Acts and Intentions

Last week the U.S. found itself digesting the fact that it had taken one of the President's most important speeches to show that the time for speeches had passed. It had taken one of his most telling statements of intention to show the U.S. that results, rather than intentions, are now what count. But this reaction to the President's great radio speech--heard by 65,000,000 Americans and short-waved overseas in 14 languages--came only slowly.

The first U.S. reaction to the speech was one of overwhelming support for his declaration of opposition--short of nothing --to Naziism's threat to the U.S. The second was questioning. Of what did such opposition consist? Next day, at a special press conference, he told reporters he would not ask Congress for convoys or for repeal of the Neutrality Act.

The great climax of the President's speech was his declaration of a national emergency, yet when commentators pondered the declaration, it was apparent that the effect was mainly psychological: to awaken the U.S. to the immensity of the world crisis; he already had, under the Constitution and the limited emergency, vast powers not yet used.

The most sensational domestic news of his speech was his statement against strikes in defense industries, but the U.S. was not likely to be galvanized into awareness unless his words were followed by actions.

The most sensational international news of his speech was his assertion that the U.S. would not permit the Atlantic islands to fall into Nazi hands, but Germans were more likely to be impressed if the U.S. demonstrated, rather than said, that it would use force to prevent it.

Unlike many Presidential addresses, this one was as logically constructed as a geometric theorem. It was divided into two great subjects: 1) what a Nazi victory would mean to the U.S. and to the world (which he had often said before); 2) that the U.S. would meet the menace (which would mean little until he decided how to meet it).

The President said, "Adolf Hitler never considered the domination of Europe as an end in itself. European conquest was but a step. . . . Unless the advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the Western Hemisphere will be within range of Nazi weapons of destruction." No man could accept the President's picture of the world after a Nazi triumph and not want to act effectively to prevent that triumph (and last week it seemed that most of the U.S. accepted it, wholly or in part). The President said:

> The U.S. will fight for freedom of the seas, for "if the Axis powers fail to gain control of the seas they are certainly defeated." > Nazi occupation of Iceland, Greenland, the Cape Verde Islands, the Azores would "endanger the freedom of the Atlantic and our own American physical safety." > The U.S. will not wait until the Western Hemisphere is actually invaded to strike back: "We in the Americas will decide for ourselves whether and when and where our American interests are attacked or our security threatened."

> The U.S. will patrol the North and South Atlantic, add more ships and planes to the patrol, and warn of the presence of attacking raiders "on the sea, under the sea and above the sea."

> The U.S. will give every possible assistance to Britain "and to all who, with Britain, are resisting Hitlerism or its equivalent with force of arms. Our patrols are helping now to insure delivery of the needed supplies to Britain. All additional measures necessary to deliver the goods will be taken."

>"When the nation is threatened from without, as it is today, the actual production and transportation of the machinery of defense must not be interrupted by disputes between capital and capital, labor and labor, or capital and labor. The future of all free enterprise--of capital and labor alike--is at stake."

>"I have tonight issued a proclamation that an unlimited national emergency exists and requires the strengthening of our defense to the extreme limit of our national power and authority."

After he left for Hyde Park, to rest, the President took several steps under his new emergency: he appointed Harold Ickes coordinator of the oil industry and he signed the mandatory priorities bill putting the entire U.S. productive machinery on a war basis. He asked Congress for authority to requisition, with just compensation, any private property in the interest of defense, in a sweeping bill modeled on measures of World War I. He awaited a report from Ambassador Winant, newly returned from Britain.

With the intentions he had stated there was little quarrel, just as there had been little quarrel when, at the beginning of his second Administration, he had spoken of his intention to remedy the plight of the third of the nation that was ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-housed. But there promised to be quarrels, just as there were before, over the means the President used to realize the intentions that almost everybody shared. For the full meaning of his speech would remain veiled until it was revealed in action.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.