BROADCAST BY ROOSEVELT

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23625, 30 April 1942, Page 5

BROADCAST BY ROOSEVELT

AMERICA’S PART IN WAR

SELF-DENIAL URGED

(Received April 29, 11 p.m.) (N.Z.P.A.) WASHINGTON, April 28. “It is nearly five months since the attack on Pearl Harbour, two years prior to which the United States had been gearing to a high level of production of munitions, yet our war effort has done little to dislocate the normal lives of most people,” said Mr Roosevelt in a world-wide broadcast. “Since then we have dispatched forces, hundreds of thousands of them, to bases and battle fronts thousands of miles' from home. We have stepped up war production on a scale testing our industrial power, engineering genius, and economic structure to the utmost. We have no illusions and know that this will be a tough and long job. “American warships are now in combat in the north and south Pacific and the Indian Ocean. American troops have taken stations in South America, Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles, the Near East, the Middle East, the Far East, Australia, and many islands of the Pacific. American war aeroplanes, manned by Americans, are flying in actual combat over all continents and oceans.

“On the European front the most important development in the last year has been the crushing offensive of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German army. These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more of the armed power of our enemies—troops, aeroplanes, tanks, and guns—than all the other United Nations put together. "Recently we have received news of a change of government in what we used to know as the Republic of France. We had hoped for the maintenance of a French Government which would strive to regain independence and to re-establish the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and to restore the historic culture of France. We are now concerned lest those who have recently come to power may seek to force the brave French people into submission to the Nazi despotism. “The United Nations will take measures to prevent the use of French territory in any part of the world for military purposes by the Axis. Such action is essential to prevent assistance to the armies, navies, and air forces of Germany, Italy, and Japan. “The majority of the French people understand that the fight of the United Nations is fundamentally their fight, that our victory means the restoration of a free and independent France and the saving of France from the slavery which would be imposed upon her by external enemies and internal traitors. In all the occupied countries there are men, women, and children who have never stopped fighting. In the German and Italian peoples themselves there is a growing conviction that the cause of Nazism and Fascism is hopeless. “There is good reason to believe that the Japanese southward advance has been checked by Australia and New Zealand, and we are determined that the territory which has been lost shall be regained. “The news in Burma to-night is not good. The Japanese may cut the Burma road, but I want to say to the gallant people of China that no matter what advances the Japanese may make ways will be found to deliver aeroplanes and munitions of war to the armies of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek. “The Chinese people were the first to fight against aggressors in this war, and in the future an unconquerable China will play its proper role in maintaining peace and prosperity, not only in eastern Asia, but the whole world. Self-Denial “Not all of us can have the privilege of fighting in distant parts. Not all of us can have the privilege of working in munition factories, shipyards, farms, oilfields, or mines, producing the weapons and raw materials which are needed by the armed forces, but there is one front where everyone in the United States is in action, and privileged to remain in action throughout the war. That front is at home. Here everyone may have the privilege of making whatever self-denial is necessary, not only to supply our fighting men, but to keep the economic structure of our country fortified and secure during the war and after the war. This will require the abandonment not only of luxuries, but of creature comforts. “We are now spending solely for war purposes 100,000,000 dollars every day, but before the year’s end that almost unbelievable expenditure will be doubled. All this money has to be spent, and spent quickly, if we are to produce within the time now available the enormous quantities of weapons, which are needed; but the spending of these tremendous sums presents a grave danger of disaster to our national economy. Such spending means that an unprecedented sum of money goes into the pocket-books and bank accounts of the people of the United States, and that at the same time raw materials and many manufactured goods are taken away from civilian use. You do not have to be a professor of economics to see that if people with plenty of cash start bidding against each other for scarce goods, prices go up. "I submitted to Congress yesterday a seven-point programme which could be called a national economic policy for attaining the great objective of keeping the cost of living down. The blunt fact is -that every single person in the United States will be affected by this programme. Sacrifice is not the proper word to describe this programme of self-denial. When at the end of this great struggle we shall have saved our free way of life, we shall have made no sacrifice.

“The price of civilisation must be paid in hard work, sorrow, and blood. The price is not too high. If you doubt it, ask those millions who live under, the tyranny of Hitlerism. Ask the' workers of France and Norway, whipped to labour by the lash, whether the stabilisation of wages is too great 3 “We do not have to ask them. They have already given us their agonised answers. This great war effort must be carried through to its victorious conclusion by the indomitable will and determination of the people. It must not be impeded by the faint heart of those who put their own selfish interests over the interests of the nation. Above all, it shall not be imperilled by a handful of noisy traitors, betrayers of America and of Christianity itself. “I know the American farmer, workman, and businessman will gladly embrace this economy of sacrifice. As we here at home contemplate our own duties and our own responsibilities, let us think hard of the example which is being set for us by our fighting men. We too must work and sacrifice. It is for them. It is for us. It is for victory.”