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Press Releases, vol. XIX, p. 224
President
Roosevelt to the Chancelor of Germany (Hitler)
[Telegram]
SEPTEMBER 27, 1938.
I desire to acknowledge Your Excellency's
reply to my telegram of September 26. I was confident that you would coincide
in the opinion I expressed regarding the unforeseeable consequences and the
incalculable disaster which would result to the entire world from the outbreak
of a European war.
The question before the world today, Mr.
Chancellor, is not the question of errors of judgment or of injustices
committed in the past. It is the question of the fate of the world today and
tomorrow. The world asks of us who at this moment are heads of nations the
supreme capacity to achieve the destinies of nations without forcing upon them
as a price, the mutilation and death of millions of citizens.
Resort to force in the Great War failed to
bring tranquility. Victory and defeat were alike sterile. That lesson the world
should have learned. For that reason above all others I addressed on September
26 my appeal to Your Excellency and to the President of Czechoslovakia and to the
Prime Ministers of Great Britain and of France.
The two points I sought to emphasize were,
first, that all matters of difference between the German Government and the
Czechoslovak Government could and should be settled by pacific methods; and,
second, that the threatened alternative of the use of force on a scale likely
to result in a general war is as unnecessary as it is unjustifiable. It is,
therefore, supremely important that negotiations should continue without
interruption until a fair and constructive solution is reached.
My conviction on these two points is deepened
because responsible statesmen have officially stated that an agreement in
principle has already been reached between the Government of the German Reich
and the Government of Czechoslovakia, although the precise time, method and
detail of carrying out that agreement remain at issue.
Whatever existing differences may be, and
whatever their merits may be—and upon them I do not and need not undertake to
pass—my appeal was solely that negotiations be continued until a peaceful
settlement is found, and that thereby a resort to force be avoided.
Present negotiations still stand open. They
can be continued if
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you will give the word. Should the need for supplementing them become
evident, nothing stands in the way of widening their scope into a conference of
all the nations directly interested in the present controversy. Such a meeting
to be held immediately—in some neutral spot in Europe—would offer the
opportunity for this and correlated questions to be solved in a spirit of
justice, of fair dealing, and, in all human probability, with greater
permanence.
In my considered judgment, and in the light
of the experience of this century, continued negotiations remain the only way by
which the immediate problem can be disposed of upon any lasting basis.
Should you agree to a solution in this
peaceful manner I am convinced that hundreds of millions throughout the world
would recognize your action as an outstanding historic service to all humanity.
Allow me to state my unqualified conviction
that history, and the souls of every man, woman, and child whose lives will be
lost in the threatened war will hold us and all of us accountable should we
omit any appeal for its prevention.
The Government of the United States has no
political involvements in Europe, and will assume no obligations in the conduct
of the present negotiations. Yet in our own right we recognize our
responsibilities as a part of a world of neighbors.
The conscience and the impelling desire of
the people of my country demand that the voice of their government be raised
again and yet again to avert and to avoid war.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT