NEW YORK CITY
[ May 27, 1940]

I WISH to talk to my countrymen tonight upon national
defense.

The increasing dangers in the world make it imperative
that we be better prepared. But equally the time has come
when the American people must insist that adequate organiza-
tion be set up within the government which will produce this
defense. It must be an organization directed by men of out-
standing experience in production, management and labor un-
hampered by partisan politics.

Today we are onlookers at the most tremendous human
tragedy of centuries. We are horrified at each gigantic scene.
Scene after scene is so great and so terrible that even across
three thousand miles of ocean our people are filled with sym-
pathy, with indignation, with hopes and with fear. Our people
are justly alarmed for our own safety. And some of them are
more panicky than the people in Paris and London.

Whatever our feelings of outrage are, now is the time to
keep cool. We need cool judgment if we are to make secure our
own defense. The President has stated that a flight of hostile
planes over Omaha, Des Moines, or New York could take
place from enemy air bases in the Western Hemisphere. But
before operating from a* base in the Western Hemisphere an
enemy must first capture that territory. Such an enemy must
fortify that base. He must transport thousands of airplanes,
hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of machinists, with
shops and vast stores of weapons and materials. And he must

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