Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1941. AN INDESTRUCTIBLE BOND.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 September 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1941. AN INDESTRUCTIBLE BOND.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT’S Labour Day broadcast was an utterance from which the people of all free countries, and many millions who have meantime been robbed of their freedom by what the head of the American Republic justly called the forces of insane violence let, loose by Hitler upon this earth, may take much comfort. The President’s address is to be welcomed as the most emphatic assurance yet given that the United States will shrink from no effort in helping to destroy Nazism In declaring that he rejected again the appeal of a few appeasers and Nazi sympathisers who asked him to become a modern Benedict Arnold and to betray all that he holds deal, Mr Roosevelt said : — Instead I know I speak for the conscience and determination of the American people when I say that we shall do everything in our power to crush Hitler and his Nazi foices. Nothing was emphasised more clearly by the President than that what is asked of the American people is not an act 01. benevolence towards the rest of the. world, but action in defence of their own menaced freedom. The enemies who had tried to divide and conquer them from within knew, be said, that the American Navy was of great and growing strength, that the strength of the ' American Army was increasing daily, that American production in the past year had shown enormous gains and that the products of American industries were moving towards the battlefronts against Hitlerism in increasing volume every day. But these enemies also know (he added) that our American effort is not yet enough and unless we step up the quota of our production and more clearly safeguard it on its journeys to‘ the battlefields, these enemies will take heart and push their attack in fields old and new. This should be a final, and sufficient answer to the appeasers and Nazi sympathisers who invite the people of Ihe United Slates to believe that they might hold themselves safe by cowering in a corner and allowing the tide ol totalitaiian aggression to sweep on unhindered. It is obvious enough that if°the rest of the world were overwhelmed the United States would speedily come to share the same fate. The Labour Day broadcast has been described in London as a more direct challenge to Hitler than any President Roosevelt had yet made. This comment, no doubt, is just, but in addition Mr Roosevelt called upon his countrymen to prepare to take their full part in safeguarding the peace that can come only when Hitlerism has been destroyed. The culminating passage of his address was that in 'which he told his countiymen that they had the great responsibility and the great privilege of labouring to build a democratic world on enduring foundations. hi speaking of the unity of the American nation, the President said that its various sections were Jinked in an indestructible bond by their interdependent, privileges, opportunities, responsibilities and rights. The establishment, of a democratic world on enduring foundations evidently depends on the development in the international' sphere of a bond broadly similar to that which unites the American people, and .those of other free nations, and on making that bond indestructible. The interdependence of the democracies already exists. Ihe continued existence of all of them —even the Lnited States uisiblj depends today upon their ability to take united and eliectiye action. The'lesson is written large in the experience of this war, if it had not been written already, that, all nations, great and small, have an equal interest in taking joint action to safeguard and defend their common security.