500 State Papers and Addresses

comfort or complacency. To refuse to accept this fact, would simply be to close
our eyes and our ears to the developments of recent months and of the past two »
years.

If this war should ever come to America, I need hardly try to picture to
you what kind of war it will be. - YOU are already too familiar with the scenes
of havoc wrought in the English towns that have borne the brunt of German
bombings: The radio, the magazines, the press, have brought forth too many
tales of executions, of banishment, of families, torn apart, of hunger and priva-
tion, for us ever to have any doubt as to the fate that might be in store for
all or part of us, if we ever have to face attacks such as have been visited upon
the lands of Europe.

Why we are so close to war is readily discernible! In the final analysis,
America stands for everything that the dictators oppose. The people of
America possess all those rights and privileges that the dictators have denied
to their own people, and have taken away from the people of their conquered
domains. Further, there is in the very spirit of American Domcracy, an un-
yielding opposition to the principles of tyranny enunciated and put into practice
by Hitler and his supporting despots. These rulers know all too well that this
great -Country of ours was founded as a protest against tyranny and oppres-
sion, and that it stands today as a lighthouse of hope to all who are enslaved.

While the new order of Europe is founded upon the doctrine that man is
completely subservient to the State, it is our National faith that men shall be
free and not be slaves.

By the covenant established by our Colonial forefathers and sealed by their
blood and the blood of succeeding generations of free men, it is proclaimed that
every man shall be equal before his fellowman, as he is before God, and that no
self-constituted authority may rightly deprive him of his God-given inde-
pendence.

In contradiction of the acts and policies of Europe's war lords, the American
way of living forbids national hatreds and religious intolerance. It elevates
man to the dignity of an individual and preserves for him this dignity against
any who would seek to violate it.

The dictator who governs by brutal force, knows that those he has en-
slaved will never be content while they know there is a land like America,
where down-trodden people can find refuge. The dictator knows that while
America stands, while its people are guaranteed the rights and privileges that
Democracy insures for us, there will be light upon the earth, and hope, and
never dying incentive to rise. against oppressors.

Even today, there is widespread evidence in the conquered countries of
Europe of the determination of those once-free populations to throw off the
oppressor's yoke, and to regain the priceless freedom they once enjoyed. It may
be that for the present Hitler and his minions may be able to. put down these
movements towards freedom, but while America stands as a land of hope, the
desire for freedom will never be quenched in the hearts of the Norwegian, or the
Belgian, the Pole, or the Czech. There is no one who realizes this situation) more
fully than the greatest oppressor in history, Hitler himself.