Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 04 January 1941
Roosevelt’s Resolve
Mr. Roosevelt has now made’ it clear “beyond a per-adventure,” as his illustrious predecessor of the last war put it, that the whole material weight of the United States is to be put behind Britain’s fight to redeem the world from the menace and horror of Nazi domination.
In plain terms he told the Americas that they are in great danger now and that if Hitler overcomes British resistance they will be in deadly danger indeed. For the first time he discussed the struggle without detachment, not as a war of ideas raging in a distant and corrupt Continent, but as a wide-ranging world crisis from which the United States has providentially enjoyed, through the sacrificial heroism of Britain, shelter and time for amendment. The truth of this is now realised by the overwhelming majority of American citizens, North and South, and nothing will prevent the United States from placing in the hand of Britain and their allies all the materials they need for final victory.
Germany, Italy and Japan have been plainly told this. While we continue to rely in the main on the resources of the British Empire, we are secure of the friendship and aid of the United States, the importance of which cannot be, over-estimated, for when its’ full weight is developed it will undoubtedly shorten the war.
Dissident voices in the United States to-day are feeble and; !few, for America is awake at last to the foul and fatal nature of the German, his ferocity when loosed for slaughter, pitiless oppression of all who come under his heel. The Germans who aspire to replace, the British as leaders of modern , civilisation are proving their own unfitness for civilised rule. A few American isolationists still bleat of peace, but the American people know that there could never have been ‘tolerable peace with Hitler and never can be. He is a greater menace to the liberties of the, world and the rights of man than was Napoleon, and must either destroy these liberties and rights or be destroyed in the attempt. He is the poisonous core of a diseased nation and until he is removed there can be no health in Germany for peace in the world.
President Roosevelt roundly declared his conviction that the Axis Powers would be defeated. The significance of that statement, coming from one who is far better informed and advised than anyone outside the arena of war, can hardly be exaggerated. He could not have felt such a conviction six months ago or even three. The Battle of Britain has revealed to him the immense toughness of the British race; to that appreciation he adds his own knowledge of the enormous reinforcement which the United States is capable of supplying.
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