Postponed from the customary January 8th date because of the inauguration, President Roosevelt’s Jackson Day address came that year in March.
March 1941 America wasn’t involved in the war in Europe or in the Far East, we were maintaining a fragile peace, tenuous at best.
President Roosevelt: We Americans have announced our determination that, with all our resources and all our power, we shall help those who block the dictators in their march toward domination of the world.
The decision we have reached is not a partisan decision. The leader of the Republican party himself—Mr. Wendell Willkie in word and in action, is showing what patriotic Americans mean by rising above partisanship and rallying to the common cause. And now that the plain people of America have spoken their determination, Republicans and Democrats in the Congress and out of the Congress are patriotically cooperating to make that determination take positive form.
The enemies of democracy are now trying, by every means, to destroy our unity. The chief weapon they now use against us is propaganda, propaganda that appeals to selfishness, that comes in ever increasing quantities, with ever increasing violence, from across the seas. And it is disseminated within our own borders by agents or innocent dupes of foreign powers.
It is directed against all Americans- Republican and Democratic- farmers and bankers- employers and employees.
Propagandists, defeatists, and dupes, protected as they are by our fundamental civil liberties, have been preaching, and are still preaching, the ungodly gospel of fear. They use insinuation and falsehood. They have tried to shatter the confidence of Americans in their Government and in one another.
We have seen what has happened to the great industrialists of Germany who supported the Nazi movement, and then received their reward in Nazi concentration camps or in death.
We have seen how the workers of France were betrayed by their so-called champions, the Communists. For no matter what Communist lips have said, their actions have proved that in their hearts they care nothing for the real rights of free labor.
The agents of Nazism and those who unwittingly help them are still trying to play both ends against the middle. They have attempted to exploit the natural love of our people for peace. They have represented themselves as pacifists, when actually they are serving the most brutal warmongers of all time. They have preached “Peace—Peace!” in the same way the devil can quote Scripture.
Here is that complete address from President Roosevelt, as it was given on March 29, 1941 and carried by all the radio networks.
