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H. Doc. 1, 76th Cong., 1st sess.
Address Delivered by President
Roosevelt to the Congress, January 4, 1939
[Extract]
In reporting on the state of the Nation, I
have felt it necessary on previous occasions to advise the Congress of
disturbance abroad and of the need of putting our own house in order in the
face of storm signals from across the seas. As this Seventy-sixth Congress
open. there is need for further warning.
A war which threatened to envelop the world
in dames has been averted, but it has become increasingly clear that peace is
not assured.
All about us rage undeclared wars—military
and economic. All about us grow more deadly armaments—military and economic.
All about us are threats of new aggression—military and economic
Storms from abroad directly challenge three
institutions indispensable to Americans, now as always. The first is religion.
It is the source of the other two—democracy and international good faith
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Religion, by teaching man his relationship to
God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect
himself by respecting his neighbors.
Democracy, the practice of self-government,
is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their
fellows.
International good faith, a sister of
democracy, springs from the will of civilized nations of men to respect the
rights and liberties of other nations of men.
In a modern civilization, all three—religion,
democracy, and international good faith—complement each other.
Where freedom of religion has been attacked,
the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been
overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and
democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have
given way to strident ambition and brute force.
An ordering of society which relegates
religion, democracy, and good faith among nations to the background can find no
place within it for the ideals of the Prince of Peace. The United States
rejects such an ordering and retains its ancient faith.
There comes a time in the affairs of men when
they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and
humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very
civilization are founded. The defense of religion, of democracy, and of good
faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one we must now make up our
minds to save all.
We know what might happen to us of the United
States if the new philosophies of force were to encompass the other continents
and invade our own. We, no more than other nations, can afford to be surrounded
by the enemies of our faith and our humanity. Fortunate it is, therefore, that
in this Western Hemisphere we have, under a common ideal of democratic
government, a rich diversity of resources and of peoples functioning together
in mutual respect and peace.
That hemisphere, that peace, and that ideal
we propose to do our share in protecting against storms from any quarter. Our
people and our resources are pledged to secure that protection. From that
determination no American flinches.
This by no means implies that the American
Republics disassociate themselves from the nations of other continents—it does not
mean the Americas against the rest of
the world. We as one of the Republics reiterate our willingness to help the
cause of world peace. We stand
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on our historic offer to take counsel with all other nations of the world
to the end that aggression among them be terminated, that the race of armaments
cease and that commerce be renewed.
But the world has grown so small and weapons
of attack so swift that no nation can be safe in its will to peace so long as
any other single powerful nation refuses to settle its grievances at the
council table.
For if any government bristling with
implements of war insists on policies of force, weapons of defense give the
only safety.
In our foreign relations we have learned from
the past what not to do. From new wars we have learned what we must do.
We have learned that effective timing of
defense, and the distant points from which attacks may be launched are
completely different from what they were 20 years ago.
We have learned that survival cannot be
guaranteed by arming after the attack begins—for there is new range and speed
to offense.
We have learned that long before any overt
military act, aggression begins with preliminaries of propaganda, subsidized
penetration, the loosening of ties of good will, the stirring of prejudice, and
the incitement to disunion.
We have learned that God-fearing democracies
of the world which observe the sanctity of treaties and good faith in their
dealings with other nations cannot safely be indifferent to international
lawlessness anywhere. They cannot forever let pass, without effective protest,
acts of aggression against sister nations—acts which automatically undermine
all of us.
Obviously they must proceed along practical,
peaceful lines. But the mere fact that we rightly decline to intervene with
arms to prevent acts of aggression does not mean that we must act as if there
were no aggression at all. Words may be futile, but war is not the only means
of commanding a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. There are many
methods short of war, but stronger and more effective than mere words, of
bringing home to aggressor governments the aggregate sentiments of our own
people.
At the very least, we can and should avoid
any action, or any lack of action, which will encourage, assist, or build up an
aggressor. We have learned that when we deliberately try to legislate
neutrality, our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and unfairly—may actually
give aid to an aggressor and deny it to the victim. The instinct of
self-preservation should warn us that we ought not to let that happen any more.
And we have learned something else—the old,
old lesson that probability of attack is mightily decreased by the assurance of
an
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ever ready defense. Since 1931 world events of thunderous import have
moved with lightning speed. During these 8 years many of our people clung to
the hope that the innate decency of mankind would protect the unprepared who
showed their innate trust in mankind. Today we are all wiser—and sadder.
Under modern conditions what we mean by
"adequate defense"—a policy subscribed to by all—must be divided into
three elements. First we must have armed forces and defenses strong enough to
ward off sudden attack against strategic positions and key facilities essential
to ensure sustained resistance and ultimate victory. Secondly, we must have the
organization and location of those key facilities so that they may be
immediately utilized and rapidly expanded to meet all needs without danger of
serious interruption by enemy attack.
In the course of a few days I shall send you
a special message making recommendations for those two essentials of defense
against danger which we cannot safely assume will not come.
If these first two essentials are reasonably
provided for, we must be able confidently to invoke the third element, the
underlying strength of citizenship—the self-confidence, the ability, the
imagination, and the devotion that give the staying power to see things
through.
A strong and united nation may be destroyed
if it is unprepared against sudden attack. But even a nation well armed and
well organized from a strictly military standpoint, may, after a period of
time, meet defeat if it is unnerved by self-distrust, endangered by class
prejudice, by dissension between capital and labor, by false economy, and by other
unsolved social problems at home.
In meeting the troubles of the world we must
meet them as one people—with a unity born of the fact that for generations
those who have come to our shores, representing many kindreds and tongues, have
been welded by common opportunity into a united patriotism. If another form of
government can present a united front in its attack on a democracy, the attack
must be met by a united democracy. Such a democracy can and must exist in the
United States.
A dictatorship may command the full strength
of a regimented nation. But the united strength of a democratic nation can be
mustered only when its people, educated by modern standards to know what is
going on and where they are going, have conviction that they are receiving as
large a share of opportunity for development, as large a share of material
success and of human dignity, as they have a right to receive.
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Our Nation's program of social and economic
reform is therefore a part of defense as basic as armaments themselves.