![]() ![]() Yes, these men and their hypnotized followers call this a new order. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent-including our own they seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who have seized power by force. Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. We know that although Prussian autocracy was bad enough in the first war, Nazism is far worse in this. The big news story of this week is this: The world has been told that we, as a united Nation, realize the danger that confronts us-and that to meet that danger our democracy has gone into action. We, the American people, are writing new history today. ![]() History cannot be rewritten by wishful thinking. Do not let us waste time in reviewing the past, or fixing or dodging the blame for it. The record shows that I was not worried enough. Before the present war broke out on September 1, 1939, I was more worried about the future than many people-indeed, than most people. ![]() Let not dictators of Europe or Asia doubt our unanimity now. I remember that, a quarter of a century ago, in the early days of the first World War, the German Government received solemn assurances from their representatives in the United States that the people of America were disunited that they cared more for peace at any price than for the preservation of ideals and freedom that there would even be riots and revolutions in the United States if this Nation ever asserted its own interests. That is especially true in those lands where freedoms do not exist-where the purposes of our democracy and the characteristics of our country and of our people have been seriously distorted. To most of them it is a matter of constant amazement that press conferences such as ours can exist in any Nation in the world. In our press conferences, as at this dinner tonight, we include reporters representing papers and news agencies of many other lands. You, more than you realize, have been giving me a great deal of information about what the people of this country are thinking and saying. ![]() I have been trying to keep you informed of the news of Washington, of the Nation, and of the world, from the point of view of the Presidency. It differs from the press conferences that you and I hold twice a week, for you cannot ask me any questions tonight and everything that I have to say is word for word "on the record."įor eight years you and I have been helping each other. It is the first one at which I have made a speech in all these eight years. The immediate crisis had passed.This dinner of the White House Correspondents' Association is unique. Sixty million people listened to Roosevelt’s first radio address the next day, per the Roosevelt Library, “newspapers around the country reported long lines of people waiting to put their money back into the banks. “The broadcast brought you so close to us, and you spoke in such clear concise terms, our confidence in the Bank Holiday was greatly strengthened,” wrote one California woman. Herbert Hoover had averaged 5,000 letters a week FDR got 50,000, according to “ FDR’s First 100 Days,” a publication by the Franklin D. After this first chat, he was inundated with fan mail from listeners who felt they now knew him intimately. While future presidents followed FDR’s lead, using the technology of their times (Obama broadcasts his own addresses via YouTube and has reached out to millennials on Reddit, Instagram and Twitter), it would be difficult to name anyone who did it better than Roosevelt. ![]()
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