FDR

Therefore, I believe that it will be necessary to lower the present minimum age limit for Selective Service from twenty years down to eighteen.

The more of such troops we have in the field, the sooner the war will be won, and the smaller will be the cost in casualties.

In doing this important neighborly work they are helping to fortify our national unity and our real understanding of the fact that we are all involved in this war.

And if this is necessary, I do not believe that the American people will shrink from it.

Every farmer in the land must realize fully that his production is part of war production, and that he is regarded by the nation as essential to victory.

We can no longer afford to indulge such prejudices or practices.

We cannot afford to transport a single worker into an area where there is already a worker available to do the job.

We are learning to ration materials, and we must now learn to ration manpower.

The problem is to have the right numbers of the right people in the right places at the right time.

In order to keep stepping up our production, we have had to add millions of workers to the total labor force of the nation.

The legislation will help the cost-of-living problems of every worker in every factory and on every farm in the land.

So having seen the quality of the work and of the workers on our production lines--and coupling these firsthand observations with the reports of actual performance of our weapons on the fighting fronts--I can say to you that we are getting…

They are risking their lives every hour so that guns and tanks and planes and ammunition and food may be carried to the heroic defenders of Stalingrad and to all the United Nations' forces all over the world.

But the total tonnage of ships coming out of American, Canadian and British shipyards, day by day, has increased so fast that we are getting ahead of our enemies in the bitter battle of transportation.

But the ring leaders and their brutal henchmen must be named, and apprehended, and tried in accordance with the judicial processes of criminal law.

For the first time, the Nazi propaganda machine is on the defensive.

Germany and Japan are already realizing what the inevitable result will be when the total strength of the United Nations hits them--at additional places on the earth's surface.

The Axis leaders, on the other hand, know by now that they have already reached their full strength, and that their steadily mounting losses in men and material cannot be fully replaced.

That is the main thing that I saw on my trip around the country-- unbeatable spirit.

A few of us are decorated with medals for heroic achievement, but all of us can have that deep and permanent inner satisfaction that comes from doing the best we know how--each of us playing an honorable part in the great struggle to save…

It is the plain fact that the American people are united as never before in their determination to do a job and to do it well.

We need not leave it to historians of the future to answer the question whether we are tough enough to meet this unprecedented challenge.

All of us here at home are being tested--for our fortitude, for our selfless devotion to our country and to our cause.

We Americans of today bear the gravest of responsibilities.

And wars are not won by people who are concerned primarily with their own comfort, their own convenience, their own pocketbooks.