TASK FOR U.S.A.

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 156, 30 December 1940, Page 8

TASK FOR U.S.A.

MR. ROOSEVELT'S SPEECH

"AXIS POWERS ARE NOT GOING TO WIN"

<By Telegraph—Tress Association—Copyright.) (Received December 30, 2.50 p.m.) WASHINGTON, December 29.

President Roosevelt told the nation that if Britain was defeated the United States would be living at the point of the gun. He added: "The United States must be the great arsenal of democracy." He expressed the belief: "The Axis Powers are not going to win this war," and declared that his assertion was based on the latest and best information,

He said that the United States has "no right or reason to encourage talk of peace until the day shall come when there is clear intention on the part of the aggressor nations to abandon all thought of dominating or conquering the world." "If Britain goes down," said the President, "the Axis Powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia, and the high seas, and will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us in the Americas will be living at the point of a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military." Saying that a British defeat would bring a new terrible era to the whole world, Mr. Roosevelt added that to survive in such a world of brute force the United States would have to become a permanently militaristic Power. "Frankly and definitely," said Mr. Roosevelt, "there is a danger ahead against which we must prepare. We well know that we cannot escape the danger by crawling into bed and pulling up the covers over our heads."

Asserting that some European Powers which had non-interven-tion pacts with Germany had been attacked, overrun, and thrown into a modern form of slavery, Mr. Roosevelt added: "The fate of these countries tells us what it means to live at the point of the Nazi gun. The Nazis have justified these actions by various pious frauds. One is the occupying of a nation for the purpose of restoring order. Another is protecting it against aggression by somebody else. Would Germany hesitate to act similarly towards any South American country?"