FDR

It is useless to win a war unless it stays won.

We, therefore, fight for the restoration and perpetuation of faith and hope and peace throughout the world.

We are united in seeking the kind of victory that will guarantee that our grandchildren can grow and, under God, may live their lives, free from the constant threat of invasion, destruction, slavery and violent death.

We are engaged in a war on the successful outcome of which will depend the whole future of our country.

We are pouring into the world-wide conflict everything that we have--our young men, and the vast resources of our nation.

Young men who were green recruits last autumn have matured into self-assured and hardened fighting men.

We shall need everything that we have and everything that our Allies have to defeat the Nazis and the Fascists in the coming battles on the continent of Europe, and the Japanese on the continent of Asia and in the islands of the Pacific.

This tremendous forward movement of the United States and the United Nations cannot be stopped by our enemies.

And equally, it must not be hampered by any one individual or by the leaders of any one group here back home.

We will win this war only as we produce and deliver our total American effort on the high seas and on the battle fronts.

A stopping of the coal supply, even for a short time, would involve a gamble with the lives of American soldiers and sailors and the future security of our whole people.

It would involve an unwarranted, unnecessary and terribly dangerous gamble with our chances for victory.

Therefore, I say to all miners--and to all Americans everywhere, at home and abroad--the production of coal will not be stopped.

But the consequences of this arbitrary action threaten all of us everywhere.

The government needs their services just as surely as it needs the services of our soldiers, and sailors, and marines-- and the services of the millions who are turning out the munitions of war.

You have sons who at this very minute--this split second--may be fighting in New Guinea, or in the Aleutian Islands, or Guadalcanal, or Tunisia, or China, or protecting troop ships and supplies against submarines on the high seas.

We have already received telegrams from some of our fighting men overseas, and I only wish they could tell you what they think of the stoppage of work in the coal mines.

They know how essential it is to the tens of thousands--hundreds of thousands--and ultimately millions of other young Americans to get the best of arms and equipment into the hands of our fighting forces--and get them there quickly.

The fathers and mothers of our fighting men, their brothers and sisters and friends--and that includes all of us--are also in the line of duty--the production line.

Any failure in production may well result in costly defeat on the field of battle.

There can be no one among us--no one faction powerful enough to interrupt the forward march of our people to victory.

You miners have ample reason to know that there are certain basic rights for which this country stands, and that those rights are worth fighting for and worth dying for.

That is why you have sent your sons and brothers from every mining town in the nation to join in the great struggle overseas.

That is why you have contributed so generously, so willingly, to the purchase of war bonds and to the many funds for the relief of war victims in foreign lands.

That is why, since this war was started in 1939, you have increased the annual production of coal by almost two hundred million tons a year.