Five months ago tonight I proclaimed to the American
people the existence of a state of unlimited emergency.
Since then much has happened. Our Army and Navy are
temporarily in Iceland in the defense of the Western Hemisphere.
Hitler has attacked shipping in areas close to the Americas in the North and
South Atlantic.
Many American-owned merchant ships have been sunk
on the high seas. One American destroyer was attacked on September fourth.
Another destroyer was attacked and hit on October seventeenth. Eleven
brave and loyal men of our Navy were killed by the Nazis.
We have wished to avoid shooting. But the shooting
has started. And history has recorded who fired the first shot. In the
long run, however, all that will matter is who fired the last shot.
America has been attacked. The U.S.S. Kearny is not
just a navy ship. She belongs to every man, woman and child in this
nation.
Illinois, Alabama, California, North Carolina, Ohio,
Louisiana Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arkansas, New York, Virginia-those
are the home states of the honored dead and wounded of the Kearny. Hitler's
torpedo was directed at every American whether he lives on our sea coasts
or in the innermost part of the nation, far from the seas and far from
the guns and tanks of the marching hordes of would-be conquerors of
the world.
The purpose of Hitler's attack was to frighten the
American people off the high seas-to force us to make a trembling retreat.
This is not the first time he has misjudged the American spirit. That
spirit is now aroused.
If our national policy were to be dominated by the
fear of shooting, then all of our ships and those of our sister Republics
would have to be tied up in home harbors. Our Navy would have to remain
respectfully-abjectly-behind any line which Hitler might decree on any
ocean as his own dictated version of his own war zone.
Naturally we reject that absurd and insulting suggestion.
We reject it because of our own self-interest, because of our own self-respect,
because, most of all, of our own good faith. Freedom of the seas is
now, as it has always been, a fundamental policy of your government
and mine.
Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest
do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. But his submarines and raiders
prove otherwise. So does the entire design of his new world order.
For example, I have in my possession a secret map
made in Germany by Hitler's government-by the planners of the new world
order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America, as
Hitler proposes to reorganize it. Today in this area there are fourteen
separate countries. The geographical experts of Berlin, however, have
ruthlessly obliterated all existing boundary lines; and have divided
South America into five vassal states, bringing the whole continent
under their domination. And they have also so arranged it that the territory
of one of these new puppet states includes the Republic of Panama and
our great life line-the Panama Canal.
That is his plan. It will never go into effect.
This map makes clear the Nazi design not only against
South America but against the United States itself.
Your government has in its possession another document
made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a detailed plan, which,
for obvious reasons, the Nazis did not wish and do not wish to publicize
just yet, but which they are ready to impose-a little later-on a dominated
world-if Hitler wins. It is a plan to abolish all existing religions-Protestant,
Catholic, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish alike. The property
of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross
and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are
to be forever silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where
even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed
God above Hitler.
In the place of the churches of our civilization,
there is to be set up an International Nazi Church-a church which will
be served by orators sent out by the Nazi Government. In the place of
the Bible, the words of Mein
Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in place of
the cross of Christ will be put two symbols-the swastika and the naked
sword.
A God of Blood and Iron will take the place of the
God of Love and Mercy. Let us well ponder that statement which I have
made tonight.
These grim truths which I have told you of the present
and future plans of Hitlerism will of course be hotly denied tonight
and tomorrow in the controlled press and radio of the Axis Powers. And
some Americans-not many-will continue to insist that Hitler's plans
need not worry us-and that we should not concern ourselves with anything
that goes on beyond rifle shot of our own shores.
The protestations of these American citizens-few in
number-will, as usual, be paraded with applause through the Axis press
and radio during the next few days, in an effort to convince the world
that the majority of Americans are opposed to their duly chosen Government,
and in reality are only waiting to jump on Hitler's band wagon when
it comes this way.
The motive of such Americans is not the point at issue.
The fact is that Nazi propaganda continues in desperation to seize upon
such isolated statements as proof of American disunity.
The Nazis have made up their own list of modern American
heroes. It is, fortunately, a short list. I am glad that it does not
contain my name.
All of us Americans, of all opinions, are faced with
the choice between the kind of world we want to live in and the kind
of world which Hitler and his hordes would impose upon us.
None of us wants to burrow under the ground and live
in total darkness like a comfortable mole.
The forward march of Hitler and of Hitlerism can be
stopped-and it will be stopped.
Very simply and very bluntly-we are pledged to pull
our own oar in the destruction of Hitlerism.
And when we have helped to end the curse of Hitlerism
we shall help to establish a new peace which will give to decent people
everywhere a better chance to live and prosper in security and in freedom
and in faith.
Each day that passes we are producing and providing
more and more arms for the men who are fighting on actual battle-fronts.
That is our primary task.
And it is the nation's will that these vital arms
and supplies of all kinds shall neither be locked up in American harbors
nor sent to the bottom of the sea. It is the nation's will that America
shall deliver the goods. In open defiance of that will, our ships have
been sunk and our sailors have been killed.
I say that we do not propose to take this lying down.
Our determination not to take it lying down has been
expressed in the orders to the American Navy to shoot on sight. Those
orders stand.
Furthermore, the House of Representatives has already
voted to amend part of the Neutrality Act of 1937, today outmoded by
force of violent circumstances. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
has also recommended elimination of other hamstringing provisions in
that Act. That is the course of honesty and of realism.
Our American merchant ships must be armed to defend
themselves against the rattlesnakes of the sea.
Our American merchant ships must be free to carry
our American goods into the harbors of our friends.
Our American merchant ships must be protected by our
American Navy.
It can never be doubted that the goods will be delivered
by this nation, whose Navy believes in the tradition of "Damn the
torpedoes; full speed ahead!"
Yes, our nation will and must speak from every assembly
line. Yes, from every coal mine-the all-inclusive whole of our vast
industrial machine. Our factories and our shipyards are constantly expanding.
Our output must be multiplied.
It cannot be hampered by the selfish obstruction of
any small but dangerous minority of industrial managers who perhaps
hold out for extra profits, or for "business as usual." It
cannot be hampered by the selfish obstruction of a small but dangerous
minority of labor leaders who are a menace-for labor as a whole knows
that that small minority is a menace-to the true cause of labor itself,
as well as to the nation as a whole.
The lines of our essential defense now cover all the
seas; and to meet the extraordinary demands of today and tomorrow our
Navy grows to unprecedented size. Our Navy is ready for action. Indeed,
units of it in the Atlantic patrol are in action. Its officers and men
need no praise from me.
Our new Army is steadily developing the strength needed
to withstand the aggressors. Our soldiers of today are worthy of the
proudest traditions of the United States Army. But traditions cannot
shoot down dive bombers or destroy tanks. That is why we must and shall
provide, for every one of our soldiers, equipment and weapons-not merely
as good but better than that of any other army on earth. And we are
doing that right now.
For this-and all of this-is what we mean by total
national defense.
The first objective of that defense is to stop Hitler.
He can be stopped and can be compelled to dig in. And that will be the
beginning of the end of his downfall, because dictatorship of the Hitler
type can live only through continuing victories-increasing conquests.
The facts of 1918 are proof that a mighty German army
and a tired German people can crumble rapidly and go to pieces when
they are faced with successful resistance.
Nobody who admires qualities of courage and endurance
can fail to be stirred by the full-fledged resistance of the Russian
people. The Russians are fighting for their own soil and their own homes.
Russia needs all kinds of help-planes, tanks, guns, medical supplies
and other aids-toward the successful defense against the invaders. From
the United States and from Britain, she is getting great quantities
of those essential supplies. But the needs of her huge army will continue-and
our help and British help will have to continue!
The other day the Secretary of State of the United
States was asked by a Senator to justify our giving aid to Russia. His
reply was: "The answer to that, Senator, depends on how anxious
a person is to stop and destroy the march of Hitler in his conquest
of the world. If he were anxious enough to defeat Hitler, he would not
worry about who was helping to defeat him."
Upon our American production falls the colossal task
of equipping our own armed forces, and helping to supply the British,
the Russians and the Chinese. In the performance of that task we dare
not fail. And we will not fail.
It has not been easy for us Americans to adjust ourselves
to the shocking realities of a world in which the principles of common
humanity and common decency are being mowed down by the firing squads
of The Gestapo. We have enjoyed many of God's blessings. We have lived
in a broad and abundant land, and by our industry and productivity we
have made it flourish.
There are those who say that our great good fortune
has betrayed us-that we are now no match for the regimented masses who
have been trained in the Spartan ways of ruthless brutality. They say
that we have grown fat, and flabby, and lazy-and that we are doomed.
But those who say that know nothing of America or
of American life.
They do not know that this land is great because it
is a land of endless challenge. Our country was first populated, and
it has been steadily developed, by men and women in whom there burned
the spirit of adventure and restlessness and individual independence
which will not tolerate oppression.
Ours has been a story of vigorous challenges which
have been accepted and overcome-challenges of uncharted seas, of wild
forests and desert plains, of raging floods and withering drought, of
foreign tyrants and domestic strife, of staggering problems-social,
economic and physical; and we have come out of them the most powerful
nation-and the freest-in all of history.
Today in the face of this newest and greatest challenge
of them all we Americans have cleared our decks and taken our battle
stations. We stand ready in the defense of our nation and the faith
of our fathers to do what God has given us the power to see as our full
duty.