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Press Releases, vol. XV, p. 163
Address Delivered by President
Roosevelt; at Chautanqua, New York, August 14, 1936
As many of you who are here tonight know, I
formed the excellent habit of coming to Chautauqua more than 20 years ago.
After my inauguration in 1933, I promised Mr. Bestor that during the next 4
years I would come to Chautauqua again; it is in fulfillment of this that I am
with you tonight.
I A few days ago I was asked what the subject
of this talk would be, and I replied that for two good reasons I wanted to
discuss the subject of peace: First, because it is eminently appropriate in
Chautanqua; and, secondly, because in the hurry-burly of domestic politics it
is important that our people should not overlook problems and issues which,
though they lie beyond our borders, may, and probably will, have a vital
influence on the United States of the future.
Many who have visited me in Washington in the
past few months may have been surprised when I have told them that personally
and because of my own daily contacts with all manner of difficult situations I
am more concerned and less cheerful about international world conditions than
about our immediate domestic prospects.
I say this to you not as a confirmed
pessimist but as one who still hopes that envy, hatred, and malice among
nations have reached their peak and will be succeeded by a new tide of peace
and good will. I say this as one who has participated in many of the decisions
of peace and war before, during, and after the World War; one who has traveled
much, and one who has spent a goodly portion of every 24 hours in the study of
foreign relations.
Long before I returned to Washington as
President of the United States I had made up my mind that, pending what might
be called a more opportune moment on other continents, the United States could
best serve the cause of a peaceful humanity by setting an
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example. That was why on the 4th of March, 1933, I made the following
declaration:
"In the field of world policy I would
dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who
resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of
others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of
his agreements in and with a world of neighbors."
This declaration represents my purpose; but
it represents more than a purpose, for it stands for a practice. To a
measurable degree it has succeeded; the whole world now knows that the United
States cherishes no predatory ambitions. We are strong; but less powerful
nations know that they need not fear our strength. We seek no conquest: we
stand for peace.
In the whole of the Western Hemisphere our
good-neighbor policy has produced results that are especially heartening.
The noblest monument to peace and to
neighborly economic and social friendship in all the world is not a monument in
bronze or stone, but the boundary which unites the United States and
Canada—3,000 miles of friendship with no barbed wire, no gun or soldier, and no
passport on the whole frontier.
Mutual trust made that frontier. To extend
the same sort of mutual trust throughout the Americas was our aim.
The American republics to the south of us
have been ready always to cooperate with the United States on a basis of
equality and mutual respect, but before we inaugurated the good-neighbor policy
there was among them resentment and fear because certain administrations in
Washington had slighted their national pride and their sovereign rights.
In pursuance of the good-neighbor policy, and
because in my younger days I had learned many lessons in the hard school of
experience, I stated that the United States was opposed definitely to armed
intervention.
We have negotiated a Pan American convention
embodying the principle of nonintervention. We have abandoned the Platt
Amendment, which gave us the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the
Republic of Cuba. We have withdrawn American marines from Haiti. We have signed
a new treaty which places our relations with Panama on a mutually satisfactory
basis. We have undertaken a series of trade agreements with other American
countries to our mutual commercial profit. At the request of two neighboring
republics, I hope to give assistance in the final settlement of the
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last serious boundary dispute between any of the American nations.
Throughout the Americas the spirit of the good neighbor is a practical and
living fact. The 21 American republics are not only living together in
friendship and in peace: they are united in the determination so to remain.
To give substance to this determination a
conference will meet on December 1, 1936, at the capital of our great southern
neighbor, Argentina, and it is, I know, the hope of all chiefs of state of the
Americas that this will result in measures which will banish wars forever from
this vast portion of the earth.
Peace, like charity, begins at home; that is
why we have begun at home. But peace in the western world is not all that we
seek
It is our hope that knowledge of the
practical application of the good-neighbor policy in this hemisphere will be
borne home to our neighbors across the seas.
For ourselves we are on good terms with
them—terms in most cases of straightforward friendship, of peaceful
understanding.
But, of necessity, we are deeply concerned
about tendencies of recent years among many of the nations of other continents.
It is a bitter experience to us when the spirit of agreements to which we are a
party is not lived up to. It is an even more bitter experience for the whole
company of nations to witness not only the spirit but the letter of
international agreements violated with impunity and without regard to the
simple principles of honor. Permanent friendships between nations as between
men can be sustained only by scrupulous respect for the pledged word.
In spite of all this we have sought
steadfastly to assist international movements to prevent war. We cooperated to
the bitter end—and it was a bitter end—in the work of the General Disarmament
Conference. When it failed we sought a separate treaty to deal with the
manufacture. of arms and the international traffic in arms. That proposal also
came to nothing. We participated—again to the bitter end—in a conference to
continue naval limitations, and, when it became evident that no general treaty
could be signed because of the objections of other nations, we concluded with
Great Britain and France a conditional treaty of qualitative limitations which,
much to my regret, already shows signs of ineffectiveness.
We shun political commitments which might
entangle us in foreign wars; we avoid connection with the political activities
of the League of Nations; but I am glad to say that we have cooperated
wholeheartedly in the social and humanitarian work at Geneva Thus we are a part
of the world effort to control traffic in narcotics;
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to improve international health, to help child welfare, to eliminate
double taxation, and to better working conditions and laboring hours throughout
the world.
We are not isolationists except insofar as we
seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so
long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the nation
which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and
sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out
their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed.
I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a
regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children
starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass
unnumbered hours thinking and planning how war may be kept from this nation.
I wish I could keep war from all nations, but
that is beyond my power. I can at least make certain that no act of the United
States helps to produce or to promote war. I can at least make clear that the
conscience of America revolts against war and that any nation which provokes
war forfeits the sympathy of the people of the United States.
Many causes produce war. There are ancient
hatreds, turbulent frontiers, the "legacy of old, forgotten, far off
things, and battles long ago." There are new-born fanaticisms, convictions
on the part of certain peoples that they have become the unique depositories of
ultimate truth and right.
A dark old world was devastated by wars
between conflicting religions. A dark modern world faces wars between
conflicting economic and political fanaticisms in which are intertwined race
hatreds. To bring it home, it is as if within the territorial limits of the
United States, 48 nations with 48 forms of government, 48 customs barriers, 48
languages, and 48 eternal and different verities, were spending their time and
their substance in a frenzy of effort to make themselves strong enough to
conquer their neighbors or strong enough to defend themselves against their
neighbors.
In one field, that of economic barriers, the
American policy may be, I hope, of some assistance in discouraging the economic
source of war and therefore a contribution toward the peace of the world. The
trade agreements which we are making are not only finding outlets for the
products of American fields and American factories but are also pointing the
way to the elimination of embargoes, quotas,
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and other devices which place such pressure on nations not possessing
great natural resources that to them the price of peace seems less terrible
than the price of war.
We do not
maintain that a more liberal international trade will stop war, but we fear
that without a more liberal international trade war is a natural sequence.
The Congress of the United States has given
me certain authority to provide safeguards of American neutrality in case of
war.
The President of the United States, who,
under our Constitution, is vested with primary authority to conduct our international
relations, thus has been given new weapons with which to maintain our
neutrality.
Nevertheless—and I speak from a long
experience—the effective maintenance of American neutrality depends today, as
in the past, on the wisdom and determination of whoever at the moment occupy
the offices of President and Secretary of State.
It is clear that our present policy and the
measures passed by the Congress would, in the event of a war on some other
continent, reduce war profits which would otherwise accrue to American
citizens. Industrial and agricultural production for a war market may give
immense fortunes to a few men; for the nation as a whole it produces disaster.
It was the prospect of war profits that made our farmers in the west plow up
prairie land that should never have been plowed but should have been left for
grazing cattle. Today we are reaping the harvest of those war profits in the
dust storms which have devastated those war-plowed areas.
It was the prospect of war profits that
caused the extension of monopoly and unjustified expansion of industry and a
price level so high that the normal relationship between debtor and creditor
was destroyed.
Nevertheless, if war should break out again
in another continent, let us not blink the fact that we would find in this
country thousands of Americans who, seeking immediate riches—fools' gold—would
attempt to break down or evade our neutrality.
They would tell you—and, unfortunately, their
views would get wide publicity—that if they could produce and ship this and
that and the other article to belligerent nations the unemployed of America
would all find work. They would tell you that if they could extend credit to
warring nations that credit would be used in the United States to build homes
and factories and pay our debts. They would tell you that America once more
would capture the trade of the world.
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It would be hard to resist that clamor. It
would be hard for many Americans, I fear, to look beyond, to realize the
inevitable penalties, the inevitable day of reckoning that comes from a false
prosperity. To resist the clamor of that greed, if war should come, would
require the unswerving support of all Americans who love peace.
If we face the choice of profits or peace,
the Nation will answer—must answer—"we choose peace." It is the duty
of all of us to encourage such a body of public opinion in this country that
the answer will be clear and for all practical purposes unanimous.
With that wise and experienced man who is our
Secretary of State, whose statesmanship has met with such wide approval, I have
thought and worked long and hard on the problem of keeping the United States at
peace. But all the wisdom of America is not to be found in the White House or
in the Department of State; we need the meditation, the prayer, and the
positive support of the people of America who go along with us in seeking
peace.
No matter how well we are supported by
neutrality legislation, we must remember that no laws can be provided to cover
every contingency, for it is impossible to imagine how every future event may
shape itself. In spite of every possible forethought, international relations
involve of necessity a vast uncharted area. In that area safe sailing will
depend on the knowledge and the experience and the wisdom of those who direct
our foreign policy. Peace will depend on their day-to-day decisions.
At this late date, with the wisdom which is
so easy after the event and so difficult before the event, we find it possible
to trace the tragic series of small decisions which led Europe into the great
war in 1914 and eventually engulfed us and many other nations.
We can keep out of war if those who watch and
decide have a sufficiently detailed understanding of international affairs to
make certain that the small decisions of each day do not lead toward war, and
if, at the same time, they possess the courage to say "no" to those
who selfishly or unwisely would let us go to war.
Of all the nations of the world today we are
in many ways most singularly blessed. Our closest neighbors are good neighbors.
If there are remoter nations that wish us not good but ill, they know that we
are strong; they know that we can and will defend ourselves and defend our
neighborhood.
We seek to dominate no other nation. We ask
no territorial expansion. We oppose imperialism. We desire reduction in world
armaments.
We believe in democracy; we believe in
freedom; we believe in
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peace. We offer to every nation of the world the handclasp of good
neighbor. Let those who wish our friendship look us in eye and take our hand.