These facts and figures that I have given will give no great aid and
comfort to the enemy. On the contrary, I can imagine that they will give
him considerable discomfort. I suspect that Hitler and Tojo will find it
difficult to explain to the German and Japanese people just why it is that
"decadent, inefficient democracy" can produce such phenomenal quantities of
weapons and munitions--and fighting men.
We have given the lie to certain misconceptions--which is an extremely
polite word--especially the one which holds that the various blocs or
groups within a free country cannot forego their political and economic
differences in time of crisis and work together toward a common goal.
While we have been achieving this miracle of production, during the past
year our armed forces have grown from a little over 2,000,000 to 7,000,000.
In other words, we have withdrawn from the labor force and the farms some
5,000,000 of our younger workers. And in spite of this, our farmers have
contributed their share to the common effort by producing the greatest
quantity of food ever made available during a single year in all our
history.
I wonder is there any person among us so simple as to believe that all this
could have been done without creating some dislocations in our normal
national life, some inconveniences, and even some hardships?
Who can have hoped to have done this without burdensome Government
regulations which are a nuisance to everyone--including those who have the
thankless task of administering them?
We all know that there have been mistakes--mistakes due to the inevitable
process of trial and error inherent in doing big things for the first time.
We all know that there have been too many complicated forms and
questionnaires. I know about that. I have had to fill some of them out
myself.
But we are determined to see to it that our supplies of food and other
essential civilian goods are distributed on a fair and just basis--to rich
and poor, management and labor, farmer and city dweller alike. We are
determined to keep the cost of living at a stable level. All this has
required much information. These forms and questionnaires represent an
honest and sincere attempt by honest and sincere officials to obtain this
information.
We have learned by the mistakes that we have made.
Our experience will enable us during the coming year to improve the
necessary mechanisms of wartime economic controls, and to simplify
administrative procedures. But we do not intend to leave things so lax that
loopholes will be left for cheaters, for chiselers, or for the manipulators
of the black market.
Of course, there have been disturbances and inconveniences--and even
hardships. And there will be many, many more before we finally win. Yes,
1943 will not be an easy year for us on the home front. We shall feel in
many ways in our daily lives the sharp pinch of total war.
Fortunately, there are only a few Americans who place appetite above
patriotism. The overwhelming majority realize that the food we send abroad
is for essential military purposes, for our own and Allied fighting forces,
and for necessary help in areas that we occupy.
We Americans intend to do this great job together. In our common labors we
must build and fortify the very foundation of national unity--confidence in
one another.
It is often amusing, and it is sometimes politically profitable, to picture
the City of Washington as a madhouse, with the Congress and the
Administration disrupted with confusion and indecision and general
incompetence.
However--what matters most in war is results. And the one pertinent fact is
that after only a few years of preparation and only one year of warfare, we
are able to engage, spiritually as well as physically, in the total waging
of a total war.
Washington may be a madhouse--but only in the sense that it is the Capital
City of a Nation which is fighting mad. And I think that Berlin and Rome
and Tokyo, which had such contempt for the obsolete methods of democracy,
would now gladly use all they could get of that same brand of madness.
And we must not forget that our achievements in production have been
relatively no greater than those of the Russians and the British and the
Chinese who have developed their own war industries under the incredible
difficulties of battle conditions. They have had to continue work through
bombings and blackouts. And they have never quit.
We Americans are in good, brave company in this war, and we are playing our
own, honorable part in the vast common effort.
As spokesmen for the United States Government, you and I take off our hats
to those responsible for our American production--to the owners, managers,
and supervisors, to the draftsmen and the engineers, and to the workers--
men and women--in factories and arsenals and shipyards and mines and mills
and forests--and railroads and on highways.
We take off our hats to the farmers who have faced an unprecedented task of
feeding not only a great Nation but a great part of the world.
We take off our hats to all the loyal, anonymous, untiring men and women
who have worked in private employment and in Government and who have
endured rationing and other stringencies with good humor and good will.
Yes, we take off our hats to all Americans who have contributed so
magnificently to our common cause.
I have sought to emphasize a sense of proportion in this review of the
events of the war and the needs of the war.
We should never forget the things we are fighting for. But, at this
critical period of the war, we should confine ourselves to the larger
objectives and not get bogged down in argument over methods and details.
We, and all the United Nations, want a decent peace and a durable peace. In
the years between the end of the first World War and the beginning of the
second World War, we were not living under a decent or a durable peace.
I have reason to know that our boys at the front are concerned with two
broad aims beyond the winning of the war; and their thinking and their
opinion coincide with what most Americans here back home are mulling over.
They know, and we know, that it would be inconceivable--it would, indeed, be
sacrilegious--if this Nation and the world did not attain some real,
lasting good out of all these efforts and sufferings and bloodshed and
death.
The men in our armed forces want a lasting peace, and, equally, they want
permanent employment for themselves, their families, and their neighbors
when they are mustered out at the end of the war.
Two years ago I spoke in my Annual Message of four freedoms. The blessings
of two of them--freedom of speech and freedom of religion--are an essential
part of the very life of this Nation; and we hope that these blessings will
be granted to all men everywhere.
'The people at home, and the people at the front, are wondering a little
about the third freedom--freedom from want. To them it means that when they
are mustered out, when war production is converted to the economy of peace,
they will have the right to expect full employment--full employment for
themselves and for all able-bodied men and women in America who want to
work.
They expect the opportunity to work, to run their farms, their stores, to
earn decent wages. They are eager to face the risks inherent in our system
of free enterprise.
They do not want a postwar America which suffers from undernourishment or
slums--or the dole. They want no get-rich-quick era of bogus "prosperity"
which will end for them in selling apples on a street corner, as happened
after the bursting of the boom in 1929.
When you talk with our young men and our young women, you will find they
want to work for themselves and for their families; they consider that they
have the right to work; and they know that after the last war their fathers
did not gain that right.
When you talk with our young men and women, you will find that with the
opportunity for employment they want assurance against the evils of all
major economic hazards--assurance that will extend from the cradle to the
grave. And this great Government can and must provide this assurance.
I have been told that this is no time to speak of a better America after
the war. I am told it is a grave error on my part.