Franklin D. Roosevelt 1940 State of the Union Address

“It is, of course, true that the record of past centuries includes destruction of many small nations, the enslavement of peoples, and the building of empires on the foundation of force. But wholly apart from the greater international morality which we seek today, we recognise the practical fact that with modern weapons and modern conditions, modern man can no longer lead a civilised life if we are to go back to the practice of wars and conquests of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries— It is not good for the ultimate health of ostriches to bury their heads in the sand...

The American people will reject the doctrine of fear...

Doctrines that set group against group, faith against faith, race against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men too despondent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as rabble-rousing slogans on which dictators could ride to power. And once in power they could saddle their tyrannies on whole nations and on their weaker neighbors.

This is the danger to which we in. America must begin to be more alert. For the apologists for foreign aggressors, and equally those selfish and partisan groups at home who wrap themselves in a false mantle of Americanism to promote their own economic, financial or political advantage, are now trying European tricks upon us, seeking to muddy the stream of our national thinking, weakening us in the face of danger, by tying to set our own people to fighting among themselves…. We must combat them, as we would the plague, if American integrity and American sovereignty are to be preserved. We cannot afford to face the future as a disunited people.

We must as a united people keep ablaze on this continent the flames of human liberty, of reason, of democracy and of fair play as living things to be preserved for the better world that is to come…”

★ FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. Press release signed and inscribed, Jan. 3, 1940. #25712.015