarines, warships, and airplanes raiding the waters that 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 the 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 in the streets of New York or San Francisco or New Orleans or Chicago. But they are simply shutting their eyes to the lesson that 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, and 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, Massachusetts.

Anyone with an atlas, anyone with 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 a strategy that 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 that it 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, of course, greatly lessened if their location is definitely known. We are thus being forewarned. 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.

If we believe in the independence and the integrity of the Americas, we must be willing to fight, 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 this our own country has a very 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 or 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.

I say that the delivery of needed supplies to Britain is imperative. I say that this can be done; it must be done; and 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 this: 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 our freedom 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, the 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 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 defense. It will rapidly organize, locality by locality. It will depend on the organized effort of men and women everywhere. All will have opportunities and 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 in this country 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 nationwide 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 conciliation and mediation 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, like the postwar world of the 1920s, 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 terror.

Is such a world impossible of attainment?

Magna Charta, 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 – and 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, tyrants 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 21 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 is 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 we are now, 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.

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Audio of the fireside chat:
https://www.fdrlibrary.org/documents/356632/405112/afdr234.mp3/d3a79519-b8ac-4f9c-b1e4-f3b76b9f58df

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The Pittsburgh Press (May 28, 1941)

ROOSEVELT’S TALK MOVES U.S. TO VERGE OF UNDECLARED WAR
Unlimited emergency proclaimed

‘Ministry’ of economic warfare may be created; stoppages of work

By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer

Washington, May 28 –
President Roosevelt led the nation today near the limits of undeclared war and prepared to implement his proclamation of all-out national emergency by invoking new executive powers.

His fireside chat provoked a national clamor of applause and dispute.

He said that strikes and lockouts must cease.

He abruptly enlarged the scope of the aid-to-Britain program and supported it with bristling threats of armed force ton deliver the goods to the fighting men.

Mr. Roosevelt said:

I say that the delivery of needed supplies to Britain is imperative. I say that this can be done; it must be done; and it will be done.

His pledge went far beyond convoys, which the administration considers an obsolescent method of protecting shipping, and placed no restriction on the extent of naval action that might be required to make good on it.

Stern and unsmiling, Mr. Roosevelt defied Adolf Hitler by name and summoned the citizenry to give united and loyal support for our “common defense.”

And the sun rose today on a steadily expanding Atlantic patrol, a steadily reinforced Atlantic fleet and a tremendously extended Western Hemisphere.

Mr. Roosevelt may soon create a “ministry” of economic warfare as an important step in his new emergency program. This was learned today a the President summoned a special press conference for later in the afternoon to clarify various aspects of his new aid-to-Britain and domestic emergency policies.

Interest centered on what he might have to say about concrete plans for further U.S. naval action to carry out his pledge to “deliver the goods” to Britain.

That is the phase of the program which held the greatest potentialities of developing into actual hostilities. The Axis has threatened to use force against American naval ships or planes protecting cargoes bound for Britain.

Mr. Roosevelt summoned British Ambassador Lord Halifax to a White House conference, presumably to discuss with him the details and scope of the proposals which he outlines in his address last night.

Creation of economic warfare machinery was regarded in authoritative quarters as one of the important objectives of the new program. The “ministry” would have broad authority to deal with internal as well as external economic matters connected with defense.

Mr. Roosevelt’s address pushed hemispherical putposts 1,000 miles or so to the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa and threatened to repel Nazi encroachments there or on the Azores, Greenland, Iceland or any islands of the Atlantic.

He virtually forbade further stoppages of national defense production and said capital and labor must adjust their disputes without lockouts or strikes on the basis of federal conciliation or mediation. He pledged the government to use “all of its power” to prevent interference with production for national defense.

His prohibition of defense stoppages was directed not only at disputes between employees and employers but to those between opposing units of capital and to jurisdictional or other disputes between competing labor organizations. It was the most direct warning ever uttered from the White House that the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations must learn to live together in peace.

The President repeatedly reasserted the “ancient American doctrine of the freedom of the seas,” although it is materially restricted at the moment by the Neutrality Act which forbids our commerce with belligerent states.

He said Axis Powers planned to overwhelm Europe, conquer Great Britain, dispose of South American nations as the Balkans were liquidated and then to “strangle” Canada and the United States.

He countered that program with a policy of active resistance in which he pledged the United States to “all further methods or combinations of methods” necessary to deliver munitions to Great Britain.

He said:

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 or 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.

White House Secretary Stephen T. Early explained that this did not mean the administration would adopt the “obsolete convoy system,” but that there would be a better and larger Atlantic patrol. When Mr. Roosevelt plunked for freedom of the sea, he answered Nazi Grand Admiral Erich Raeder and German spokesmen who within 48 hours challenged the Atlantic patrol and threatened that their naval forces would not submit to it.

Mr. Roosevelt went further. He said Iceland and Greenland were stepping stones to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and our own industrial areas of the north, the east and the midwwest. He said thagt Nazi control pr occupation of the Azores, the Vape Verde Islands or any kind in the Atlantic would jeopardize our safety. He noted the recent presence of the late German battleship Bismarck in the vicinity of Greenland and said that attack in shiopping off the shores we are protecting at present are an actual military danger to the United States.

Therefore, Mr. Roosevelt said he would fight to prevent Axis control or occupation of those Atlantic islands. The safety belt, which he boldly drew around the Western Hemisphere at the distance of some 200 or 300 miles off our shores when Europe’s war began, was extended suddenly with those words to encircle the Cape Verdes which lie 3,356 statute miles from Sandy Hook but only 1,600 from Natal, Brazil.

These solemn declarations set off an explosion of comments by Congressional and other national figures. It divided substantially along party or isolationist-interventionist lines and here are typical samples:

Rep. Melvin Mass (R-MN) snapped:

This means war.

Senator Tom Connally (D-TX) said:

A ringing call to duty and service for all Americans.

Alf M. Landon, who listened in Topeka, said:

The end of democratic government in the United States – temporarily at least.

Rep. James A. Shanley (D-CT) said:

He has turned the Atlantic Ocean into a Pan-American lake.

The comment of Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones was:

Just what the people were waiting for.

Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH), who called a non-interventionist meeting this afternoon to consider the President’s speech, and others exclaimed that the “unlimited emergency” proclamation was meaningless, without legal effect and gave Mr. Roosevelt no powers he did not already possess. A crackling dispute developed on that phase of the suddenly invigorated aid-for-Britain policy. Isolationists labeled the proclamation a “sop to the interventionists.”

Secretary Early virtually invited support today for the President’s position from American leaders, Wendell L. Willkie specifically. He said that a speech by Mr. Willkie in support of the President would be well received at the White House. But he said that no direct invitation for such an address had been extended.

I think an address by Willkie would be welcome and well received here. But I think that is not something for the White House to request.

The President foresees trouble on the high seas.

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, and the attack on the United States can begin with the domination of any base which menaces our security – north or south.

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, Massachusetts.

Anyone with an atlas, anyone with 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.

Mr. Roosevelt scornfully rejected the idea of a negotiated peace, which he said would be a Hitler peace that would lead to economic encirclement and destruction of Western Hemisphere republics if it were not actually followed by armed invasion.

There would be Quislings, he said, to subvert the governments of the republics. And he warned that after a negotiated peace:

…a triumphant Hitler would say, as he said after the seizure of Austria, and as he said after Munich, and as he said 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.

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. And 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.

Mr. Roosevelt was talking face-to-face with the Canadian Minister, the diplomats of South and Central America and their families. They were assembled in the East Room of the White House for an occasion solemn and heavy with forebodings, in contrast to the gay parties and musicales which usually are held in that largest of White House rooms.

The President was in a somber mood, unsmiling and grim. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and other cabinet members likewise showed in their faces the grave thoughts which they shared as Mr. Roosevelt uttered words which defied the Axis navies and notified Berlin, Rome and Tokyo that the armed forces of the United States were at sea and ready.

The President continued:

We do not accept, we 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.

But Mr. Roosevelt had a note of hope:

…if the Axis Powers fail to gain control of the seas, then 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 and their people 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 let us remember, the wider the Nazi land effort, the greater is their ultimate danger.

But the President’s warnings were not all directed abroad. He said to disregard “those few citizens of the United States who contend that we are disunited and cannot act.” Some, he continued, were timid and for peace at any price. Others here were sincere and patriotic but blind to the “ugly realities of international banditry.” And he said the latter must be embarrassed by the “sinister support” they get from Bundists, Fascists and Communists and groups devoted to bigotry and racial tolerance.

He said:

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 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, these same words have formed the advance guard of physical attack.

Your government has the right to expect of all citizens that they take a loyal parrt in the common work of our common defense – take a loyal part from this moment forward.

The agency said:

He can speak only for the United States and he should let others speak for themselves.

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WHEELER BRANDS IT ‘DECLARATION OF WAR’

Indianapolis, May 28 (UP) –
Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-MT), the isolationist leader, asserted today that President Roosevelt’s fireside chat was “a virtual declaration of war” and that the only way the President could add to his powers by declaring an emergency would be to:

…take over labor, industry and even the press.

Mr. Wheeler said:

The President talks about cold, hard facts and fear, but no one in America had tried to create fear in the minds of the American people more than President Roosevelt since March 4, 1933.

He has done more to stir up class hatred than any other man and has been guided entirely by emotions and sentiments rather than by the cold, hard facts that he talks about.

The cold, hard facts are that the nation is not ready and cannot land an expeditionary force in Europe.

The only thing we have is the Navy and to throw the Navy into this war would mean, inevitably, that we would have to follow with an unprepared expeditionary force.

The Montanan came from Washington to address a rally tonight of the America First Committee. Tonight’s speech will be a reply to the President’s fireside chat.

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HERE IS RECORD OF 13 U.S. STEPS 'SHORT OF WAR’

Swing started away from neutrality with limited emergency in 1939

Washington, May 28 (UP) –
The United States’ swing away from neutrality to non-belligerent partisanship in this war began in September 1939, immediately after the war started.

There have been at least 13 major “short-of-war” steps:

  1. September 8, 1939
    President Roosevelt proclaimed a limited national emergency.

  2. September 23, 1939
    Western Hemisphere neutrality zone proclaimed by American nations in conference at Panama. At first, it was designed to keep hostilities away from Americas; now enables U.S. patrol vessels to give British ships information regarding whereabouts of German surface, submarine and air raiders.

  3. November 4, 1939
    Neutrality Act amended to permit export to belligerents of munitions, war supplies and airplanes on a cash-and-carry basis.

  4. May 1940
    Congress authorized transfer to other nations – Great Britain in this instance – of 116 government-owned vessels which had been laid up since World War I.

  5. June 1940
    Adoption of trade-in policy whereby U.S. Army and Navy aircraft and other munitions were released to manufacturers for immediate delivery to the Allies in exchanged for credits toward later deliveries to the United States.

  6. August 17, 1940
    The Ogdensburg Agreement (Canadian-American joint defense agreement) announced.

  7. September 2, 1940
    50 overage destroyers transferred to Great Britain in exchange for naval and air base leases on British territory in North, Central and South America.

  8. A series of embargoes against export of essential war materials which not only conserved American supplies but hindered war preparations of Axis Powers, notably Japan.

  9. Export-import bank loans to Finland, China and to South American countries, the latter to combat Axis economic infiltration.

  10. March 11, 1941
    The Lend-Lease Act was approved.

  11. March 20, 1941
    Danish, Italian and German merchant vessels in American waters seized.

  12. May 15, 1941
    French ships – including the luxury liner Normandie – placed under protective custody.

  13. May 27, 1941
    President Roosevelt proclaims unlimited national emergency.

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