COURSE CLEAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1940, Page 5

COURSE CLEAR

AND DECISION MADE POLICY OF UNITED STATES FIRM DEFENCE OF DEMOCRACY. DOCTRINE OF APPEASEMENT REJECTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) NEW YORK, October 12. “The Americas will not be be seared and threatened into the tvays the dictators want us to follow. No combination of dictator countries in Europe and Asia will stop the help we are giving to almost the last free people fighting to hold them at bay,” declared President Roosevelt in a speech on Columbus Day at Dayton. “Our course is clear and our decision made. We will continue to pile up our defence and our armaments, and will continue to help those who resist aggression and who how hold the aggressors far from our shores. “Let no American in any part of the Americas accept assurances that we are immune. History records that not long ago those same assurances were given to the people of Holland and Belgium. It can no longer be disputed that the forces of evil which are bent on the conquest of the world will destroy whomever they can destroy. “We have learned the lessons of recent years. We know that if we seek to appease them by withholding aid from those that stand in their way we shall only hasten the day of their attack upon us. The people of the United States and all the Americas reject the doctrine of appeasement. They recognise it for what it is—a major weapon of the aggressor nations. “I speak bluntly. I speak with the love the American people have for freedom, liberty, decency and humanity. That is why we arm. The men and women of Britain show how a free people defend what they know to be right. Their heroic defence will be recorded for all time and will be a perpetual proof that when put to the test democracy can show the stuff of which it is made.” The American radio stations would play their part in the new unity which had been built so solidly between the American nations in the past eight years. They must be effective instruments for the honest exchange and communication of ideas. They must never be used as stations in other lands were used —to. send out the same day one false story to. one country and a different false story to another. In an impromptu address to 25,000 people at a railroad station in Akron, Ohio, Mr Roosevelt said: “I am confident that we will be able to avoid being drawn into war by an attack from somebody else in the Americas, but I also believe that the best way to avoid an attack is to be ready to meet one.” He called for greater speed in rearmament.