In 1776, on the fourth day of July, the Representatives
of the several States in Congress assembled, declaring our independence,
asserted that a decent respect for the opinion of mankind required that
they should declare the reasons for their action. In this new crisis,
we have a like duty.
In 1776 we waged war in behalf of the great principle
that government should derive its just powers from the consent of the
governed-in other words, representation chosen in free elections. In
the century and a half that followed, this cause of human freedom swept
across the world.
But now, in our generation-in the past few years-a
new resistance, in the form of several new practices of tyranny, has
been making such headway that the fundamentals of 1776 are being struck
down abroad, and definitely they are threatened here.
It is, indeed, a fallacy, based on no logic at all,
for any Americans to suggest that the rule of force can defeat human
freedom in all the other parts of the world and permit it to survive
in the United States alone. But it has been that childlike fantasy itself-that
misdirected faith-which has led nation after nation to go about their
peaceful tasks, relying on the thought, and even the promise, that they
and their lives and their government would be allowed to live when the
juggernaut of force came their way.
It is simple-I could almost say simpleminded-for us
Americans to wave the flag, to reassert our belief in the cause of freedom,
and to let it go at that.
Yet, all of us who lie awake at night-all of us who
study and study again-know full well that in these days we cannot save
freedom with pitchforks and muskets alone, after a dictator combination
has gained control of the rest of the world.
We know that we cannot save freedom in our own midst,
in our own land if all around us-our neighbor nations-have lost their
freedom.
That is why we are engaged in a serious, in a mighty,
in a unified action in the cause of the defense of the hemisphere and
the freedom of the seas. We need not the loyalty and unity alone; we
need speed and efficiency and toil and an end to backbiting, an end
to the sabotage that runs far deeper than the blowing up of munitions
plants.
I tell the American people solemnly that the United
States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded
by a cruel desert of dictatorship.
And so it is that when we repeat the great pledge
to our country and to our flag, it must be our deep conviction that
we pledge as well our work, our will, and, if it be necessary, our very
lives.