MATCHING FORCE WITH FORCE

Southland Times, Issue 23794, 17 April 1939, Page 7

MATCHING FORCE WITH FORCE

Pledge To Western Hemisphere INDIVIDUALS’ ABILITY TO “BREAK BONDS” (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) NEW YORK, April 14. Speaking at the celebration of PanAmerican Day at Washington, the President (Mr Franklin D. Roosevelt) pledged the United States’s economic support and readiness to match “force with force” if necessary in defending the nations of the western hemisphere against foreign aggression. The President took the role of spokesman for the West in a bold veto of dictatorial organization of the world. His words apparently invited the plain people of the totalitarian States to “break their bonds,” and his speech was translated for short-wave delivery in six languages to every corner of the globe. Mr Roosevelt reminded all men that “they have within themselves the power, to become free at any time.” Carrying the thought farther, he said: “The truest defence of peace in our hemisphere must always lie in the hope that our sister nations beyond the seas will break the bonds of ideas which constrain them toward perpetual warfare. By example we can at least show them the possibility that we too have a stake in world affairs.”

Mr Roosevelt began his speech with a review of American achievements. “The American family of nations pays honour today to the oldest and most successful association of sovereign governments in the whole world,” he said. “Few of .us realize that the PanAmerican organization at present has attained a longer history and a greater catalogue of achievements than any other similar group known to modern history. Justly we can be proud of it, and even more rightly we can look to it as a symbol of great hope at a time when much ■of the world finds hope dim and difficult.” Never was it more fitting to salute Pan-American Day than in the stormy present, said Mr Roosevelt. AMERICAN FAMILY “For more than half a century the republics of the western world have been working together, promoting a common civilization under a system of peace,” said Mr Roosevelt. “That venture, launched so hopefully 50 years ago, has succeeded. The American family is today a great co-operative group facing the troubled world in serenity and calm.' This success is sometimes attributed to good fortune. I do not share that view. There are not wanting here all the usual rivalries, all the normal human desires for power and expansion, all the commercial problems. The Americas are sufficiently rich to be the object of desire on the part of overseas governments. Our traditions and history are as deeply rooted in the Old World as are those of Europe. It was not an accident that prevented South America and our own west from sharing the fate of the other great areas of the world in the nineteenth century. We have here diversities of race language, customs, natural resources and intellectual forces at least as great as 'those which have prevailed in Europe. What has protected us from the tragic involvements which at present are making the Old World a new cockpit of old struggles? The answer is easily found in the new and powerful ideal—that of the community of nations —which sprang up at the same time as the Americas became free and independent. “We hold conferences not as the results of wars but as the result of the will to peace. Elsewhere in the world to hold conferences similar to ours it is necessary to fight a major war until exhaustion and defeat at length brings the governments together to reconstruct their shattered fabrics.

“Greeting the conference in Buenos Aires in 1936 I said: ‘The madness of a great war in another part of the world would affect us and threaten our good in a hundred ways. The economic collapse of any nation or nations must necessarily harm our prosperity. lam confident that we can help the Old World to avert the catastrophe which impends.’ STILL CONFIDENT “I still have that confidence. There is no fatality which forces Europe towards the new catastrophe. Men are not prisoners of fate but prisoners of their own minds. They have within themselves the power to become free at any moment. As an instance, last summer I stated that the United States would join in defending Canada if she were attacked from overseas. At Buenos Aires in 1936 all of us agreed that in the event of war threat on the Continent we should consult to remove that threat. Yet no American nation regarded these understandings as threats. ,

“American peace has no quality of weakness. We are prepared to maintain and defend it to the fullest extent of our strength, matching force with force if an attempt is made to subvert our institutions or impair the independence of any one of our group. Should the method of attack be - economic pressure, I pledge the United States also to give economic support so that no American nation need surrender any fraction of its sovereign freedom. We can rightfully claim now to speak to the rest of the world. We have an interest wider than the mere defence of our sea-ringed continent and know now that the development in the next generation will so narrow the oceans that our customs and actions will necessarily be involved with those of Europe. The economic functioning of the world becomes increasingly a unit, and no interruption anywhere can fail in future to disrupt economic life everywhere. The truest peace in our hemisphere must always lie in the hope that our sister nations beyond the seas will break the bonds of the ideas which constrain them toward perpetual warfare.”

The United States Secretary of State (Mr Cordell Hull) emphasized the ability and the determination of the American nations to fight if necessary to preserve their independence. “The American republics have in clear and unmistakable terms expressed their determination to assure the peace of this continent and its defence and to maintain the independence of the institutions of our peoples against any menace,” he said. “None can say that we offer to the world an example of international adjustment maintained by reason because we do not have at our command more brutal weapons. Nor can any one harbour the illusion that our insistence on international justice is an appeal springing from weakness. This hemisphere’s devotion is to organization grounded on the juridical equality of all nations, respect for the sovereignty of each and and an understanding so complete that every question can be dealt with by reason and peaceful discussion. This is the free choice of all of us—a true choice since other alternatives are open. This choice in international relations gives the western hemisphere something definite and distinct to say to the world, particularly in this time of stress.”