Fellow Americans of the radio audience, this is one of the saddest weeks that has come to humanity in a hundred years. A senseless war seems inevitably forced upon hundreds of millions of people. The whole world still prays for some miracle that might deliver us. For war means the killing of millions of the best and the most courageous of men who might contribute something to human progress. It means the killing and starvation of millions of women and children. It means another quarter of a century of impoverishment for the whole world. And it will likely be a long war, it is possible that the brave people of Poland may be overrun in a few months, but there seems no point of access from which an overwhelming attack can be delivered from the British and French on one side, to the Germans on the other, which might quickly end this war. It’s likely to be a war of slow attrition, and the fate of Poland will depend upon its ending. The air defenses of France and England, their greatly superior naval strength, their manpower, resources, their resolution, make it certain that they can defend themselves. And it is true that vast fleets of airplanes on both sides contribute a new and uncertain factor, but there is nothing which proves that even the superiority in airplanes can win the war. And while assurances have been given that there will be no bombing of women and children, there may come a time of desperation when all restraints go to the winds. It’s likely to be the most barbarous war that we have ever known.
This situation is the world today is not the act of the German people themselves, it’s the act of a group who hold them in subjection. The whole Nazi system is repugnant to the American people. The most of American sympathy will be to the democracies, but whatever our sympathies are, we cannot solve the problems of Europe. America must keep out of this war. The President and the Congress should be supported in their every efforts to keep us out. We can keep out, if we have the resolute national will to do so. We can be of more service to Europe and to humanity if we preserve the vitality and strength of the United States for use in the period of peace which must sometime come. And we must keep out if we are to preserve for civilization the very foundations of democracy and of free men
