FDR

But new forces are being unleashed, deliberately planned propaganda to divide and weaken us in the face of danger as other nations have been weakened before.

Campaigns of group hatred or class struggle have never made much headway among us, and are not making headway now.

Fortunately, American men and women are not easy dupes.

The unity of the State can be so sapped that its strength is destroyed.

Faith and courage can yield to doubt and fear.

Men can lose confidence in each other, and therefore lose confidence in the efficacy of their own united action.

Sound national policies come to be viewed with a new and unreasoning skepticism, not through the wholesome political debates of honest and free men, but through the clever schemes of foreign agents.

The aim of those who deliberately egg on these groups is to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and eventually, a state of panic.

A group--not too large--a group that may be sectional or racial or political--is encouraged to exploit its prejudices through false slogans and emotional appeals.

But there is an added technique for weakening a nation at its very roots, for disrupting the entire pattern of life of a people.

Today's threat to our national security is not a matter of military weapons alone.

By giving to those millions an increased purchasing power, the prosperity of the whole nation will rise to a much higher level.

The soundest policy is for every employer in the country to help give useful employment to the millions who are unemployed.

And, last of all, this emergency demands that the consumers of America be protected so that our general cost of living can be maintained at a reasonable level.

Also, our present emergency and a common sense of decency make it imperative that no new group of war millionaires shall come into being in this nation as a result of the struggles abroad.

Let us remember that the policy and the laws that provide for collective bargaining are still in force.

It is my hope, indeed, that the new speed-up of production will cause many businesses which now pay below the minimum standards to bring their wages up.

That offensive should not now be broken down by the pincers movement of those who would use the present needs of physical military defense to destroy it.

We have carried on an offensive on a broad front against social and economic inequalities and abuses which had made our society weak.

For that reason, we must make sure, in all that we do, that there be no breakdown or cancellation of any of the great social gains which we have made in these past years.

While our Navy and our airplanes and our guns and our ships may be our first line of defense, it is still clear that way down at the bottom, underlying them all, giving them their strength, sustenance and power, are the spirit and morale…

It is our purpose not only to speed up production but to increase the total facilities of the nation in such a way that they can be further enlarged to meet emergencies of the future.

Patriotic Americans of proven merit and of unquestioned ability in their special fields are coming to Washington to help the government with their training, their experience and their capability.

We are constantly improving and redesigning, testing new weapons, learning the lessons of the immediate war, and seeking to produce in accordance with the latest that the brains of science can conceive.

Every day's fighting in Europe, on land, on sea, and in the air, discloses constant changes in methods of warfare.