Twenty-one American republics, expressing the will of 250,000,000 people to preserve peace and freedom in this hemisphere are displaying a unanimity of ideals and practical relationships which gives hope that what is being done here can be done on other continents. We in all the Americas are coming to the realization that we can retain our respective nationalities without, at the same time, threatening the national existence of our neighbors.

Such truly friendly relationships, for example, permit us to follow our own domestic policies with reference to our agricultural products, while at the same time we have the privilege of trying to work out mutual assistance arrangements for a world distribution of world agricultural surpluses.

And we have been able to apply the same simple principle to many manufactured products-surpluses of which must be sold in the world export markets if we would continue a high level of production and employment.

For many years after the World War blind economic selfishness in most countries, including our own, resulted in a destructive mine field of trade restrictions which blocked the channels of commerce among nations. This policy was one of the contributing causes of existing wars. It dammed up vast unsalable surpluses, helping to bring about unemployment and suffering in the United States and everywhere else. To point the way to break up the log jam, our Trade Agreements Act was passed-based upon a policy of equality of treatment among nations and of mutually profitable arrangements of trade.

It is not correct to infer that legislative powers have been transferred from the Congress to the executive branch of the Government. Everybody recognizes that general tariff legislation is a congressional function, but we know that, because of the stupendous task involved in the fashioning and passing of a general law, it is advisable to provide at times of emergency some flexibility to make the general law adjustable to quickly changing conditions.

We are in such a time today. Our present trade-agreement method provides a temporary flexibility and is, therefore, practical in the best sense. It should be kept alive to serve our trade interests-agricultural and industrial-in many valuable ways during the existing wars. But what is more important, the Trade Agreements Act should be extended as an indispensable part of the foundation of any stable and durable peace.

The old conditions of world trade made for no enduring peace; and when the time comes, the United States must use its influence to open up the trade channels of the world in order that no nation need feel

compelled in later days to seek by force of arms what it can well gain by peaceful conference. For this purpose we need the Trade Agreements Act even more than when it was passed.

I emphasize the leadership which this Nation can take when the time comes for a renewal of world peace. Such an influence will be greatly weakened if this Government becomes a dog in the manger of trade selfishness.

The first President of the United States warned us against entangling foreign alliances. The present President of the United States subscribes to and follows that precept.

But trade cooperation with the rest of the world does not violate that precept in any way.

Even as through these trade agreements we prepare to cooperate in a world that wants peace, we must likewise be prepared to take care of ourselves if the world cannot attain peace.

For several years past we have been compelled to strengthen our own national defense. That has created a very large portion of our Treasury deficits. This year, in the light of continuing world uncertainty, I am asking the Congress for Army and Navy increases which are based not on panic but on common sense. They are not as great as enthusiastic alarmists seek. They are not as small as unrealistic persons claiming superior private information would demand.

As will appear in the Annual Budget tomorrow, the only important increase in any part of the Budget is the estimate for national defense. Practically all other important items show a reduction. Therefore, in the hope that we can continue in these days of increasing economic prosperity to reduce the Federal deficit, I am asking the Congress to levy sufficient additional taxes to meet the emergency spending for national defense.

Behind the Army and Navy, of course, lies our ultimate line of defense "the general welfare" of our people. We cannot report, despite all the progress we have made in our domestic problemsdespite the fact that production is back to 1929 levels-that all our problems are solved. The fact of unemployment of millions of men and women remains a symptom of a number of difficulties in our economic system not yet adjusted.

While the number of the unemployed has decreased, while their immediate needs for food and clothing-as far as the Federal Government is concerned-have been largely met, while their morale has been kept alive by giving them useful public work, we have not yet found a way to employ the surplus of our labor which the efficiency of our industrial processes has created.

We refuse the European solution of using the unemployed to build up excessive armaments which eventually result in dictatorships. We encourage an American way-through an increase of national income which is the only way we can be sure will take up the slack. Much progress has been made; much remains to be done. We recognize that we must find an answer in terms of work and opportunity.

The unemployment problem today has become very definitely a problem of youth as well as of age. As each year has gone by hundreds of thousands of boys and girls have come of working age. They now form an army of unused youth. They must be an especial concern of democratic government.

We must continue, above all things, to look for a solution of their special problem. For they, looking ahead to life, are entitled to action on our part and not merely to admonitions of optimism or lectures on economic laws.

Some in our midst have sought to instill a feeling of fear and defeatism in the minds of the American people about this problem.

To face the task of finding jobs faster than invention can take them away-is not defeatism. To warble easy platitudes that if we will only go back to ways that have failed, everything will be all right is not courage.

We met a problem of real fear and real defeatism in 1933. We faced the facts-with action, not with words.

The American people will reject the doctrine of fear, confident that in the thirties we have been building soundly a new order of things different from the order of the twenties. In this dawn of the decade of the forties, with our program of social improvement started, we must continue to carry on the processes of recovery so as to preserve our gains and provide jobs at living wages.

There are, of course, many other items of great public interest which could be enumerated in this message-the continued conservation of our natural resources, the improvement of health and of education, the extension of social security to larger groups, the freeing of large areas from restricted transportation discriminations, the extension of the merit system and many others.

Our continued progress in the social and economic field is important not only for the significance of each part of it but for the total effect which our program of domestic betterment has upon that most valuable asset of a nation in dangerous times-its national unity.

The permanent security of America in the present crisis does not lie in armed force alone. What we face is a set of world-wide forces

of disintegration-vicious, ruthless, destructive of all the moral, religious, and political standards which mankind, after centuries of struggle, has come to cherish most.

In these moral values, in these forces which have made our Nation great, we must actively and practically reassert our faith.

These words "national unity"-must not be allowed to become merely a high-sounding phrase, a vague generality, a pious hope, to which everyone can give lip service. They must be made to have real meaning in terms of the daily thoughts and acts of every man, woman, and child in our land during the coming year and the years that lie ahead.

For national unity is, in a very real and deep sense, the fundamental safeguard of all democracy.

Doctrines which set group against group, faith against faith, race against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men too despondent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as rabble-rousing slogans on which dictators could ride to power. And once in power they could saddle their tyrannies on whole nations, and on their weaker neighbors.

This is the danger to which we in America must begin to be more alert. For the apologists for foreign aggressors, and equally those selfish and partisan groups at home who wrap themselves in a false mantle of Americanism to promote their own economic, financial, or political advantage, are now trying European tricks upon us, seeking to muddy the stream of our national thinking, weakening us in the face of danger, by trying to set our own people to fighting among themselves. Such tactics are what have helped to plunge Europe into war. We must combat them, as we would the plague, if American integrity and security are to be preserved. We cannot afford to face the future as a disunited people.

We must as a united people keep ablaze on this continent the flames of human liberty, of reason, of democracy, and of fair play as living things to be preserved for the better world that is to come.

Overstatement, bitterness, vituperation, and the beating of drums, have contributed mightily to ill feeling and wars between nations. If these unnecessary and unpleasant actions are harmful in the international field, they are also hurtful in the domestic scene. Peace among ourselves would seem to have some of the advantage of peace between us and other nations. And in the long run history amply demonstrates that angry controversy surely wins less than calm discussion.

In the spirit, therefore, of a greater unselfishness, recognizing that

the world-including the United States of America-passes through perilous times, I am very hopeful that the closing session of the Seventy-Sixth Congress will consider the needs of the Nation and of humanity with calmness, tolerance, and cooperative wisdom.

May the year 1940 be pointed to by our children as another period when democracy justified its existence as the best instrument of government yet devised by mankind.

Department of State Bulletin, vol. II, p. 335

147

Statement by President Roosevelt, March 29, 1940

Under Secretary of State Welles has concluded the mission upon which he was sent to Europe and has reported to me and to the Secretary of State.

As I said when the announcement of Mr. Welles' mission was made, Mr. Welles was sent to Europe in order to obtain information with regard to existing conditions. He was neither authorized to make, nor has he made, any commitments involving the Government of the United States, nor was he empowered to offer, and he has not offered, any proposals in the name of this Government. He has not received, nor has he brought back to me, any peace proposals from any source. The information which he has received from the heads of the governments which he has visited will be of the greatest value to this Government in the general conduct of its foreign relations. As was announced at the time of his departure from the United States, the information communicated to him by the Italian, German, French, and British Governments will be regarded as entirely confidential by this Government. It relates to the views and policies of the European governments mentioned.

I am glad to say that Mr. Welles' mission has likewise resulted, through personal contacts and through the conversations which he held, in a clarification of the relations between the United States and the countries which he visited and will, I believe, assist in certain instances in the development of better understanding and more friendly relations.

Finally, even though there may be scant immediate prospect for the establishment of any just, stable, and lasting peace in Europe, the information made available to this Government as a result of Mr.