AID GIVEN TO DEMOCRACIES

Southland Times, Issue 24447, 29 May 1941, Page 5

AID GIVEN TO DEMOCRACIES

The President reviewed the necessary measures already undertaken for the defence of the United States and the aid given to the democracies, culminating in the passage of the Lend or Lease “Our whole programme of aid for the democracies has been based on hardheaded concern for our own security and for the kind of safe, civilized world in which we wish to live,” he said. “Every dollar, and material we send helps to keep the dictators away from our own hemisphere. Every day they are held off gives us time to build more guns, tanks, planes and ships. We made no pretence about our own self-interest in this aid. Britain understands it. So does Germany. VAST PRODUCTION “We have doubled and redoubled our vast production. We are increasing month by month the supply of tools of war for ourselves, Britain, China and, eventually, all the democracies. The supply of these tools will not fail. It will increase with greatly augmented strength. Your Government knows what terms Hitler, if victorious, would impose. They are indeed the only terms on which he would accept a so-called negotiated peace. Germany would literally parcel out the world, hoisting the swastika over vast territories and populations and setting up puppet governments of her own choosing wholly subject to the will of the conqueror.”

| Mr Roosevelt said that Quislings would be found to subvert the Governments in the American republics, and the Nazis would back the “fifth I columns” with invasion, if necessary. “The Nazis .plan to treat the Latin : American nations as they are now treating the Balkans,” said the President. “They plan to strangle the United States of America and Canada. American labour would have to compete with slave labour in the rest of a world of minimum wages and maximum hours. The dignity, power and standard of the American worker and farmer i would be gone. Trade unions would , become historical relics and collective ; bargaining a joke. The American far- | mer would get for his products exactly | what Hitler wanted to give. He would I face obvious disaster and complete I regimentation. Tariff walls would be ' futile. Freedom of trade is essential. Our economic life and the whole fabric of working life as we know it —business, manufacturing, mining, agriculture—all would be mangled and crippled under such a system. Yet to maintain even that crippled independence would require permanent conscription of our man-power. We would be pouring our resources into armaments and year in and year out a standing watch against the destruction of our cities. We do not ! accept and will not permit this Nazi i shape of things to come. We must act I in this present crisis with the wisdom • and courage which have distinguished our country in all crises of the past.