Franklin Roosevelt delivered an Armistace Day address at Arlington National Cemetery. It reads:
Among the great days of national remembrance, none
is more deeply moving to Americans of our generation than the Eleventh of
November, the Anniversary of the Armistice of 1918, the day sacred to the
memory of those who gave their lives in the war which that day ended.
Our observance of this Anniversary has a
particular significance in the year 1941.
For we are able today as we were not always able
in the past to measure our indebtedness to those who died.
A few years ago, even a few months, we
questioned, some of us, the sacrifice they had made. Standing near to the tomb
of the Unknown Soldier, Sergeant York of Tennessee, on a recent day spoke to
such questioners. "There are those in this country today," said
Sergeant York, "who ask me and other veterans of World War Number One,
'What did it get you?'"
Today we know the answer-all of us. All who
search their hearts in honesty and candor know it.
We know that these men died to save their
country from a terrible danger of that day. We know, because we face that
danger once again on this day.
"What did it get you?"
People who asked that question of Sergeant York
and his comrades forgot the one essential fact which every man who looks can
see today.
They forgot that the danger which threatened
this country in 1917 was real-and that the sacrifice of those who died averted
that danger.
Because the danger was overcome they were unable
to remember that the danger had been present.
Because our armies were victorious they demanded
why our armies had fought.
Because our freedom was secure they took the
security of our freedom for granted and asked why those who died to save it
should have died at all.
"What did it get you?"
"What was there in it for you?"
If our armies of 1917 and 1918 had lost there
would not have been a man or woman in America who would have wondered why the
war was fought. The reasons would have faced us everywhere. We would have known
why liberty is worth defending as those alone whose liberty is lost can know
it. We would have known why tyranny is worth defeating as only those whom
tyrants rule can know.
But because the war had been won we forgot, some
of us, that the war might have been lost.
Whatever we knew or thought we knew a few years
or months ago, we know now that the danger of brutality and tyranny and slavery
to freedom-loving peoples can be real and terrible.
We know why these men fought to keep our
freedom-and why the wars that save a people's liberties are wars worth fighting
and worth winning-and at any price.
"What did it get you?"
The men of France, prisoners in their cities,
victims of searches and of seizures without law, hostages for the safety of
their masters' lives, robbed of their harvests, murdered in their prisons-the
men of France would know the answer to that question. They know now what a
former victory of freedom against tyranny was worth.
The Czechs too know the answer. The Poles. The
Danes. The Dutch. The Serbs. The Belgians. The Norwegians. The Greeks.
We know it now.
We know that it was, in literal truth, to make
the world safe for democracy that we took up arms in 1917. It was, in simple
truth and in literal fact, to make the world habitable for decent and
self-respecting men that those whom we now remember gave their lives. They died
to prevent then the very thing that now, a quarter century later, has happened
from one end of Europe to the other.
Now that it has happened we know in full the
reason why they died.
We know also what obligation and duty their
sacrifice imposes upon us. They did not die to make the world safe for decency
and self-respect for five years or ten or maybe twenty. They died to make it
safe. And if, by some fault of ours who lived beyond the war, its safety has
again been threatened then the obligation and the duty are ours. It is in our
charge now, as it was America's charge after the Civil War, to see to it
"that these dead shall not have died in vain." Sergeant York spoke
thus of the cynics and doubters: "The thing they forget is that liberty
and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win
them once and stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only
to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold
them."
The people of America agree with that. They
believe that liberty is worth fighting for. And if they are obliged to fight
they will fight eternally to hold it.
This duty we owe, not to ourselves alone, but to
the many dead who died to gain our freedom for us-to make the world a place
where freedom can live and grow into the ages.
This would, of course, be the last peacetime Armistice Day/Veterans Day address delivered by a President until November, 1946.
Under Secretary of State Sumner Wells delivered one as well, in Washington D. C. In it, he stated:
Twenty-three years ago today, Woodrow Wilson
addressed the Congress of the United States in order to inform the
representatives of the American people of the terms of the Armistice which
signalized the victorious conclusion of the first World War.
That day marked, as he then said, the attainment
of a great objective: the opportunity for the setting up of "such a peace
as will satisfy the longing of the whole world for disinterested justice,
embodied in settlements which are based upon something much better and much
more lasting than the selfish competitive interests of powerful states".
Less than five years later, shrouded in the
cerements of apparent defeat, his shattered body was placed in the grave beside
which we now are gathered.
He was laid to rest amid the apathy of the many and amid the sneers of those of
his opponents who had, through appeal to ignorance, to passion, and to
prejudice, temporarily persuaded the people of our country to reject Wilson's
plea that the influence, the resources; and the power of the United States be
exercised for their own security and for their own advantage, through our
participation in an association of the free and self-governed peoples of the
world.
And yet, when we reflect upon the course of the
years that have since intervened, how rarely in human history has the vision of
a statesman been so tragically and so swiftly vindicated.
Only a score of years have since elapsed, and
today the United States finds itself in far greater peril than it did in 1917.
The waves of world-conquest are breaking high both in the East and in the West.
They are threatening, more nearly each day `that passes, to engulf our own
shores.
Beyond the Atlantic a sinister and pitiless
conqueror has reduced more than half of Europe to abject serfdom. It is his
boast that his system shall prevail even unto the ends of the earth.
In the Far East the same forces of conquest
under a different guise are menacing the safety of all nations that border upon
the Pacific.
Were these forces to prevail, what place in such
a world would there be for the freedoms which we cherish and which we are
passionately determined to maintain?
Because of these perils we are arming ourselves
to an extent to which we have never armed ourselves before. We are pouring out
billions upon billions of dollars in expenditures, not only in order that we
may successfully defend ourselves and our sister nations of the Western
Hemisphere but also, for the same ends, in order to make available the weapons
of defense to Great Britain, to Russia, to China, and to all the other nations
that have until now so bravely fought back the hordes of the invaders. And in
so doing we are necessarily diverting the greater part of our tremendous
productive capacity into channels of destruction, not those of construction,
and we are piling up a debt?burden which will inevitably affect the manner of
life and diminish the opportunity for progressive advancement of our children'
and of our children's children.
But far graver than that-for the tides are running
fast-our people realize that at any moment war may be forced upon us, and if it
is, the lives of all of us will have to be dedicated to preserving the freedom
of the United States and to safeguarding the independence of the American
people, which are more dear to us than life itself.
The heart-searching question which every
American citizen must ask himself on this day of commemoration is whether the
world in which we have to live would have come to this desperate pass had the
United States been willing in those years which followed 1919 to play its full
part in striving to bring about a new world-order based on justice and on
"a steadfast concert for peace".
Would the burdens and the dangers which the
American people might have had to envisage through that "partnership of
democratic nations" which Woodrow Wilson then urged upon them, have
represented even an infinitesimal portion of the burdens and the dangers with
which they are now confronted?
Solely from the standpoint of the interest of
the American people themselves, who saw straight and who thought straight 20
years ago? Was it Woodrow Wilson when he pled with his fellow Americans to
insure the safety and the welfare of their country by utilizing the influence
and the strength of their great Nation in joining with the other peace-loving
powers of the earth in preventing the outgrowth of those conditions which have
made possible this new world upheaval? Or was it that group of self-styled,
"practical, hardheaded Americans", who jeered at his idealism, who
loudly proclaimed that our very system of government would be destroyed if we
raised our voice in the determination of world-affairs, and who refused to
admit that our security could be even remotely jeopardized if the whole of the
rest of the earth was plunged into the chaos of world anarchy?
A cycle in human events is about to come to its
end.
The American people after full debate, in
accordance with their democratic institutions, have determined upon their
policy. They are pledged to defend their freedom and their ancient rights
against every form of aggression, and to spare no effort and no sacrifice in
bringing to pass the final defeat of Hitlerism and all that which that evil
term implies.
We have no doubt of the ultimate victory of the
forces of liberty and of human decency. But we cannot know, we cannot yet
foresee, how long and how hard the road may be which leads to that new day when
another armistice will be signed.
And what will come to pass thereafter?
Three months ago the President of the United
States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom signed and made public a
new charter on which they base their hopes for a better future for the
world".
The principles and the objectives set forth in
that joint declaration gave new hope and new courage to millions of people
throughout the earth. They saw again more clearly the why and the wherefore of
this ghastly struggle. They saw once more the gleam of hope on the horizon-hope
for liberty; freedom, from fear and want; the satisfaction of their craving for
security.
These aspirations of human beings everywhere
cannot again be defrauded. Those high objectives set forth in the Charter of
the Atlantic must be realized. They must be realized, quite apart from every
other consideration, because of the fact that the individual interest of every
man and woman in the United States will be advanced consonantly with the
measure in which the world where they live is governed by right and by justice,
and the measure in which peace prevails
The American people thus have entered the Valley
of Decision.
Shall we as the most powerful Nation of the
earth once more stand aloof from all effective and practical forms of
international concert, wherein our participation could in all human probability
insure the maintenance of a peaceful world in which we can safely live?
Can we afford again to refrain from lifting a
finger until gigantic forces of destruction threaten all of modern
civilization, and the raucous voice of a criminal paranoiac, speaking as the
spokesman for these forces from the cellar of a Munich beer hall, proclaims as
his set purpose the destruction of our own security, and the annihilation of
religious liberty, of political liberty, and of economic liberty throughout the
earth?
The decision rests solely with the people of the
United States-the power is theirs to determine the kind of world of the future
in which they would live. Is it conceivable that, in enlightened self-interest,
they could once more spurn that opportunity?
When the time for?the making of that great
decision is at hand, I believe that they will turn again for light and for
inspiration to the ideals of that great seer; statesman, patriot, and lover of
his fellow men-Woodrow Wilson-whose memory we here today revere.
Then, again, they will remember that great cause
he once held up before their eyes-"A universal dominion of right by such a
concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make
the world itself at last free.
Australia dedicated its war memorial on this day.
In the Philippines, a general election won a second term for Manuel L. Quezon, the incumbent President. This was the first time a Filipino President had been reelected because it was the first time its constitution allowed for it.
Quezon was a lawyer and former insurrectionist, from the US point of view, who had come around to supporting the US created government, as most prominent Filipino figures had. He would occupy the position of President until his death on August 1, 1944.
Vichy France suffered the loss of the commander of its ground forces, Charles Hutzinger, in an air accident. The aircraft in which he was a passenger was on an inspection tour of Vichy military facilities in North Africa when it attempted to land in bad weather with poor visibility in an aircraft whose radio equipment was obsolete.
Hutzinger, who had been one of the officials to sign Vichy France's anti-Semitic laws of 1940, was perhaps a natural for his position, as he was of German descent.
