FDR

I think the American people as a whole approve the salvage of these human beings, who are only now learning to walk in a new atmosphere of freedom.

We have to help them cleanse their schools of Fascist trappings.

We have had to make it possible for the Italians to raise and use their own local crops.

We have had to give them bread to replace that which was stolen out of their mouths by the Germans.

Our troops have found starvation, malnutrition, disease, a deteriorating education and lowered public health--all by-products of the Fascist misrule.

In Italy the people had lived so long under the corrupt rule of Mussolini that, in spite of the tinsel at the top--you have seen the pictures of him--their economic condition had grown steadily worse.

We shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself.

And in the meantime our gallant Russian Allies continue to make their power felt more and more.

Our victory comes at an excellent time, while our Allied forces are poised for another strike at western Europe--and while the armies of other Nazi soldiers nervously await our assault.

The Italians, too, forswearing a partnership in the Axis which they never desired, have sent their troops to join us in our battles against the German trespassers on their soil.

The fighting New Zealanders from the far South Pacific, the courageous French and the French Moroccans, the South Africans, the Poles and the East Indians--all of them fought with us on the bloody approaches to the city of Rome.

The American and British armies--who bore the chief burdens of battle--found at their sides our own North American neighbors, the gallant Canadians.

That, too, is significant, for the United Nations are determined that in the future no one city and no one race will be able to control the whole of the world.

Keep us strong in our faith that we fight for a better day for humankind--here and everywhere.

And we ask that God receive and cherish those who have given their lives, and that He keep them in honor and in the grateful memory of their countrymen forever.

We ask that the comfort of God's grace shall be granted to those who are sick and wounded, and to those who are prisoners of war in the hands of the enemy, waiting for the day when they will again be free.

In our hearts are prayers for you and for all your comrades in arms who fight to rid the world of evil.

American boys are fighting today in snow-covered mountains, in malarial jungles, on blazing deserts; they are fighting on the far stretches of the sea and above the clouds, and fighting for the thing for which they struggle.

Tonight, on Christmas Eve, all men and women everywhere who love Christmas are thinking of that ancient town and of the star of faith that shone there more than nineteen centuries ago.

As I have said before, you cannot order up a great attack on a Monday and demand that it be delivered on Saturday.

For, surely, our first and most foremost tasks are all concerned with winning the war and winning a just peace that will last for generations.

I think I see a tendency in some of our people here to assume a quick ending of the war--that we have already gained the victory.

But today I wish to say that in all my travels, at home and abroad, it is the sight of our soldiers and sailors and their magnificent achievements which have given me the greatest inspiration and the greatest encouragement for the future.

If the people of Germany and Japan are made to realize thoroughly that the world is not going to let them break out again, it is possible, and, I hope, probable, that they will abandon the philosophy of aggression--the belief that they can…

I believe, and I think I can say, that the other three great nations who are fighting so magnificently to gain peace are in complete agreement that we must be prepared to keep the peace by force.