Abstract
IN his ‘fireside talk’ on December 29, President Roosevelt reached the highest point he has yet attained in his career as statesman and a great leader of democracy. No less than the successes of allied arms in the field, it holds out a promise of ultimate victory and marks a substantial stage in progress towards a ‘new order’ of democratic unity. As he had elected national security rather than war as his topic, his statement was addressed primarily to the people of the United States; but in order that he should place the situation as it affects their country fairly and squarely before them, he was bound by the logic of present realities to show how the forces of aggression embodied in the Axis Powers form a threat to the Americas as a whole, and in aiming at a world domination were bent upon the destruction everywhere of that freedom which is of the essence of democracy. By the cogent argument of the facts of recent history in the action of “a gang of outlaws” against weaker neighbouring peoples, and the inevitable consequences which would follow their success in Europe, he showed that American civilization and American independence “had never before, since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock,"been in such danger.
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President Roosevelt and United Democracy. Nature 147, 20 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147020a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147020a0